Homily for Saturday, Week 22 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Saturday
Week 22 of Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Teresa of Calcutta

Sept. 5, 2026
1 Cor 4: 6-15
Collect
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

St. Paul mosaic
San Vitale Basilica, Ravenna

“What do you possess that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4: 7).

In the opening section of his 1st Letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul has been contrasting the wisdom of the world with spiritual wisdom.  The latter is a gift of the Holy Spirit and is summed up in the cross and the resurrection of Christ.

Paul is disturbed by the factionalism he’s detected among his friends.  They’re more than friends; they’re his “beloved children” because he “became [their] father in Christ Jesus thru the Gospel” (4:15).

He’s disturbed because some members of the community seem to be giving their loyalty to Apollos or Peter, even to him, rather than to Christ and, it appears, to be claiming importance in Corinth based on which apostle they’re following.

That’s not what Paul and Apollos have taught them; they ought not “be inflated with pride in favor of one person over against another” (4:6); ought not be claiming importance on the basis of which preacher they’re listening to.

Paul uses irony—it might be read as sarcasm—to try to bring his “beloved children” back to the reality that all of them have been given a gift, namely the Gospel, the Gospel that’s foolishness in the eyes of the world:  we apostles are “like people sentenced to death, … a spectacle to the world….  We are fools on Christ’s account…; we are weak, … held in disrepute….  We have become like the world’s rubbish, the scum of all…” (4:9-13).

That, as Paul wrote a few verses earlier (our reading yesterday), is what it means to be “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (4:1).  That identifies us with the cross of Christ.  That is the wisdom of God’s Holy Spirit (cf. 2:10-15) that will enable us to come in due time to the resurrection and to reign with Christ (4:8).   That we will possess only because we’ve received it (4:7), not consequent to our own power, wisdom, or nobility, but only by God’s generous gift “in Christ Jesus thru the Gospel.”

Mother Teresa’s life and ministry illustrate Paul’s message.  No one she and her sisters cared for on the streets of Calcutta or in their other houses earned or deserved their care—except insofar as those destitute, sick, and dying people are God’s beloved children.  The sisters freely bestow a gift of mercy on them in the name of the Gospel, in the name of God’s “Son thirsting on the cross” for the hearts of “our suffering brothers and sisters” (ibid.).