24th Week of Ordinary Time
Sept.
17, 2018
1
Cor 11: 17-26, 33Don Bosco Cristo Rey, Takoma Park, Md.
“I hear
that when you meet as a Church there are divisions among you” (1 Cor 11: 18)
Earlier
in 1 Corinthians, Paul chastised the Church for factionalism based on whom they
looked to as their leader or model of faith:
Paul, Apollos, Cephas (see ch. 3).
Here he faults them for a different kind of factions when they come
together, i.e., to celebrate the Lord’s Supper:
this time on the basis of social class, rich and poor (11:18-21). At this time in the early Church—not even 30
years after the Resurrection—the Eucharist was celebrated in conjunction with a
meal, but those with an abundance of food weren’t sharing it with those who had
less. Picture a church potluck dinner at
which every family eats only what they’ve brought and don’t offer it to anyone
else.
 |
An agape feast
(Fresco at a tomb in the catacombs of Sts. Marcellinus & Peter, Rome)
|
Then
Paul reminds them of the origins, the meaning, of the Lord’s Supper: Christ gave us this sacrament as a memorial
of his own self-giving (11:23-24). He
who was super-rich in the abundance of God’s love gave himself to us who are so
wretchedly poor (cf. Phil 2:6-7), that a new covenantal relationship might be
forged between us and God (11:25).
So it
ill behooves the Corinthians to ignore the poor and think only of
themselves. So any distinctions between
rich and poor or between ethnic groups or anything like that is antithetical to
the Eucharist, to the Body of Christ in which we participate.
And it’s
one of the glories of our Salesian mission and of what we do, of who we are, at
DBCR that we do the opposite of what the Corinthians were doing, e.g., in our
sistering with Cristo Rey Houston last year and our mission trip to Puerto Rico
this summer—and in our day-to-day school life.
Thanks be to God! Thanks be to
the grace of our Lord Jesus. May we
always “do this in remembrance of [him]”—bringing the Eucharist into our lives.
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