2nd Reading for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

From: 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17

An Appeal for Unity

[10] I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. [11] For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarrelling among you, my brethren. [12] What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ." [13] Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? [17] For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
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Commentary:

10-17. St Paul takes the Corinthians to task for the strife in their community--not, it seems, quarrels over matters of doctrines but minor disagreements due to preferenges for certain teachers. Even so, the Apostle is very much against factions, and he starts his letter by stressing that unity is essential to the Church.

He makes four points, as it were--an appeal (v. 10); a description of the state of affairs in Corinth (vv. 11-12); a doctrinal reflection: Christ cannot be divided (v. 13); and a summary of his (Paul's) ministry (vv. 14-17).

His appeal is virtually a warning: I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." The Apostle only calls on the name of our Lord when he has very serious counsel to offer (cf. 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6); he makes it clear that it is a very grave matter to put the unity of the Church at risk. Each of these groups in Corinth is appealing to whichever authority it prefers--without Paul, Apollos or Cephas having any say in the matter. Christ cannot be divided and therefore neither can the Church, Christ's body (cf. 1 Cor 12:12-31).

Finally, St Paul points out their feeble grounds for basing divisions on personal relationships: very few of them can claim to have been baptized by him, because his concentration has been on evangelization.

This entire passage is a defense of Church unity. Throughout the centuries the Church has confessed this truth of faith--from the Apostles' Creed ("I believe in the Holy Catholic Church") right down to the "Creed of the People of God" of Paul VI: "We believe that the Church which Christ founded and for which he prayed is indefectibly one in faith and in worship, and one in the communion of a single hierarchy' (no. 21).

10. "That you all agree...in the same mind and the same judgment": St Paul is not calling for mere external unity or just living peaceably or being sure to come together for certain liturgical ceremonies. He wants something that goes much deeper than that: the concord that should reign among them should stem from their being of one mind, from feeling the same way about things. In saying this he obviously does not mean to restrict the freedom every Christian enjoys as far as earthly affairs are concerned: it is the unity of the Church that Paul is discussing, and in that area there is no room for factions among Christians (cf. v. 11). Differences, diversity, which do not affect the unity of the Church are something lawful and positively good.

One basic dimension of Church unity is unity of faith. That is why the Fathers and the Magisterium have borrowed from what St Paul says here, to show that genuine progress in understanding the content of truths of faith must always keep in line with earlier understanding of the same: "any meaning of the sacred dogmas that has once been declared by holy Mother Church must always be retained; and there must never be any deviation from that meaning on the specious grounds of a more profound understanding. 'Therefore, let there be growth [...] and all possible progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom whether in single individuals or in the whole body, in each man as well as in the entire Church, according to the stage of their development but only within proper limits, that is, in the same doctrine, in the same meaning, and in the same purport ["eodem sensu eademque sententia]' (St Vincent of Lerins, "Commonitorium", 28)" (Vatican I, "Dei Filius", chap. 4).

11-12. St Paul now goes on to discuss the dissensions (v. 10) which "Chloe's people" have told him about. We must presume that Chloe was a woman well known in the church at Corinth; and obviously there is no question of secret denunciations but of a well-intentioned effort to bring to Paul's attention a problem requiring solution. Chloe's people might have been members of her family or servants of hers who had visited the Apostle in Ephesus (cf. 1 Cor 16:15-17).

Although St Paul does not go into much detail, we can see that a number of groupings had grown up among the Corinthians They each claimed to follow a prominent Christian (clearly without any encouragement from their "heroes"), and a certain rivalry had developed which could easily undermine the unity of faith. The group who claimed Apollos--a Jewish convert from Alexandria (Egypt), a man of eloquence, well versed in the Scriptures (cf. Acts 18:24-28)--would have emerged after Apollos spent some time preaching in Corinth shortly after Paul left there (cf. Acts 19:1).

"I belong to Cephas": the Peter group may have consisted of people who knew him to be the leader of the Apostles (cf. 3:21-23; 9:4-5; 15:5); St Peter may have passed through Corinth at some point, but there is no evidence of a visit and it is more likely that some of his disciples or converts had come to the city.

"I belong to Christ": this can be interpreted as a reference either to a fourth group very attached to certain preachers from Jerusalem, of a Judaizing tendency--and therefore very attached to Jewish traditions and very disinclined to acknowledge the newness of Christ's message; or else to some Christians who were disgusted at the petty quarrelling of the other groups and, therefore, would naturally claim to belong to Christ and only to Christ. It is possible, however, that this is a personal statement of St Paul's, designed to show how foolish these groups are: You may say that you belong to Paul, to Apollos or to Peter: but I belong to Christ.

What the Apostle says here should lead us to avoid narrow-mindedness; each of us has his own job to do, where God put him, but he should also make his own the sentiments and concerns of the universal Church.

17. In the first part of this verse St Paul is giving the reasons for his actions as described in the preceding verses. The second part he uses to broach a new subject--the huge difference between this world's wisdom and the wisdom of God.

"Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel": this is areminder that preaching is St Paul's main task, as it is of the other Apostles (cf. Mk 3:14). This does not imply a belittling of Baptism: in his mandate to the Apostles to go out into the whole world (cf. Mt 28:19-20), our Lord charged them to baptize as well as to preach, and we know that St Paul did administer Baptism. But Baptism--the sacrament of faith presupposes preaching: "faith comes from what is heard" (Rom 10:17). St Paul concentrates on preaching, leaving it to others to baptize and gather the fruit--a further sign of his detachment and upright intention.

In Christian catechesis, evangelization and the sacraments are interdependent. Preaching can help people to receive the sacraments with better dispositions, and it can make them more aware of what the sacraments are; and the graces which the sacraments bring help them to understand the preaching they hear and to be more docile to it. "Evangelization thus exercises its full capacity when it achieves the most intimate relationship, or better still a permanent and unbroken intercommunication, between the Word and the Sacraments. In a certain sense it is a mistake to make a contrast between evangelization and sacramentalization, as is sometimes done. It is indeed true that a certain way of administering the Sacraments, without the solid support of catechesis regarding these same Sacraments and a global catechesis, could end up by depriving them of their effectiveness to a great extent. The role of evangelization is precisely to educate people in the faith so as to lead each individual Christian to live the Sacraments as true Sacraments of faith--and not to receive them passively or apathetically" (Paul VI, "Evangelii Nuntiandi", 47).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.