A Homily for Septuagesima Sunday

+ We learn from this morning’s Epistle that God was not well pleased with most of the Israelites, in spite of all having been under the cloud and passed through the sea together and all having eaten together of the same spiritual food and same spiritual drink – that drink which is from Christ. These stark words of the Apostle are written before decrying the liturgical abuse that was occurring within the Corinthian church (11:20-22). Whilst he is drawing, in a typical exegetical manner, from the prophets he is clearly and directly applying it to the new situation as an image that God is not well pleased with most of those in the Corinthian church. He decries the Corinthians as not eating the Lord’s supper because “there are schisms among” them implying that “there must also be heresies” (11:18-19)

All we know of the situation of the Church in Corinth at that moment is what can be gleaned from the Apostle, and he himself admits that his knowledge is hearsay, which he believes. His correction of the situation, however, is to condemn that “everyone takes his own supper” (11:21), that which is made of himself and contrasts it with that which he himself delivered on to them having received it from the Lord (11:23). He knows that not even he, an apostle of Christ, could in any sense depart from the fundamental structure of the Lord’s supper which he had directly received. Within this structure, however, he could be content until he came to set the rest in order (11:34).

Preliminary to all this, however, St Paul is addressing the Corinthians about the need for self-mastery. Nobody trains unless it is to win the race, nobody fights beating the air. Likewise, within the liturgical context of the Epistle, St Paul is urging the Corinthians not to go through the motions of the liturgy emptily. Just as all the Israelites were baptised in Moses, and drank from the rock, which was Christ, yet were not pleasing to God, so likewise the Corinthians, not being transformed by the corresponding sacraments partake it emptily bringing judgement onto themselves. For they are not struggling to win the crown.

So, it is likewise with us. Unless we satiate ourselves on, and live entirely from, the bread that is offered in the lex credendi, the law which is to be believed through the lex orandi, the law of prayer: we run at an uncertainty (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 43 - unless you follow the Vatican’s faulty translation).

Unless we all allow the cloud, the Holy Ghost, into which the rites of the Church lead us, to fully permeate us we are but beating at the air. Unless we strive to keep the sea’s washing ever clean our self-mastery is nothing. Rather we will be “smitten as grass” with a withered heart having forgotten “to eat bread” (Ps 101:5[102:4]) even whilst present at table.

Only at the hour of death is it too late to start training, to take up that bread, to savour it, and to live from the nourishment it provides. Only at the hour of death is it too late to point ourselves towards the finish line, to start to land the blows on the enemy. Yet it is not only at a certain moment that we must check that orientation; it is not only a single punch that we must land. Urgency is given to each punch, each reorientation, for our moment of death is unknown. Moreover, the same punches are not thrown by different people. A monk must have a very different trajectory from a nursing mother – yet both are targeting heaven.

We must remain ever attentive to the crown for which we compete and rectify every step that moves us away from that target. It is in this continual personal renewal truly nourished on the spiritual food and drink given us by Christ that we are found to be pleasing in His sight. +