What drives you? What is your passion? What are the parts of your life that are intrinsic to who you are? This is more than a question of identity. I am a Catholic priest, a Franciscan friar, a Naval Academy graduate, former nuclear submariner, and the list can go on. You have your own list of attributes by which people might identify you. But are any one of these the passion that drives you when everyone else stops?
Today’s first reading from the 1st Letter to the Corinthians is part of a larger section in which St. Paul is trying to explain to the Corinthian community his passion and why it leads him to make the choices he makes in his own life and how that same passion underlies the pastoral guidance that he gives to the community.
The proximate issue begins in Chapter 8 when Paul has corrected the community on their practice of buying meat from the pagan temple markets – meat that was sacrificed to pagan gods, as well as attending the cultic meals with their pagan friends. He acknowledges that while some people possess the knowledge that there is only one true God and that idols are nothing, and thus feel free to eat such meat, others might not share this knowledge and could be led astray or feel conflicted by the action. Paul argues that even though eating this meat might not be inherently sinful, Christians should consider the impact of their actions on others. If eating the meat causes a fellow believer to stumble or be troubled in their conscience, it’s better to abstain from it out of love and consideration for that person’s faith. The principle he emphasizes is that love should guide their actions, prioritizing the well-being and spiritual growth of others over personal freedom.
Apparently, the Corinthian community pushed back on that pastoral guidance and some seem to have questioned St. Paul’s authority to give any advice since he does not take any compensation for his leadership role – freely having given it up – Paul is not following what Jesus says: that a laborer deserves his wages (Luke 10:7). The logic seems to be that thus Paul is not one truly commissioned by Jesus.
Prior to our first reading Paul makes clear that those who give themselves to the “work of the ministry” are deserving of material support. The whole reason for his argument is to assert that his giving up of these rights does not mean that he is not entitled to them.
It is a long, winding argument and explanation that as much as anything in his letters help us to understand what made Paul tick. In the middle of his discussion, we can’t lose sight of the fact that his renunciation of his “rights” to material support is attributable to his singular passion for the gospel. Everything is done so as not to hinder the gospel (v. 12b), so as not to misuse his authority in the gospel (v. 18). By presenting the gospel “free of charge” he is himself thereby “free from all people”; no one except Christ has a claim on him (v. 19). His presenting the gospel “free of charge” also becomes a lived-out paradigm of the gospel itself.
“…when I preach, I offer the Gospel free of charge so as not to make full use of my right in the Gospel. Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the Gospel,
so that I too may have a share in it.” (1 Cor 9:18-19)
Paul has paradoxically used the Christ-centric freedom to become “a slave to all.” Because he is Christ’s slave, he must work without pay; but working without pay also makes him free from any merely human restraints on his ministry, so that he might freely become other people’s slave as well.
It is pretty clear what drives St. Paul, nothing ambivalent there. What about each one of us? What drives us?
Image credit: Saint Paul Writing His Epistles | attributed to Valentin de Boulogne | Houston Museum