From: 1 Corinthians 7:25-31
The Excellence of Virginity
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Commentary:
25-35. The Apostle now explains the excellence of virginity or celibacy (vv. 26ff)
for love of God as compared with marriage. The Magisterium of the Church has
explicitly spoken on the same lines (cf. Council of Trent, “De Sacrum Matrimonio”,
can. 10; Pius XII, “Sacra Virginitas”, 11).
He begins by saying that he has no commandment from the Lord on this matter
(cf. note on 7:12-16; Mt 19-12) but he for his part recommends celibacy, and his
advice carries weight because he is an Apostle chosen by the Lord in his mercy.
The reasons why he makes this recommendation reduce to one, basically—the
love of God: the unmarried person can dedicate himself or herself to God more
fully than a married person can, who has to look after the family and is “divided”
(v. 34). “This is the main purpose and primary reason for Christian virginity—to
dedicate oneself exclusively to divine things, giving them all one’s attention and
love, thinking of Him constantly and consecrating oneself to Him completely,
body and soul” (Pius XII, “Sacra Virginitas”, 5). This exclusive dedication to
God will lead to a full and productive life because it enables a person to love
others and devote himself or herself to them with great freedom and availability.
Also, celibacy has an eschatological dimension: it is a special sign of heavenly
delights (cf. Vatican II, “Perfectae Caritatis”, 12), and points to the fact that the
blessed in heaven live as angels (cf. Mt 22:30).
St Paul’s references to marriage should be understood in the context in which
he is writing (cf. note on 7:1-9). All he wants to make clear here is that, although
celibacy is a higher state, marriage is not something bad: those who marry are
not doing anything wrong (v. 28), nor is there any need for married people to live
as celibates (vv. 3-5) or to separate (v. 27). However, only someone who acknow-
ledges the great value that marriage has is in a position to appreciate celibacy
as a gift of God. “Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God not on-
ly does not contradict the dignity of marriage but presupposes it and confirms it.
Marriage and virginity or celibacy are two ways of expressing and living the one
mystery of the covenant of God with his people. When marriage is not esteemed,
neither can consecrated virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not
regarded as a great value given by the Creator, the renunciation of it for the sake
of the Kingdom of heaven loses its meaning” (Bl. John Paul II, “Familiaris Consor-
tio”, 16)
28. “Worldly troubles” (tribulation of the flesh): this is not in any way pejorative
of marriage: “Married love is uniquely expressed and perfected by the exercise
of the acts proper to marriage. Hence the acts in marriage by which the intimate
and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable: the truly
human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches
the spouses in joy and gratitude” (Vatican II, “Gaudium Et Spes”, 49).
The phrase is very like that used in v. 33 (”worldly affairs”): that is, married peo-
ple cannot ignore the material needs of their family. This is also what the Apostle
means when he says that the married man’s interests are “divided” (v. 34), that
is, he cannot please God unless he attend to the needs—including material needs
—of his family. Married people have to turn these circumstances—inherent in their
state of life—into a means of sanctification. “Husband and wife are called to sanc-
tify their married life”, Monsignor Escriva writes, “and to sanctify themselves in it.
It would be a serious mistake if they were to exclude family life from their spiritual
development. The marriage union, the care and education of children, the effort to
provide for the needs of the family as well as for its security and development, the
relationships with other persons who make up the community—all these are
among the ordinary human situations that Christian couples are called upon to
sanctify” (”Christ Is Passing By”, 23).
29-31. In their letters, St Paul and the other Apostles frequently remind us that
life is short (cf. Rom 13:11-14; 2 Pet 3:8; 1 Jn 2:15-17), in order to encourage
us to make the very best use of our time to serve God, and others for his sake.
“When I reflect on this, how well I understand St Paul’s exclamation when he
writes to the Corinthians, “tempus breve est” (1 Cor 7:29). How short indeed is
the time of our passing through this world! For the true Christian these words ring
deep down in his heart as a reproach to his lack of generosity, and as a constant
invitation to be loyal. Brief indeed is our time for loving, for giving, for making atone-
ment. It would be very wrong, therefore, for us to waste it, or to cast this treasure
irresponsibly overboard. We must not squander this period of the world’s history
which God has entrusted to each one of us” (J. Escriva, “Friends of God”, 39).
A Christian, therefore, should always be detached from worldly things, and never
let himself become the slave of anything or anyone (cf. 1 Cor 7:23; “Lumen Gen-
tium”, 42) but, instead, always have his sights on eternal life. “It is a great help
towards this”, St Teresa of Avila teaches, “if we keep a very constant care of the
vanity of all things, and the rapidity with which they pass away, so that we may
withdraw our affections from everything and fix them on what will last forever.
This may seem to be a poor kind of help but it will have the effect of greatly forti-
fying the soul. With regard to little things, we must be very careful, as soon as
we begin to be fond of them, to think no more about them and to turn our thoughts
to God. His majesty will help us to do this” (”Way of Perfection”, chap. X).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: Luke 6:20-26
The Beatitudes and the Curses
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Commentary:
20-49. These thirty verses of St. Luke correspond to some extent to the Sermon
on the Mount, an extensive account of which St. Matthew gives us in Chapters 5
to 7 in his Gospel. It is very likely that in the course of His public ministry in diffe-
rent regions and towns of Israel Jesus preached the same things, using different
words on different occasions. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit each evan-
gelist would have chosen to report those things which he considered most useful
for the instruction of his immediate readers—Christians of Jewish origin in the
case of Matthew, Gentile converts in the case of Luke. There is no reason why
one evangelist should not have selected certain items and another different ones,
depending on his readership, or why one should not have laid special stress on
some subjects and shortened or omitted accounts of others.
In this present discourse, we might distinguish three parts—the Beatitudes and
the curses (6:20-26); love of one’s enemies (6:27-38); and teaching on upright-
ness of heart (6:39-49).
Some Christians may find it difficult to grasp the need of practising the moral
teaching of the Gospel so radically, in particular Christ’s teaching in the Sermon
on the Mount. Jesus is very demanding in what He says, but He is saying it to
everyone, and not just to His Apostles or to those disciples who followed Him
closely. We are told expressly that “when Jesus finished these sayings, the
crowds were astonished at His teaching” (Matthew 7:28). It is quite clear that
the Master calls everyone to holiness, making no distinction of state-in-life, race
or personal circumstances. This teaching on the universal call to holiness was
a central point of the teaching of St. Escriva. The Second Vatican Council ex-
pressed the same teaching with the full weight of its authority: everyone is
called to Christian holiness; consider, for example, just one reference it makes,
in “Lumen Gentium”, 11: “Strengthened by so many and such great means of
salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state — though each in his
or her own way—are called by the Lord to that perfection of sanctity by which
the Father Himself is perfect.”
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is not proposing an unattainable ideal, useful
though that might be to make us feel humble in the light of our inability to reach
it. No. Christian teaching in this regard is quite clear: what Christ commands,
He commands in order to have us do what He says. Along with His command-
ment comes grace to enable us to fulfill it. Therefore, every Christian is capable
of practising the moral teaching of Christ and of attaining the full height of his
calling —holiness—not by his own efforts alone but by means of the grace which
Christ has won for us, and with the abiding help of the means of sanctification
which He left to His Church. “If anyone plead human weakness to excuse Him-
self for not loving God, it should be explained that He who demands our love
pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit the fervor of His love, and this good Spirit
our Heavenly Father gives to those that ask Him. With reason, therefore, did St.
Augustine pray: ‘Give Me what Thou command, and command what You please.’
As, then, God is ever ready to help us, especially since the death of Christ our
Lord, by which the prince of this world was cast out, there is no reason why any-
one should be disheartened by the difficulty of the undertaking. To him who loves,
nothing is difficult” (”St. Pius V Catechism”, III, 1, 7).
20-26. The eight Beatitudes which St. Matthew gives (5:3-12) are summed up in
four by St. Luke, but with four opposite curses. We can say, with St. Ambrose,
that Matthew’s eight are included in Luke’s four (cf. “Expositio Evangelii Sec.
Lucam, in loc.”). In St. Luke they are in some cases stated in a more incisive,
more direct form than in the First Gospel, where they are given with more expla-
nation: for example, the first beatitude says simply “Blessed are you poor”,
whereas in Matthew we read, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, which contains
a brief explanation of the virtue of poverty.
20. “The ordinary Christian has to reconcile two aspects of this life that can at
first seem contradictory. There is on the one hand “true poverty”, which is ob-
vious and tangible and made up of definite things. This poverty should be an ex-
pression of faith in God and a sign that the heart is not satisfied with created
things and aspires to the Creator; that it wants to be filled with love of God so
as to be able to give this same love to everyone. On the other hand, an ordinary
Christian is and wants to be “one more among his fellow men”, sharing their
way of life, their joys and happiness; working with them, loving the world and
all the good things that exist in it; using all created things to solve the problems
of human life and to establish a spiritual and material environment which will fos-
ter personal and social development [...].
“To my way of thinking the best examples of poverty are those mothers and
fathers of large and poor families who spend their lives for their children and who
with their effort and constancy—often without complaining of their needs—bring
up their family, creating a cheerful home in which everyone learns to love, to
serve and to work” (St. J. Escriva, “Conversations”, 110f).
24-26. Our Lord here condemns four things: avarice and attachment to the things
of the world; excessive care of the body, gluttony; empty-headed joy and general
self-indulgence; flattery, and disordered desire for human glory—four very common
vices which a Christian needs to be on guard against.
24. In the same kind of way as in verse 20, which refers to the poor in the sense
of those who love poverty, seeking to please God better, so in this verse the “rich”
are to be understood as those who strive to accumulate possessions heedless
of whether or not they are doing so lawfully, and who seek their happiness in
those possessions, as if they were their ultimate goal. But people who inherit
wealth or acquire it through honest work can be really poor provided they are de-
tached from these things and are led by that detachment to use them to help
others, as God inspires them. We can find in Sacred Scriptures a number of peo-
ple to whom the beatitude of the poor can be applied although they possessed
considerable wealth—Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Job, for example.
As early as St. Augustine’s time there were people who failed to understand
poverty and riches properly: they reasoned as follows: The Kingdom of Heaven
belongs to the poor, the Lazaruses of this world, the hungry; all the rich are bad,
like this rich man here. This sort of thinking led St. Augustine to explain the deep
meaning of wealth and poverty according to the spirit of the Gospel: “Listen, poor
man, to my comments on your words. When you refer to yourself as Lazarus,
that holy man covered with wounds, I am afraid your pride makes you describe
yourself incorrectly. Do not despise rich men who are merciful, who are humble:
or, to put it briefly, do not despise poor rich men. Oh, poor man, be poor yourself;
poor, that is, humble [...].
Listen to me, then. Be truly poor, be devout, be humble; if you glory in your rag-
ged and ulcerous poverty, if you glory in likening yourself to that beggar lying
outside the rich man’s house, then you are only noticing his poverty, and nothing
else. What should I notice you ask? Read the Scriptures and you will understand
what I mean. Lazarus was poor, but he to whose bosom he was brought was rich.
‘It came to pass, it is written, that the poor man died and he was brought by the
angels to Abraham’s bosom.’ To where? To Abraham’s bosom, or let us say, to
that mysterious place where Abraham was resting. Read [...] and remember that
Abraham was a very wealthy man when he was on earth: he had abundance of
money, a large family, flocks, land; yet that rich man was poor, because he was
humble. ‘Abraham believed God and he was reckoned righteous.’ [...] He was
faithful, he did good, received the commandment to offer his son in sacrifice, and
he did not refuse to offer what he had received to Him from whom he had received
it. He was approved in God’s sight and set before us as an example of faith”
(”Sermon”, 14).
To sum up: poverty does not consist in something purely external, in having or
not having material goods, but in something that goes far deeper, affecting a per-
son’s heart and soul; it consists in having a humble attitude to God, in being
devout, in having total faith. If a Christian has these virtues and also has an abun-
dance of material possessions, he should be detached from his wealth and act
charitably towards others and thus be pleasing to God. On the other hand, if
someone is not well-off he is not justified in God’s sight on that account, if he
fails to strive to acquire those virtues in which true poverty consists.
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.