From: Isaiah 9:1-4 — RSVCE (8:23 - 9:3 — NAB)
The Prince of Peace
[2] The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness
on them has light shined.
[3] Thou hast multiplied the nation,
thou hast increased its joy;
they rejoice before thee
as with joy at the harvest,
as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
[4] For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
thou hast broken as on the day of Midian.
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Commentary:
9:1-7. At this point, though not yet very clearly, we begin to see the figure of King
Hezekiah, who, unlike his father Ahaz, was a pious man who put all his trust in
the Lord. After Galilee was laid waste by Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, and its po-
pulation subsequently deported (cf. 8:21-22), Hezekiah of Judah would reconquer
that region, which would recover its splendour for a period. All this gave grounds
for hope again.
This oracle may have a connexion with the Immanuel prophecy (7:1-17), and the
child with messianic prerogatives that has been born (cf. 9:6-7) could be the child
that Isaiah prophesied about (cf. 7:14). For this reason, 9:1-7 is seen as the se-
cond oracle of the Immanuel cycle. This “child” that is born, the son given to us,
is a gift from God (9:6), because it is a sign that God is present among his peo-
ple. The Hebrew text attributes four qualities to the child which seem to embrace
all the typical features of Israel’s illustrious forebears — the wisdom of Solomon
(cf. 1 Kings 3: “Wonderful Counsellor”), the prowess of David (cf. 1 Sam 7: “Migh-
ty God”), the administrative skills of Moses (cf. Ex 18:13-26) as liberator, guide
and father of the people (cf. Deut 34:10-12), (”Everlasting Father”), and the virtues
of the early patriarchs, who made peace pacts (cf. Gen 21:22-34; 26:15-35; 23:
6), (”Prince of peace”). In the old Latin Vulgate, the translation gave six features
(”Admirabilis, Consiliarius, Deus, Fortis, Pater future saeculi, Princeps pacis”);
these have found their way into the liturgy. The New Vulgate has reverted to the
Hebrew text. Either way, what we have here are titles that Semite nations ap-
plied to the reigning monarch; but, taken together, they go far beyond what be-
fitted Hezekiah or any other king of Judah. Therefore, Christian tradition has in-
terpreted them as being appropriate only for Jesus. St Bernard, for example, ex-
plains the justification for these names as follows: “He is Wonderful in his birth,
Counsellor in his preaching, God in his works, Mighty in the Passion, Everlas-
ting Father in the resurrection, and Prince of Peace in eternal happiness” (”Ser-
mones de diversis”, 53, 1).
Because these names are applied to Jesus, the short-term conquest of Galilee
by Hezekiah is seen as being only an announcement of the definitive salvation
brought about by Christ. In the Gospels we find echoes of this oracle in a num-
ber of passages that refer to Jesus. When Luke narrates the Annunciation by
the angel to Mary (Lk 1:31-33) we hear that the son that she will conceive and
give birth to will receive “the throne of his father David and he will reign over the
house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Lk 1:32b-33;
cf. Is 9:7). And in the account about the shepherds of Bethlehem, they are told
that “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord
…” (Lk 2:11-12; cf. Is 9:6). St Matthew sees the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in
Galilee (Mt 4:12-17) as the fulfillment of this Isaian oracle (cf. Is 9:1): the lands
that in the prophet’s time were laid waste and saw ethnic cleansing and trans-
plantation were the first to receive the light of salvation from the Messiah.
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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: 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17
An Appeal for Unity
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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 doctrine, but minor disagreements due to
preferences for certain teachers. Even so, the Apostle is very much against fac-
tions, 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 Co-
rinth is appealing to whichever authority it prefers — without Paul, Apollos or Ce-
phas 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 dis-
cussing, 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 some-
thing 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 re-
tained; 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 [”eo-
dem 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 de-
nunciations 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 ser-
vants 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.
13-16. Crispus was, or had been, the ruler of the synagogue at Corinth and had
become a Christian through Paul’s preaching (cf. Acts 18:8). Gaius was another
convert of Paul’s and the Apostle had stayed with him when he was in Corinth (cf.
Rom 16:2). Stephanas’ family had been the first to be converted in the province
of Achaia; and Stephanas himself was now with St Paul in Ephesus (cf. 1 Cor
16:15-17).
There is no excuse for divisions, the Apostle tells them: unity is not dependent
on which teacher you had or who baptized you; it is something based on Christ
— whom all the preachers preach; Christ was the one who was crucified for every-
one, and his is the name they were baptized in. And there is only one Christ;
therefore they all belong to him.
It is through Baptism, the door of the Christian life, that a Christian becomes part
of the one body of Christ; there the merits gained by Christ on the cross are ap-
plied to him, and the baptized person is configured to his dead and risen Lord:
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death,
so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father we too might
walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4). And the Second Vatican Council states that:
“by the sacrament of Baptism [...] man becomes truly incorporated into the cruci-
fied and glorified Christ and is reborn to a sharing of the divine life, as the Apostle
says: ‘for you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with
him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead’ (Col 2:12)”
(”Unitatis Redintegratio”, 22).
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 sub-
ject — 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 a reminder
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 Bap-
tism — 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 inten-
tion.
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 unbro-
ken intercommunication, between the Word and the Sacraments. In a certain
sense it is a mistake to make a contrast between evangelization and sacramen-
talization, as is sometimes done. It is indeed true that a certain way of admini-
stering 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 Sa-
craments 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 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.