Catholic lectionary for 9 November 2020

La Bibbia (it)

La Bibbia (it)

Corinzi 1, Capitolo 3, versi 9-11, 16-17

⁹Siamo infatti collaboratori di Dio, e voi siete il campo di Dio, l'edificio di Dio.

¹⁰Secondo la grazia di Dio che mi è stata data, come un sapiente architetto io ho posto il fondamento; un altro poi vi costruisce sopra. Ma ciascuno stia attento come costruisce.

¹¹Infatti nessuno può porre un fondamento diverso da quello che gia vi si trova, che è Gesù Cristo.
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¹⁶Non sapete che siete tempio di Dio e che lo Spirito di Dio abita in voi?

¹⁷Se uno distrugge il tempio di Dio, Dio distruggerà lui. Perché santo è il tempio di Dio, che siete voi.

Read more:Corinzi 1, Capitolo 3

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3

3:9 For we are all fellowlabourers - God's labourers, and fellowlabourers with each other. Ye are God's husbandry - This is the sum of what went before: it is a comprehensive word, taking in both a field, a garden, and a vineyard. Ye are God's building - This is the sum of what follows.

3:10 According to the grace of God given to me - This he premises, lest he should seem to ascribe it to himself. Let every one take heed how he buildeth thereon - That all his doctrines may be consistent with the foundation.

3:11 For other foundation - On which the whole church: and all its doctrines, duties, and blessings may be built. Can no man lay than what is laid - In the counsels of divine wisdom, in the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament, in the preaching of the apostles, St. Paul in particular. Which is Jesus Christ - Who, in his person and offices, is the firm, immovable Rock of Ages, every way sufficient to bear all the weight that God himself, or the sinner, when he believes, can lay upon him.

Giovanni, Capitolo 2, versi 13-22

¹³Si avvicinava intanto la Pasqua dei Giudei e Gesù salì a Gerusalemme.

¹⁴Trovò nel tempio gente che vendeva buoi, pecore e colombe, e i cambiavalute seduti al banco.

¹⁵Fatta allora una sferza di cordicelle, scacciò tutti fuori del tempio con le pecore e i buoi; gettò a terra il denaro dei cambiavalute e ne rovesciò i banchi,

¹⁶e ai venditori di colombe disse: «Portate via queste cose e non fate della casa del Padre mio un luogo di mercato».

¹⁷I discepoli si ricordarono che sta scritto: Lo zelo per la tua casa mi divora.

¹⁸Allora i Giudei presero la parola e gli dissero: «Quale segno ci mostri per fare queste cose?».

¹⁹Rispose loro Gesù : «Distruggete questo tempio e in tre giorni lo farò risorgere».

²⁰Gli dissero allora i Giudei: «Questo tempio è stato costruito in quarantasei anni e tu in tre giorni lo farai risorgere?».

²¹Ma egli parlava del tempio del suo corpo.

²²Quando poi fu risuscitato dai morti, i suoi discepoli si ricordarono che aveva detto questo, e credettero alla Scrittura e alla parola detta da Gesù .

Read more:Giovanni, Capitolo 2

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2

2:14 Oxen, and sheep, and doves - Used for sacrifice: And the changers of money - Those who changed foreign money for that which was current at Jerusalem, for the convenience of them that came from distant countries.

2:15 Having made a scourge of rushes - (Which were strewed on the ground,) he drove all out of the temple, (that is, the court of it,) both the sheep and the oxen - Though it does not appear that he struck even them; and much less, any of the men. But a terror from God, it is evident, fell upon them.

2:17 Salmi 69:10.

2:18 Then answered the Jews - Either some of those whom he had just driven out, or their friends: What sign showest thou? - So they require a miracle, to confirm a miracle!

2:19 This temple - Doubtless pointing, while he spoke, to his body, the temple and habitation of the Godhead.

2:20 Forty and six years - Just so many years before the time of this conversation, Herod the Great had begun his most magnificent reparation of the temple, (one part after another,) which he continued all his life, and which was now going on, and was continued thirty - six years longer, till within six or seven years of the destruction of the state, city, and temple by the Romans.

2:22 They believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said - Concerning his resurrection.

NOTES

When Paul mentions the divisions and disagreements in the Corinthian church, he connects them with the absence of true wisdom and with the fact that its members are “fleshly.” He is evidently speaking of human nature, which in this case determines a person's whole life. Yet nature can take different forms, judging by the fact that...

When Paul mentions the divisions and disagreements in the Corinthian church, he connects them with the absence of true wisdom and with the fact that its members are “fleshly.” He is evidently speaking of human nature, which in this case determines a person's whole life. Yet nature can take different forms, judging by the fact that the apostle often calls people who live a natural life not “fleshly” but “natural.”

Indeed, the corresponding Greek words might better be conveyed by such concepts as “bodily” (“fleshly”) and “natural” (“psychical”). Nature is broader than bodily existence, but in any case it is not “breath” (“spirit”), whether “human breath” (which evidently means the “breath of life” that God “breathes” into every person at creation) or God's “breath,” experienced when the power of God acts within a person.

Spirit is not nature, even when we speak of the human spirit. Yet the stream of our life (called the “soul” in biblical language) has both a spiritual and a natural component. If the spiritual predominates, a person may be called “spiritual.” But in a fallen human being, nature usually predominates, and then we must speak of a “natural” person, who may nevertheless be far from alien to intellectual, aesthetic, and even religious experiences and the corresponding experience. The problem is that even in such experience, often called “spiritual” in everyday usage, it is in fact nature rather than spirit that predominates.

A person who does not understand his own spiritual life very well—or indeed his own life in general—can easily mistake manifestations of his higher nature (psychic in the modern sense of the word) for manifestations of the spirit. Yet as soon as he has to defend his experience, whether intellectual, aesthetic, or especially religious, human nature reveals itself in all its power and displays itself in all its glory.

At that point, lofty ideas, profound aesthetic experiences, and the most refined religiosity quickly give way to the most primitive, almost animal, “bodily” emotions. A person will often throw himself upon an ideological opponent as upon an enemy threatening his life and well-being. In many respects this is indeed so, for the life and well-being of the natural person are bound up with the inviolability of the experience he is defending.

Of course, if a person truly lived a spiritual life, if his life and well-being were connected with the spirit within him rather than with his nature, he would not rush so furiously to defend his convictions and views, nor would he make an absolute of his intellectual, aesthetic, or even religious experience. If something of this kind does happen, then there can be no question of spiritual life, which is precisely what Paul writes in his letter to the Christians of Corinth.

Everyone - pilgrims who had come for Passover, priests, Pharisees - everyone was satisfied that brisk trade was going on around the Jerusalem Temple. The voices of the sacrificial animals drowned out the hymns? Well, what can be done, at least...

Everyone - pilgrims who had come for Passover, priests, Pharisees - everyone was satisfied that brisk trade was going on around the Jerusalem Temple. The voices of the sacrificial animals drowned out the hymns? Well, what can be done; at least there is always a chance to buy those animals. Surely a pilgrim would not lead them from home, which could be hundreds of kilometers away... The money changers, bargaining with clients, argue and curse so loudly that it is disgraceful? Sad, of course, but denarii have to be exchanged for drachmas and back again... Strictly speaking, no one approves of all this noise in the temple courts, but everyone puts up with it as an unavoidable evil, a kind of tribute to eastern temperament.

Strictly speaking, devout Jews endured all this not so much from indifference as because they were waiting tensely for the coming of the Messiah. Through the prophets the Lord more than once angrily rebuked Israel for its lack of reverence. The words quoted by Jesus, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers," belong to the prophet Jeremiah and were spoken 600 years before the events described in the Gospel. But in Israel there was a conviction that the coming Messiah would order the service in the Temple and, so to speak, "put things in order." In carrying out this cleansing, the Lord acts precisely as the One long-awaited Messiah. This is exactly how the Jews perceive it, and therefore they demand a sign from Him.

Yet one cannot fail to notice that the dialogue between the Jews and the Lord takes place in raised tones: the Jews react to Christ's action with a certain hostility. This happens because the Lord calls things by their names. His words, "Do not make My Father's house a house of trade," do not fit at all within the framework of tolerance and indulgence toward lawlessness and irreverence. It is important to see this, because in our own time, when someone tells us about what we softly call "disorders" in our spiritual and church life, we often react the same way the Jews did then, in April of A.D. 27. Fear and uncertainty about God's love make this kind of truth very offensive to people. It is useful to remember this and notice it in ourselves, so as not to become like those Jews.

Jerusalem. The Temple. Walls. Stones. How much they had seen! "Before their eyes" the future Mother of God was raised. Soon after His birth her Son was brought here. This is where He appears as a boy...

FAQ

If Peter is so inconsistent (he acts hastily, misses the mark, sometimes shows weakness, and even denied Jesus), even though he is open to God, could it be that Jesus had another foundation in mind? Peter himself in his epistle (1 Peter 2:4) says that Jesus is the living stone, and Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 3:11) says that no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ?

Certainly, you are correct. Christ is the foundation of the Church and its Head...

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