All Souls Saturday. The Holy Priest-Martyr Blaise, Bishop of Sebastia (313-24)
1 Corinthians 10:23-28; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; Luke 21:8-9, 25-27, 33-36; John 5:24-30.
Read 1 Corinthians 10:23-28
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Our reading today begins with the slogan of the Corinthians which they used to assert their freedom: “All things are lawful.” Corinth was known in St. Paul’s time as a place of indulgence and loose living, being “Corinthian” meant that you didn’t really put any boundaries on yourself.
Today, brothers and sisters, we live in a society which defines freedom by autonomy. In other words, we think that we are truly free when we can “do whatever we want.” This principle applies when we are respecting the dignity of others as well. To tell someone that “they can be that or do that” means we have degraded. This idea of freedom is false from our Christian perspective in that our dignity is given to us by God and cannot be lost and that freedom is not something good for its own sake but always at the service of virtue and holiness. As Christians we don’t just stop at freedom we always ask the next question, “freedom for what?”
Although the Corinthian Christians were free to eat the meat sacrificed to idols in Corinth, they were not free to eat without sensitivity to those who might be scandalized when witnessing this. Their freedom is directed and conditioned by their service and witness to Christ through virtuous living.