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The Catholic Telegraph
January 28, 2000Today’s passage is another summary passage, like last week’s, but it is more deliberately focused on the specific questions that the Corinthians had addressed to Paul.
In the community of Corinth, there seem to have been two basic currents of opinion about sex and marriage. One group seems to have held that unlimited sexual freedom was a sign of salvation, parallel to the dietary freedom that came with liberation from the observance of Jewish law. Paul had learned about this second hand, and we heard him addressing it two weeks ago at the end of Chapter 6. The other current of opinion seems to have held that all sexual activity, even in marriage, was sinful. Uncertainties about this view seem to lie behind the questions that Paul is answering here in Chapter 7. Is it all right to get married? Is it all right to stay married? Are we all supposed to be celibate? What about widows? What state of life are we supposed to be in so as to be most ready for Christ’s coming?
Paul himself was unmarried and he saw advantages for the service of the Lord in remaining so. But he was very clear about not wanting to recommend his situation for everybody (cf. 7.7 f.). He was also quite aware that marriage can be the source of lots of affliction, but was not, for that reason, ready to say that it was wrong to get married (cf.7.28). In view of "the present distress," i.e., the impending advent of the Lord, it seemed a good thing for everybody to remain as they were (cf. 7.26).
Now, in our text, he sums up. What’s important, he says, is not to spend your time worrying about your state of life. I want to spare you that. There can be cause for anxiety in every state of life. Married people can be all caught up in trying to respond to the (legitimate) demands of their spouses and families and find themselves distracted from the attention they owe to God. But unmarried people, too, can find causes for anxiety in their attempts to make themselves pleasing to the Lord. I don’t want to lay down specific directions for any of you or force you into different states of life. The important thing is for each of you to look for the Lord in the situation in which you find yourselves.
What Paul is telling us here is that there is no one, single right state of life for all Christians. Obviously each of us has to search out the life context that seems most in accord with the gifts that we have been given, most responsive to what God seems to be asking of us. But we don’t have to spend our whole lives wondering whether we have made the right choice, whether God might not have been more pleased if we were something other than what we are.
Religious celibacy has always enjoyed high regard among Christians. Religious celibates are women and men who have freely renounced marriage "for the sake of the kingdom," in order to give themselves fully to the immediate service of the Lord and to act as accredited witnesses to the provisional nature of earthy goods and values. Their life does not suggest that other ways of living are wrong or without value in God’s sight, but merely that there is more to Christian living than the here and now. The rest of the Church needs their testimony.
Marriage is not some second best, for those who can’t make it as celibates, but a true and proper vocation in itself. Sacred Scripture looks on the dedication of Christian marriage as a symbol of Christ’s love for His Church (cf. Eph. 5.25 f., 29 f.) and Catholic tradition refers to the Christian family as the "domestic Church" because of its important role in fostering the faith of its members and providing a context in which the fundamentals of Christian life are taught and learned.
There is another group of Church members who often do not receive appropriate attention, i.e., women and men who are not religious celibates but who are not married, either. Often the circumstances of their lives make both of the more ordinary options unavailable. They are not, for that reason, outcasts. They serve God and the Church and their fellow Christians in their own particular ways and are precious to the Lord for that reason. (Somewhere there ought to be a special memorial shrine to all the unmarried aunts and uncles who "stayed home" to take care of mom and pop.)
There is one constant requirement, though, in this variety of acceptable options for Christian life, and that is relationship to Christ. However we decide to spend our "pre-kingdom" years, the decision must not be made exclusively on the basis of personal likes and wants. There are selfish celibates and selfish married people and selfish unmarried people. They may have chosen the right state for themselves, but for the wrong reason. All right choices involve "adherence to the Lord without distraction." Bloom where you’re planted, but be sure you’re blooming for the Lord.
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Conversation Questions.
How does my life reflect a call from God?
If I had my life to live over again, would I want anything to be different?
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