Reading Francis

Poor Paul.

This was my thought, briefly, when I realized at the start of Mass what I thought was about to happen. 

Once every three years, the Church’s liturgical cycle of readings cues up a complete turkey of a reading that I have seldom heard acknowledged, much less preached on, from the pulpit. In I Corinthians 7:32-35, St. Paul lays out an argument about marriage that sounds like (and probably was) a knock on married life:

Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction.

Poor Paul, I thought. Not St. Paul, but Paul, our church’s brand-new permanent deacon. For those who aren’t familiar, since the mid-1960s, Roman Catholicism has revived the role of permanent deacons, a form of ordination of married men for service to the Church that traces its roots back to the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. And while deacons (then and now) are primarily called to service to the community in some unique way, they also (then and now) are allowed to preach at mass. It’s not really their main role, but it’s a big deal, and for many of us it’s the only encounter we have with deacons.

I had heard Deacon Paul preach once, and I have confidence in his ability to proclaim the Good News, but as I saw him on the altar with our associate pastor and heard this reading, I thought, “Oh no. I can totally see the priests looking at this reading, looking at their deacon, and saying, ‘Why don’t YOU take this one?’”

Proving again the mercy of our local priests, the associate took the homily and focused on the other readings. But even so, and even though I literally took a class on Corinthians from a professor who wrote one of the definitive commentaries on this, I heard three new things this Sunday in the midst of wondering whether Deacon Paul was going to have to make lemonade out of this.

First, St. Paul fails at his goal. He leads off this section by saying that he’s providing this advice because he wants his listeners to be “free of all anxieties.” Then he outlines how each of the states he considers, men and women, married and unmarried ARE ALL ANXIOUS, just about different things. While there is a lot to say about the mindset from which Paul writes (which maybe we’ll talk about another time), at the end of the day, Paul’s advice doesn’t help anyone be “free of all anxieties”. Because anxieties are a part of the human condition.

Second, when I go back and read what Paul says people are anxious about in these different states, I think “I wish!” He says those who aren’t married are anxious about how to please God, and people who are married are anxious about how to please each other. 

Would that it were so. In real life, we are all anxious about many things, and they usually aren’t this noble. We’re anxious about the bills and the promotion and the drama at the office or in the family and who’s going to win the game on Sunday or the election on Tuesday. Lots and lots of things, none of them what Paul points to. Which is too bad.

And that’s the third point. What Paul does point to as the sources of our anxiety – to please God and to please each other – are actually two paths to holiness. I know it’s easier to see how Paul’s vision of celibacy – as a freedom from attachment in order to directly pursue the divine – is a fast track to holiness. But as much as we may be culturally programmed to think that marriage is about other things, it is really a pathway to holiness every bit as powerful.

Think of it this way: when Jesus is asked what the Greatest Commandment is, he replies with a two-part answer: love God, love your neighbor. They both count. And while every neighbor is an opportunity to practice that divine call to love in a way that shapes both you and them, no relationship has more potential to unflinchingly carve out all that is not love in you than marriage. If you are really committed, as Paul says, to please each other, you will learn both what sacrifice and joy look like, and they will form you in holiness.

We should probably do a better job of articulating the sanctifying challenge of matrimony to folks on the front end. I know that I didn’t realize the full implications of what I signed up for at the time, and I also know that I don’t do enough to ensure that the engaged couples I meet know what they are about to commit to. Even so, having a partner in the pursuit of love is a whole lot better than going it alone.

St. Paul, famously, didn’t see it that way, and this passage in I Corinthians is part of his argument that the celibacy he chose was the better way. I know that choice has worked out well for many, and I guess it worked out OK for him, but still.

Poor Paul.