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The Second Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 6.

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Working together with him, then we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, at the acceptable time, I have listened to you and helped you on the day of salvation. Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God with weapons of righteousness. For the right hand and for the left, in honor and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute, we are treated as impostors, and yet are true, as unknown and yet well known as dying. And behold, we live as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians. Our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as to children. Widen your hearts also.

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The temple of the living God. Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said, I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean. Then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

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Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit and make holiness perfect in the fear of God. Paul's joy at the Corinthians Repentance, and.

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Open your hearts to us. We have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one. We have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. I have great confidence in you. I have great pride in you. I am filled with comfort. With all our affliction. I am. I am overjoyed. For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus. And not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. For even if I have made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it. For I see that the letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you. What eagerness to clear yourselves. What indignation, what alarm, what longing, what, what zeal, what punishment. At every point you have proved yourselves guiltless in the matter. So although I wrote to you, it was not on account of the one who did the wrong, nor on account of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your zeal for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. Therefore we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his mind has been set at rest by you all. For if I have expressed to him some pride in you, I was not put to shame. But just as everything we said to you is true, so our boasting before Titus has proved true, and his heart goes out all the more to you, as he remembers the obedience of you all and the fear and trembling with which you received him. I rejoice, because I have perfect confidence in you.

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Encouragement to be generous.

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We want you to know, brethren, about the grace of God which has been shown in the churches of Macedonia. For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favour of taking part in the relief of the saints. And this not as we expected, but first they gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God. Accordingly, we have urged Titus that as he has already made a beginning, he should also complete among you this gracious work. Now, as you excel in everything, in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in your love for us, see that you excel in this gracious work also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. And in this matter I give my advice. It is best for you now to complete what a year ago you began not only to do, but to desire, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a man has not, not according to what he has not. I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality, your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality. As it is written, he who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Commendation of Titus. But thanks be to God, who puts the same earnest care for you into the heart of Titus, for he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest, he is going to you of his own accord. With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the Gospel. And not only that, but he has been appointed by the churches to travel with us in this gracious work which we are carrying on for the glory of the Lord, and to show our good will. We intend that no one should blame us about this liberal gift which we are administering, for we aim at what is honourable, not only in the Lord's sight, but. But also in the sight of men. And with them we are sending our brother, whom we have often tested and found earnest in many matters, but who is now more earnest than ever because of his great confidence in you. As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker in your service. And as for our brethren, they are messengers of the churches, the glory of Christ. So give proof before the churches of your love and of our boasting about you to these men.

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The book of Proverbs 29:1 4. He who is often reproved yet stiffens his neck will suddenly be broken beyond healing. When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan. He who loves wisdom makes his father glad, but one who keeps company with harlots squanders his substance. By justice, a king gives stability to the land, but one who exacts gifts ruins it.

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Father, in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you so much. Thank you for having. Giving us older siblings in Christ who have been willing to suffer for your name, who have been willing to give of their lives, to give everything, so that years later we can hear your word. Years later we can know who you are. We can know your heart and. And we can become part of your family. Thank you, Lord, for those people who are named in today's readings. Thank you for Paul, of course. Also thank you for all of those Ephesians. Thank you for all of those people who supported Paul, all those Corinthians who repented at his letter. We thank you for the people who brought us to you in our lives. If we had Sunday school teachers, thank you for them. Lord God, if we had people who taught us religious education or people who taught us how to read the Bible, or people who taught us how to say the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father, thank you, Lord, thank you. For our parents, if we have parents, Lord God, that showed us who you are, thank you for them, helped us take one step closer to you, maybe many steps closer to you. And for those who maybe it was their job to do that and they didn't do it, they did it poorly or they didn't do it at all, they worked against it. Lord God, we ask you to please meet them with your love. Let this moment be a moment for them where they can come to know you. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, we have a lot of readings these last couple days. You know, it was kind of easy, smooth sailing for a while. There are only a couple of chapters. And now these days, you know, four chapters a day, Sheesh. But it's been good. And one of the things we see here, of course, in the Acts of the Apostles is Paul continues to be on mission. Paul continues to move around. He arrives at Jerusalem and remember, Paul said he knew that the Lord keeps telling him that he was going to meet with afflictions and imprisonment when he got to Jerusalem. And hey, guess what? He's met with a lot of opposition. One of the things we see here is we see this growing division between the source of Christianity, which is Judaism, and Christianity, you know what I'm saying? Basically between the fact that Christianity begins as the fulfillment of Judaism, but now we see a growing dividend. And that growing divide is basically necessary because of the fact that Christians have, the church has discerned that Greeks are able to be part, full fledged members of the body of Christ without circumcision, without observing the Jewish laws. And we see this divide growing wider and wider, which is one of the reasons why here, Even in chapter 21, we have Paul visiting the temple and he's doing all the external things. He's doing all of the purification rituals. He's doing everything that needs to be done in order to, like, show himself. No, no, I still am a good Jew. Like, I'm still, you know, you don't have to be mad at me essentially. But he's falsely accused, right, of bringing this Greek, this Gentile into the temple. And so this mob comes after him. But one of the things we just take away from this whole scenario here in chapter 21 is this growing divide between Judaism and Christianity, which is of course horrible because Jesus came first to the Jews. First he came to the covenant people of God. Now, the good news is that there were many Jews, thousands of Jews who came to Christ. We know that is completely true. At the same time, our Lord wants every one of his people to belong to him fully. And so we continue to pray especially for all the history that we have, you know, history of 2000 years of Christians then versus Jews. And that becomes a deadly and tragic history. So we pray in repentance of those things, but we also continue to pray for the fact that those who are people of the old covenant, that they realize and encounter Jesus, who is the fulfillment of everything that they long for, as he is for us, the fulfillment of everything we long for. We pray for our brothers and sisters, the Jewish people. Yeah, right. Okay, moving on to 2 Corinthians. We have in 2nd Corinthians. I just. There's something so powerful about. Here is St. Paul talking about how he has lived. He's talking about how. I love this section where he says, in chapter six, he says, we commit ourselves in every way through great endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, calamities, all these things, also positive things by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit. Even more, he goes with weapons of righteousness, in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. Here is St. Paul, who's just saying, basically, our mouth is open to you, Corinthians. Our heart is wide. And it's just there's something so powerful about St. Paul. He's rejoicing in the Corinthians because as he notes in chapter seven, they responded to his last letter, the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, which was kind of him throwing this smackdown, putting it down and saying, okay, listen, you have to stop doing this. You have to start doing this. And here are all the ways in which you are not living up to your high call of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. In chapter seven, he says that, ah, chapter seven, verse eight. He says, for even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it. And he puts in parentheses, though I did regret it. For I see that the letter grieved you, though only for a while. I know that experience of saying a word. I'm like, I don't know. I feel like I have to say this wor because it's a hard word. I don't want to say it, but I have to say it. I regret it because I'm making you feel bad. But he goes on to say, as it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. And that's the key. It's like, you know, I don't know anyone who likes making someone sad. I don't know anyone who likes, you know, correcting people. Maybe. Actually, I take that back. I know there's some people who really enjoy correcting people, but most of us, we don't want to grieve people. We want to make people sad. But he says, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting for you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. And he has this principle. Then he says in verse 10, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, I'm sometimes torn by the idea that people say, you know, hey, live with no regrets because whatever you went through is brought you to this place, you know, made you the person you are today. Sometimes I think, well, that's. That's fine. That's true. But maybe the person you are today is worse, right? Maybe. Maybe we should regret some of these things. But in Christ here, St. Paul is saying, but in Christ, godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. That makes sense. Because if I place all those things in my past, all those even horrible things that I've done under God's dominion, under his lordship, and allowing him to not only forgive me, but also to transform me, well, then, yes, all of those things have contributed to this transformation, but that doesn't mean that those were all good. And, like, if I could go back again, I probably would not want to do those things. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense. But St. Paul goes on to say he wants the Corinthians to be generous. And he wants them to be generous not because he's guilting them into this and he even says that, but because he wants them to be like Jesus. Remember we talked about how he wants them to be transformed from glory to glory, bit by bit, more glory and more glory, to be like Jesus. And so he's saying in chapter eight, saying, basically, you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that by his poverty you might Become rich. And he's saying, just do the same thing. Be like Jesus. And that's the whole goal of the spiritual life, the whole goal of the Christian life is not to just live decent lives or be decent people or be nice or, you know, pay your taxes on time and stay out of jail and wipe your nose. The point is to be like Jesus. So here's St. Paul saying, I need you to be generous, but not because I need you to be generous, but because you need to be like Jesus, who himself was so generous. Ah, what a gift it is. It's a massive gift. Here we are on day 342, and it has been an incredible gift to be on this incredible journey with this incredible community. I know. I know that you're praying for each other, because I get letters every single day that reveal miracles, like, true miracles. Everything from someone just being grateful that they've been able to get this far through the Bible and their hearts have been changed. To people going to confession for the first time in years and years, to people going back to mass, to people actually achieving pregnancy when that was thought to be impossible. All of these things have been happening because of God's grace and because of your prayers for each other. So please keep praying for each other. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.

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Sam.