Monday, September 10, 2018


Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 5:1-8; Luke 6:6-11)

Donald Trump’s “locker room banter” many times is more than bravado.  Men will brag of actual sexual exploits as if they were still school boys propelled by excess dopamine.  The same coarseness has long been in comic routines and now appears even among strangers.  St. Paul takes the Corinthians to task for showing acceptance of a similar display of lewdness.

Paul is outraged upon hearing how the Corinthian community gossips about sexual sins. Evidently the community is more amused than affronted by a member’s sleeping with his father’s wife. He chastises everyone for finding delight in the travesty.  He implies that this kind of practice indicates a loss in the Christian quest for holiness.  He says like leaven in dough they have been inflated by sin.  He exhorts them to renew the quest by distancing themselves both spiritually and physically from the guilty party.

In this time of sexual license many will think it normal, even healthy to describe sexual adventure.  The ancients labeled such description “obscene” to relegate it to the periphery.  We should be wary that such talk does not become familiar.  It will lure us into thinking the sexual intimacy may be pursued by anyone at any time.  Surely such an idea will detour us from the road to sanctity.