Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
On a tour of the restored Pompeii the guide stopped in front of a house to point out an adornment. It was a statue of a man whose phallus sticks out when the gate to the yard of the yard opened. Most of the tourists were fascinated by this banality showing that St. Paul’s warning in today’s first reading as valid as ever.
Paul urges his readers not to copy the ways of the pagan majority. He sees obsession with fine dining and ubiquitous references to sex in Greek society as anti-Christian. Jesus’ followers, he would say, do not belong to such a realm. According to Paul, their homeland is the kingdom of God which is still to come fully into the world. For now, he would recommend, they need only to comply with the laws of the land like mindful migrants and ignore its mores. They should take directives for living from the gospel.
Many today believe that the world is slipping back to the paganism that pervaded early roman times. Homosexual relations and sex out of marriage are promoted as healthy. Abortion is claimed to be a human right. Buffets can turn meals into orgies. We should take care not to be seduced by these kinds of behavior. Rather, we should live Christian morals and show others how those morals lead to true happiness.
