Homily: September 12, 2022, Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time.

 Today’s first reading ends with this instruction, “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another”.

Today’s passage is taken from St. Paul’s first letter to the new church community in Corinth. It was considered his very first pastoral letter.

We can see that there already existed divisions and challenges in the early church communities. Because of Christ’s universal call to conversion, people of vastly different backgrounds and social statuses were coming together in the communities.

They were probably made up of rich people who were landowners and didn’t need to work, and poor folks who were labourers. When they came together for meals and breaking of bread, very likely the rich people were able to arrive much earlier while the poor labourers came after a hard day’s work. And it was a practice that each household would bring the food they prepared for the fellowship meal and bread for the eucharistic celebration.

Can you visualise, how the rich and early ones would finish eating and drinking what they had brought before the others arrived. They did not wait. While the poor people came later after work without having had time to prepare any food, had nothing to eat, nothing to offer and nothing for the eucharist.

Thus St. Paul was upset and wrote to address them. He questioned, “Do you not have houses in which you can eat and drink?”

The purpose of coming together is not just to eat and drink within their own family. They can do that at home. But the purpose of coming together is simply to be together, with others in the community.

And the breaking of bread, the Eucharist, is holy communion – union with God and with one another. The Eucharist should be the source of unity, not division.

If they do not wait for one another, there is no ‘together’ and no ‘communion’.

Jesus’ body and blood is given to everyone, to make us all one people in God’s love. He prayed for us, “Father, may they be one as we are one”. 

To wait for one another is to be patient, to be understanding, to be empathetic with one another. To be mindful of our different life situations. We may be at different levels of faith experience and varying stages of faith growth.

If you look around, are you aware of others who are in need, in want, in trouble, in search, in sickness, in loneliness, in despair?

Should we be more mindful and conscious? Should we be more patient and compassionate?

When we come together physically, should we not also be together in mind and spirit?

“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another”. Amen.