Take a lesson from the architect
Dear People of St. Boniface:
This is an extract from my First Letter to the Corinthians, out of sequence for today’s feast.
The Basilica of St John Lateran, Rome
In my life as a Christian I never was to worship in anything so splendid as the Lateran Basilica. In fact we didn’t even have churches; we met in houses and meeting halls. So there was not much point using the image of a beautiful building, because we had none.
More importantly, I was able to stress that the “building” was in fact the body of believers. And if a physical building gains strength from the cohesion of all its structural parts, then it has to be said that the “building” in Corinth was very wobbly indeed.
The not very large community was divided between various groups, forgetting that Christ was meant to be the foundation of them all. I had to remind them that in Corinth I had laid the foundations, because some were attributing that to my fellow-missionary Apollos, preferring his kind of oratory to mine, it seems! Others wanted “Peter” – and although Peter may seem an admirable person to want, they meant by that name a very legal form of Christianity which was certainly not what I was teaching.
In short, those who exploited these divisions and tried to disrupt the community were causing the “building” to collapse. They needed to take a lesson from good architects.
My blessing, from Heaven, PAUL.