by Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz
When was the last time you wrote a letter? I don’t mean an e-mail, or a text from your phone, or a social media posting, but a letter, hand-written on paper, signed, sealed, stamped, and sent off by mail.
For me, it has been years, and not even my birthday greetings or Christmas cards have made it to paper!
Yet, when we delve into the New Testament, we find a treasure trove of letters, many attributed to the apostle Paul and sent to small communities of believers where Paul had personally proclaimed the Gospel.
They are documents that wrestle vigorously with the challenges these communities faced as they grew into their identity and their mission as believers and disciples.
Paul’s letters are the earliest New Testament writings, with his first letter to the Corinthians (from which Sunday’s second reading is taken) composed around the year 55, 15 years or so before any of the Gospels. The disunity of the Corinthian community seriously vexed Paul. After words of greeting and thanksgiving, Paul dove right into their mess: “I urge you, my brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.
“For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers, by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.”
The factionalism that had the Corinthians taking sides against each other had even wormed its way into the Corinthians’ gatherings for the Eucharist. Paul holds nothing back: “I do not praise the fact that your meetings are doing more harm than good. … I hear that when you meet as a church, there are divisions among you. … When you meet in one place, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s supper, for in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk” (1 Cor 11:17-21).
At the time Paul wrote, the Eucharistic liturgy was still taking shape, and gathering for “the Lord’s Supper” also included shared food and fellowship as believers met in each other’s homes.
Disappointed to learn about the disastrous situation in Corinth, Paul summoned the community back to basics, using an expression that means “I didn’t just make this up on my own.”
“I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you,” Paul wrote, handing on what he received from Christ himself. We then read the New Testament’s earliest version of the Eucharistic words of Jesus: “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. … This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
In the 21st century, as in the first, it is the Eucharist that brings the Church together as the food that makes our unity possible and sustainable.
As Pope Leo XIV said at his inaugural Mass, we are “called through our baptism to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity.”
Let us pray, with Pope Leo, that “our first great desire might be for a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world.”
May the one bread and the one cup always be for us the sacrament of our oneness in Christ!
Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is a professor of theology at St. John’s University.