The Unmarried Person Is
Anxious to Please the Lord
General Audience, June 30, 1982
1. Saint Paul, in explaining in the
seventh chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians the question
of marriage and virginity (or continence for the sake of the kingdom
of God), tries to give the reason why one who chooses marriage does
well, while one who decides on a life of continence or virginity
does better. He writes: "I tell you this, brothers, the time is
already short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though
they had none...." And then: "...those who buy, as though they had
no goods; those who deal with the world, as though they had no
dealings with it, for the form of this world is passing away. I want
you to be free from anxieties..." (1 Cor 7:29-32).
2. The last words of the text just quoted show that in his
argumentation, Paul is also referring to his own experience, which
makes his reasoning more personal. He not only formulates the
principle and seeks to justify it as such, but he ties it in with
personal reflections and convictions arising from his practice of
the evangelical counsel of celibacy. The individual expressions and
phrases testify to their persuasive power. The Apostle not only
writes to his Corinthians: "I wish that all were as I myself am" (1
Cor 7:7), but he goes further when, referring to men who contract
marriage, he writes: "Yet they will have troubles in the flesh, and
I would want to spare you that" (1 Cor 7:28). However, this personal
conviction of his was already expressed in the first words of the
seventh chapter of the same letter, referring to this opinion of the
Corinthians, in order to modify it as well: "Now concerning the
matters about which you wrote, it is well for a man not to touch a
woman..." (1 Cor 7:1).
3. We can ask here, what "troubles in the flesh" did Paul have in
mind? Christ spoke only of suffering (or "afflictions"), which a
woman experiences when she is to deliver a child. However, he
emphasized the joy that fills her as a reward for these sufferings
after the birth of her child, the joy of motherhood (cf. Jn 16:21).
Paul, rather, writes of the "tribulations of the body" which spouses
expect. Would this be an expression of the Apostle's personal
aversion with regard to marriage? In this realistic observation we
must see a just warning for those who—as at times young people
do—hold that conjugal union and living together must bring them only
happiness and joy. The experience of life shows that spouses are not
rarely disappointed in what they were greatly expecting. The joy of
the union brings with it also those "troubles in the flesh" that the
Apostle writes about in his letter to the Corinthians. These are
often troubles of a moral nature. If by this he intends to say that
true conjugal love—precisely that love by virtue of which "a
man...cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh" (Gn 2:24)—is
also a difficult love, he certainly remains on the grounds of
evangelical truth. There is no reason here to see symptoms of the
attitude that later was to characterize Manichaeism.
4. In his words about continence for the sake of the kingdom of God,
Christ did not in any way try to direct his listeners to celibacy or
virginity by pointing out to them the troubles of marriage. We see
rather that he tried to highlight various aspects, humanly painful,
of deciding on continence. Both the social reason and reasons of a
subjective nature led Christ to say about the man who makes such a
decision, that he makes himself a eunuch, that is, he voluntarily
embraces continence. But precisely thanks to this, the whole
subjective significance, the greatness and exceptional character of
such a decision clearly springs forth. It is the significance of a
mature response to a particular gift of the Spirit.
5. In the letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul does not understand
the counsel of continence differently, but he expresses it in a
different way. He writes: "I tell you this, brothers, the time is
already short..." (1 Cor 7:29), and a little later on, "the form of
this world is passing away..." (1 Cor 7:31). This observation about
the perishability of human existence and the transience of the
temporal world, in a certain sense about the accidental nature of
all that is created, should cause "those who have wives to live as
though they had none" (1 Cor 7:29; cf. 7:31). At the same time it
should prepare the ground for the teaching on continence. At the
center of his reasoning, Paul places the key phrase that can be
joined to Christ's statement, one of its own kind, on the subject of
continence for the sake of the kingdom of God (cf. Mt 19:12).
6. While Christ emphasized the greatness of the renunciation,
inseparable from such a decision, Paul demonstrates above all what
the kingdom of God must mean in the life of the person who has
renounced marriage in view of it. While the triple parallelism of
Christ's statement reaches its climax in the word that signifies the
greatness of the renunciation voluntarily made ("...and there are
others who have become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven": Mt 19:12), Paul describes the situation with only one word:
the "unmarried" (agamos). Further on, however, he expresses the
whole content of the expression "kingdom of heaven" in a splendid
synthesis. He says: "The unmarried person is anxious about the
affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord" (1 Cor 7:32). Each word
of this statement deserves a special analysis.
7. The context of the word "to be anxious" or "to try" in the Gospel
of Luke, Paul's disciple, indicates that one must truly seek only
the kingdom of God (cf. Lk 12:31), that which constitutes the better
part, the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary (cf. Lk 10:41).
Paul himself speaks directly about his "anxiety for all the
churches" (2 Cor 11:28), about his search for Christ through his
concern for the problems of the brethren, for the members of the
Body of Christ (cf. Phil 2:20-21; 1 Cor 12:25). Already from this
context the whole vast field of the "anxiety" emerges, to which the
unmarried can totally dedicate his mind, his toil, his heart. Man
can "be anxious" only about what is truly in his heart.
8. In Paul's statement, the unmarried person is anxious about the
affairs of the Lord (ta tou kyriou). With this concise expression,
Paul embraces the entire objective reality of the kingdom of God.
"The earth is the Lord's and everything in it," he himself will say
a little further on in this letter (1 Cor 10:26; cf. Ps 24:1).
The object of the Christian's concern is the whole world! But Paul,
with the name "Lord," describes first of all Jesus Christ (cf. Phil
2:11). Therefore the "affairs of the Lord" signify in the first
place the kingdom of Christ, his Body which is the Church (cf. Col
1:18) and all that contributes to its growth. The unmarried person
is anxious about all this. Therefore Paul, being in the full sense
of the term the "Apostle of Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 1:1) and minister
of the Gospel (cf. Col. 1:23), writes to the Corinthians: "I wish
that all of you were as I myself am" (1 Cor 7:7).
9. Nevertheless, apostolic zeal and most fruitful activity do not
yet exhaust what is contained in the Pauline motivation for
continence. We could even say that their root or source is found in
the second part of the sentence, which demonstrates the subjective
reality of the kingdom of God: "The unmarried person is
anxious...how to please the Lord." This observation embraces the
whole field of man's personal relationship with God. "To please
God"—the expression is found in ancient books of the Bible (cf. Dt
13:19)—is synonymous with life in God's grace and expresses the
attitude of one who seeks God, of one who behaves according to his
will so as to please him. In one of the last books of Sacred
Scripture this expression becomes a theological synthesis of
sanctity. Saint John applies it only once to Christ: "I always do
what is pleasing to him [the Father]" (Jn 8:29). Saint Paul observes
in his letter to the Romans that Christ "did not please himself" (Rm
15:3).
Between these two observations all that makes up the content of
"pleasing God" is contained, understood in the New Testament as
following in the footsteps of Christ.
It seems that both parts of the Pauline expression overlap. In fact,
to be anxious about what "pertains to the Lord," about the "affairs
of the Lord," one must "please the Lord." On the other hand, one who
pleases God cannot be closed in upon himself, but is open to the
world, to everything that is to be led to Christ These evidently are
only two aspects of the same reality of God and his kingdom. Paul
nevertheless had to distinguish them in order to show more clearly
the nature and the possibility of continence "for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven."
We will try to return to this subject again.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 5 July
1982, page 3
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