The second reading is from the first Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20 in which St. Paul makes it crystal clear that justifying fornication as part of Christian liberty is an incorrect interpretation of his preaching and that the body must be preserved from all immorality.
The Gospel is from St. John 1:35-42 and gives an account of the vocation of the first four Apostles who followed Jesus.
It was a momentous event in the history of salvation. It was the beginning of a stream of vocations that would grow and spread down through the ages until the end of the world.
It was momentous, firstly, in that Christ, who had come to open heaven for all men and who could find means of bringing them all to that eternal home without help from any man, decided instead to let men co-operate with Him in this divine task. He decreed to set up a kingdom in this world—His Church—which would be run by mere mortals for their fellow-mortals, but which would be under his protection and assisted by His divine aid until the end of time.
Christ chose this very human way, in order to make his Church more acceptable to our limited, human understanding and more approachable for sinful, human nature.
Today, let us thank our blessed Lord who provided so humanly—and yet so divinely for our eternal welfare. In the Church, which He founded on the lowly but solid foundation of simple fishermen of Galilee, He erected an institution against which the gates of hell, the power of all the enemies of our salvation, cannot prevail, for His divine guidance and help will be with it forever. Christ Church has had enemies and opposition from the beginning; they may be more numerous and more destructive than ever today. But the promise of Christ still holds good, his word cannot fail. Therefore, neither the opposition of materialistic enemies from without, nor the even more insidious attacks from faint-hearted and worldly-minded members from within, nothing can affect the safety and permanence of the building which Christ built on the Rock.
God Bless you all reading !
