Condone No Evil (Monday, Week 23, Year 2)

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Those in the bakery business will perfectly understand the analogy employed by St Paul in the first reading (1 Cor. 5:1-8). No matter how little a leaven (or yeast) is, it still has a very powerful influence on the dough (or flour). It is the wish of every baker to come up with good loaves of bread at the end of the baking process. If a speck (a particle) of leaven is bad or corrupt, it must be removed; otherwise, it will corrupt the entire dough. This illustration perfectly captures the power of influence. 

St Paul drew the attention of the people of Corinth to the fact that someone among them was living an adulterous lifestyle with his father’s wife and such evil was allowed to go on. Just like a speck of bad yeast in the dough, if nothing about evil growing in the body of Christ (that is, the church), the entire body will be badly affected in the long run. To forestall such a calamitous consequence, it is a duty of charity to the entire body to deal with evil (no matter how little it may be) on the spot before it spreads like a leaven and affects the entire body. St Paul finally enjoined them to “cleanse the old leaven of malice and evil so that they can present themselves as an unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”.

This charitable task of uprooting the old leaven of sin and wickedness and cleansing and purifying the entire system is one of the reasons why God took flesh in Jesus and came to live among us. Evil continued to fester amongst the Jews under the guise of observance of the Pharisaic law. Jesus didn’t allow such evil of legalism to fester; He trashed it on the spot. A man with a withered hand was gasping for life, needed to be healed and made whole. And the Pharisees expected Jesus not to heal him on the Sabbath in the name of observing the law of the Sabbath. Legalism at the detriment of human life! No evil or wickedness of any sort should be allowed to fester.

Is there any evil being perpetrated or tolerated in our small community? Even if it appears not to have been noticed by everyone, the earlier it is dealt with, the better for us. Is there an offshoot of malice, arrogant indifference and oppressive tendency growing in our community? The earlier it is nipped at the bud the better for us. If nothing is done and it grows into a big tree, it may be difficult to uproot.



        

Comments

  1. Unknown7 September 2020 at 05:39

    Eye opening. Thank you Padre. Yes, the evil of too war, poverty, hatred and dehumanization.

    ReplyDelete

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