Those using the world as not using it fully

[CyrilSebastian]

In the Second Reading of the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, it is stated:
From now on, let those…using the world as not using it fully.

In reality, even to the best of his God-given capabilities, how could an individual use the world fully? If he were able to do this, what time would he have for God?

 

[edward_george]

In the Second Reading of the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, it is stated:
From now on, let those…using the world as not using it fully.

In reality, even to the best of his God-given capabilities, how could an individual use the world fully? If he were able to do this, what time would he have for God?

Why does it have to be an either/or proposition? We live in a world, as Flannery O’Connor put it, that is “charged with God.” All creation is a sign of its Creator, to some degree, all points back to him. To live in the world, and to use our lives in the world to embrace and glorify God, to see him in all things, and thus show him to others, this is what it means to live in a truly Incarnational way. We are not pantheists; we do not think that everything is God, but rather that everything is a sign of God because it came from him.

-ACEGC

 

[DoGodsBidding]

From the New Jerome Biblical Commentary:

“Paul expected an imminent parousia (1 Thess 4: 16-17; 1 Cor 15:51-52), and recommended not pretense but detachment. It would be silly to make new commitments when all is going to end.”

 

[Tommy555]

Exactly. And we must have the same mindset. Otherwise, we are “using the world fully,” to the fullest extent we are able.

 

[Ignatius]

In the Second Reading of the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, it is stated:
From now on, let those…using the world as not using it fully.

In reality, even to the best of his God-given capabilities, how could an individual use the world fully? If he were able to do this, what time would he have for God?

What book, chapter and verse?

 

[edward_george]

What book, chapter and verse?

1 COR 7:29-31

I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.
From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away.

I answered the question absent the full context of the reading. What this is saying is that since the day of the coming of the Lord is eminent, we ought to turn our attention away from the passing things of the world and focus on Christ.

-ACEGC

 

[Mintaka]

Anyway, the point was not “don’t act as stewards of God’s Creation,” because that’s a commandment from Jesus that we are obliged to fulfill.

Paul meant, “Don’t be as worldly as you can possibly be.”

Worldliness is all about pretending that it isn’t God’s Creation.