Take Care Not to Fall

In Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, a very potent line rings forth from the end of the excerpt selected for the Third Sunday of Lent in Cycle C: “Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” (1 Corinthians 10:12). It is a fascinating exhortation, as it is attached to the examples that Paul lays out prior to this line. He reminds the Corinthians how their ancestors witnessed so much of what God did to manifest His presence in their midst: that He fed them manna, He split the sea, He gave them water from the rock. Somehow, though, in the midst of all of these truly incredible signs and wonders, God’s people still fell away, and perished in the desert. Paul follows up with this encouragement to take these moments as examples and warnings.

Notice the very shrill tone of that line. As he speaks out, Paul actively encounters and engages with two separate threats that can exist within the spiritual development of the Corinthians, and even our own lives of faith as well. First, Paul warns against the threat of complacency. Complacency, as we know it, is a certain laziness that can take place root in our hearts and souls, due to confidence in “having done enough” or “having walked the walk.” It is the feeling that things in our spiritual lives are at their status quo. We may not feel that we are threatened by potential downfall in any way, and we may feel pretty good. Yet, in getting that sense that we feel that we are good enough, and don’t have to worry about our salvation should cause us concern! If we pay attention to what happened to the Israelites in Paul’s example, they likely felt that they were in a good place, and in fact, they were not. Perhaps they had grown complacent and felt they were okay, due to their feeling that they had manifest their faith enough at that time.

The second danger that Paul draws out by his warning is the warning against indifference. The Israelites were around many incredible signs and wonders. They were fed, they were led out of captivity, and they even saw powerful manifestations that let them know that God was truly in their midst. Yet, it seems that they had, somehow, fallen to a sense that, as incredible as these signs and wonders are, they did not move them on the path of conversion. They could not see God in their midst and had lost that sense of wonder and awe in His presence, and as a result, they fell. This, too, can become a danger to us, since we have so many powerful signs and wonders done in our midst and in our faith. We should not grow indifferent and cold!

All in all, this gives us encouragement to live our lives in a sense of spiritual awareness. We should know about our faith, about our God, and our Church. Those are all good and meritorious things. We still need to have access to our hearts and souls to know that we need to continue to challenge ourselves to live our faith well. We should not fall into complacency because we fell that we have done enough, and we shouldn’t fall back due to indifference and a coldness to the beauty and splendor of our faith, our Church, and our sacraments.

Thus, Paul’s reminder to each of us: whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall!