Translated by Qwen.
LITERAL COMMENTARY
1 Cor 5:6–7. “Your boasting is not good.” You have no reason to boast as though you were innocent and abounded in many gifts. “Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole mass?” It infects it with its sour taste; so an evil man easily imbues and stains the whole society with his vice. “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as indeed you are unleavened.” Eliminate everything by which the Church can be corrupted; exclude this incestuous man from your assembly by divine censure, lest he corrupt the morals of others. Be a people conspicuous for the newness of life, a holy people, as through baptism you have been made pure and holy from the leaven of sin. And by the very fact that you profess yourselves disciples of Christ, you ought to abstain from all those things by which morals are wont to be corrupted. The mystical sense refers to the law given in Exodus 12:18–20 concerning the eating of unleavened bread and the removal of leaven from the houses of the Israelites during the seven paschal days. “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” For the Passover of Christians, of which the Passover of the Jews was a type, that is, the paschal lamb, is Christ, sacrificed on the cross for us.
1 Cor 5:8. “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Therefore, let us celebrate that Passover feast, which is perpetual for us, not in the leaven of an old life infected with sins, nor in works of malice and deceit, but in sincerity and truth, signified by the unleavened bread with which the Israelites fed at the paschal banquets.
MORAL COMMENTARY
1 Cor 5:6. “Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole mass?” Nothing is more dangerous than wicked examples, because they entice and provoke others to sin, or at least make them participants and accomplices in sin by consenting to the sinner, or at least by not correcting him when they can. According to that saying in Romans 1: “They are worthy of death, not only those who do such things, but also those who consent to those who do them.” Therefore, the greatest caution is needed to avert the corruption of wicked examples. Moreover, the purpose of excommunication here is that by the amputation of one diseased member, the whole body may be preserved from the contagion of the disease. A little leaven corrupts the whole mass. It is easier to be affected for ill than for good, to be corrupted than to be healed. The greater part of mankind imitates the wicked more easily than the good. So prone to evil is the human will.
1 Cor 5:7. “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as indeed you are unleavened. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” As holy as is the Christian profession, so holy and chaste ought to be the morals of Christians. Christ offered Himself as a victim to the Father, shed His blood, and died for us, that He might merit this holiness for us. Why do we neglect it? Why do we so easily fall away from it? O adorable victim of our Passover, that is, of our passage from sin to justice, from the oldness of Adam to the newness of life in Christ Jesus, from the captivity of the devil to the liberty of the children of God! Christians must celebrate a perpetual Passover, and therefore they ought to perpetually abstain from the leaven of old and wicked conduct. “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” Therefore, just as the Israelites were freed from destruction by the blood of the paschal lamb on the doorposts, so too Christians are freed from sin and from the eternal damnation due to it by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
1 Cor 5:8. “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” The old leaven is pride and vain glory. For pride, from the oldness of the first man who fell by pride, as it were with a fermented and corrupted mind, makes the haughty into one lump, who consent among themselves in similar vain boasting. And to boast, indeed, not of one’s own sins, but over the sins of another, as though from a comparison with one’s own innocence, seems like a little leaven; for to boast even of one’s own iniquities would be much leaven. Yet even that little corrupts the whole mass. For the proud man falls by the merit of his pride, and begins even to want to boast by defending his sins. Therefore the Apostle says: “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole mass? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as indeed you are unleavened.” And immediately he added: “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,” so that by the example of such great humility they might learn to purge out the old leaven, that is, whatever pride from the old man remained in them. “Therefore,” he says, “let us keep the feast, let us celebrate the festival day, not indeed for one day, but throughout our whole life. Not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” For it is malice and malignity to boast, as it were, over another’s sin, as if one ought to rejoice in his own justice only when he has not seen another to be just. But sincerity and truth consist in this: that even if anyone makes progress, he should remember what he once was, and much more should he have mercy on those who have fallen, since he himself was raised up from his fall by the mercy of Christ, who without any sin of His own humbled Himself for sinners. Moreover, that old leaven of pride must be purged out all the more diligently, because God often permits men, as a just consequence of pride, to fall into some open and manifest sin, even impurity, so that they may displease themselves who had already fallen by pleasing themselves.
CONTINUE
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