Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
Year C (Jan. 21, 2007)
1 Cor. 12: 12-30
AIM: To explain the doctrine
of the mystical body and show its implications for each believer.
A bishop told one of his priests that
he was sending him to be Pastor of a really difficult parish B so difficult, in fact, that it had
become known among the priests as Athe graveyard of Pastors.@
AI=ve been advised to close the place,@ the bishop said. ABut I=d like to make one last attempt. I=m asking you to go there and see what
you can do.@
The priest had not been in his
assignment a month when he found that everything he had heard about the parish
was true. Attendance at Sunday Masses was pathetic. The only thing parishioners
seemed to be good at was malicious gossip, backbiting, and criticism.
So one Sunday the Pastor announced: AI have some bad news for you. I hate to tell you, but this parish is dead.
So at 10 o=clock next Sunday we=re going to celebrate a funeral Mass
for this parish.@
In the days following news of this
sensational announcement spread like wildfire. At 10 o=clock the following Sunday the church
was full. There were funeral wreaths up front, and an open coffin. The Pastor
announced that before beginning the Mass, he wanted everyone to come forward to
pay their respects to the deceased. As people filed by, they got a shock. The
coffin was empty B save for a large mirror. Each person looking in at the
deceased saw a picture of himself or herself.
I have told you that story B and of course it is just a story B because Paul is saying something
very similar in our first reading. AYou are Christ=s body,@ he writes, Aand individually parts of it.@ And Paul goes on to say that though
Christ=s body has many different parts, each
with its own function, there are no unimportant parts.
Where did Paul get this idea that the
Church is Christ=s body? He got it in the event which changed his life: Paul=s dramatic encounter with the risen
Lord on the road to Damascus Damascus
Note Jesus= question: not, AWhy are you persecuting my followers,
or my Church?@, but AWhy do you persecute me?@ Paul=s insight, that Jesus= followers, born into the Church by
baptism, comprise Christ=s body, came straight from that question, and that
encounter.
But what do we really mean when we
say that the Church is Christ=s body? No one has
stated it better than the sixteenth century Spanish Carmelite, St. Teresa of Avila
Christ has no body now on earth but
yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which
he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless
people now.
Do we really believe that? Do we
believe that the Church is not just the clergy and other religious
professionals, but all of us? Many Catholics today do believe that. But not
all. Old habits die hard. Some of our ways of speaking betray a different view. We hear people
saying, for instance: AWhy doesn=t the Church do something@ about this or that problem? Or when
a young man is ordained a priest, people say: AHe went into the Church.@
In both of those examples the assumption is that the Church is
synonymous with the clergy C and today perhaps other religious professionals who work
with the clergy.
That older view of the Church sees
the laity as something like customers in a filling station. If they are good
customers, they drop into the station weekly to top up their tanks. When they
need a tune-up they may go to confession. Otherwise the customers are content
to leave the running of the station to others. There are still Catholics who
think that way, and act that way. They like that model of the Church. It is easier, and less bother.
I called that the older view of the
Church. It is not the oldest view, however, and certainly not the original
view. The original view is the one set forth by St. Paul
We can take this a step farther. If baptism has made us active members of
Christ=s body, on whom he depends to
continue his work in the world, then our relationship with Jesus Christ, who is
the head of the body, cannot be a merely one-to-one, private affair. As members
of Christ=s body we are related not merely to
Christ our head, but to all the other members of his body as well. As Paul says
in our second reading: AIf one part [of the body] suffers, all parts suffer with it;
if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.@
Jesus says something similar in his
great parable of judgment, which speaks of the division of sheep and goats. To
the sheep on his right hand, the king says: AAnything you did for one of my
brothers here, however humble, you did for me.@ (Mt 25:40) The lesson of the parable is clear.
There is no service of others which is not a service of Jesus Christ. There is
no neglect of sister or brother that is not neglect of Jesus Christ.
So often we think of our religion as
a striving after high and distant ideals which constantly elude us. That is wrong!
Being a follower of Jesus Christ never means trying to become something we are
not. It means living up to what, through baptism, we already are. In
baptism we were born into the great family of God called the Catholic Church.
We became, in Paul=s language, members of Christ=s body. None of the members is
unimportant. None is passive.
The differences between the members
of Christ=s body are differences of function.
Paul lists some of these functions at the end of our second reading: apostles,
prophets, teachers, the doers of Amighty deeds,@ healers, administrators. All are equally important. And all of us, as
members of Christ=s body are joined in intimate fellowship with one another.
Together we all have an intimate relationship with the head of the body: Jesus
Christ, our Savior and our Lord B but also our brother, our lover, our
best friend.
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