"YOU ARE THE BODY OF CHRIST"

Third Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C (Jan. 27, 2019)

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. That encounter was so important to Paul that it is recounted three times over in the Acts of the Apostles. We find it first in chapter 9. You know the story. AAs Saul [his Jewish name, for he had not yet received his Christian name of Paul in baptism] approached Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed about him. He fell to the ground and at the same time heard a voice saying, >Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?= >Who are you, sir?= he asked. The voice answered, >I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.=@

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.  This is what she said:

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 in our second reading. The Church is Christ=s body. That means that the Church is all of us. We don=t just go to church. We are the Church. If the Church is truly Christ=s body, and not just a spiritual service station, then there can be no passive customers. We are all called to be active messengers of Christ=s mercy, healing, and liberating love.   

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.

"HE IS OUT OF HIS MIND."

Homily for January 26^th, 2019: Mark 3:20-21.

          No sooner has word got out that Jesus has come to their town than crowds storm the house where he is staying in such numbers that it was “impossible even to eat,” Mark tells us. Even more shocking is the reaction of his family: “When his relatives hear of this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” People are still saying that of Jesus Christ and of those determined to follow him. Here are three examples.

          A man married for well over twenty years tells a priest: “Father, my wife is so sensitive. For the whole of our marriage I’ve been walking on eggshells, always afraid that I’ll say or do something that will upset her. It’s driving me nuts.” Further conversation discloses that there is another woman in the picture who understands and affirms him. “I’ve thought about getting a divorce and marrying her,” he says. “But then I think of the children – and of the promises I made when we married. So I’ve decided to stay married and tough it out. All my buddies tell me I’m out of my mind.”

          Then there is the girl at college who discovers that she is pregnant. The man responsible, and all her girlfriends, tell her to get an abortion. At first terrified that her parents will find out, she finally screws up courage to tell them. “You’re still our daughter,” they say. “You mustn’t kill the child you’re carrying. We all make mistakes. We’re going to help you – with the birth and by caring for your baby afterwards.” When other members of the family find out about this they’re outraged. “Are you out of your mind?” they ask. “An abortion may not be cheap. But it’s nothing compared with the expense of raising a child no one wants. And think of the embarrassment when everyone finds out.” The child is a girl, three years old now. Everybody loves her.

          Finally there is the young man who tells his parents he wants to go to seminary – or it could be his sister (the only other sibling in the family) wanting to enter a convent. This time it’s the parents who are outraged. “You need to marry, have children,” they say. “And we want grandchildren who will have Dad’s name. You’re throwing your life away. Are you out of your mind?”

          None of the people in these examples are out of their minds. Rather, through faithfulness to the Lord, supported by much prayer, they have developed the mind of Christ.

Think about that. More important: pray about it.       

"WHY ARE YOU PERSECUTING ME?"

Homily for January 25^th, 2019: Acts of the Apostles 22: 3-16.

          “Why are you persecuting me?” the voice from heaven asks the zealous defender of his Jewish faith, Saul, as he approaches Damascus. He is armed with letters from the religious authorities in Jerusalem authorizing him to track down and arrest members of this heretical sect who follow and worship the one whom the Jews consider a mere man, Jesus of Nazareth.

“Persecuting me?” Persecuting “my Church,” we could understand. But“me”? The words that Paul heard from heaven that day are the origin of his teaching that the Church is Christ’s body. What does that mean? Simply this. Since his return to his Father’s right hand in heaven, Jesus has no body on earth but ours. We are hands, arms, feet, eyes, ears, and voice for Jesus Christ. What a tremendous responsibility! But a tremendous opportunity a well.

Paul’s conversion is yet another of the Lord’s surprises. Which of us would have chosen an arch persecutor of the Church to be the first great missionary of the gospel to those outside the Jewish world in which Jesus was born, nourished and died?

Unlike Jesus’ other apostles, Paul was not an eyewitness to Jesus’ deeds and teaching. There is no evidence that Paul ever saw Jesus. In time, however, Paul became convinced that he had seen the risen Lord there outside Damascus. Here is what Paul writes in his first Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15.

“I handed on to you first of all what I myself received, that Christ died for us in accordance with the Scriptures, rose on the third day; that he was seen by Cephas [Peter], then by the Twelve. After that he was seen by five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Next he was seen by James; then by all the apostles. Last of all he was seen by me, as one born out of the normal course.” And then, remembering the man he had been before he saw and worshipped the risen Lord, Paul adds: “I am the least of the apostles; in fact, because I persecuted the church of God, I am not worthy of the name. But by God’s grace, I am what I am.” (verses 3-10)

As we celebrate Paul’s conversion today, we pray that like him, we too may give ourselves completely to the Lord. And we pray also that one day we may hear the Lord speaking to us tenderly, and with great love the words he spoke to Paul : “Well one, good and faithful servant. Enter into your master’s joy.”

THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

January 24^th, 2019: Hebrews 7:25-8:6.

Jesus, we heard in our first reading, from the letter to the Hebrews, “has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered himself.”

Jesus’ sacrificial self-offering began at the Last Supper and was consummated at Calvary. But if that sacrifice was unique and unrepeatable (which is what Hebrews means when it says that Jesus’s sacrifice was “once for all”), how can we call the Mass, which we celebrate daily, “the holy sacrifice”?

In the Mass Jesus’ sacrifice is not repeated. Rather, it is made spiritually present. There is a parallel in the Jewish feast of Passover, which commemorates God’s deliverance of his people, the Jews, from the pursuing Egyptian army at the Red Sea. The celebration of Passover does not repeat that deliverance (an event even more distant in time than the Last Supper and Calvary are for us). Rather it makes that miraculous deliverance by God spiritually present.

          Whenever, therefore, we gather to obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to “do this” with the bread and the wine, we are there! We are in the Upper Room with Jesus’ apostles. We are there with the Beloved Disciple and Mary, along with his other female followers – more faithful than the men – beneath the cross. We are there with but one difference: we cannot see the Lord with our physical eyes; but we do perceive him with the eyes of faith.

          Do we realize that when we come to Mass – and truly worship?

 

"THEY WATCHED JESUS CLOSELY."

Homily for January 23^rd, 2019. Mark 3:1-6.

          Rabbis in Jesus’ day said that it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath, if the illness was life-threatening. Saving a life took precedence over the command to refrain from work on the Sabbath. The life of the man with the withered hand, whom we have just heard about in the gospel, was not in danger. The healings recounted by Mark in the first two chapters of his gospel have brought Jesus the reputation of a powerful healer. The man with the withered hand is probably well known to the local community. It is no wonder therefore, that the people in the synagogue on watch Jesus closely to see whether he will heal this man on the Sabbath – “so that they might accuse him,” Mark explains. Jesus has just begun his 3-year public ministry. But already there are signs of the hostility which will bring him to the cross.

          Jesus knew what his critics were up to. The gospel writers tell us often about his ability to read minds. So Jesus takes the initiative. “Come up here before us,” Jesus says to the man with the withered hand. With the man standing before him, Jesus challenges his critics by asking: “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save a life rather than to destroy it?” To which those watching give no answer. But of course. Any answer they give will land them in difficulties. If they say that healing on the Sabbath is lawful, they will have no grounds for criticizing Jesus. If they call Sabbath healing unlawful, they will discredit themselves with the multitudes flocking to see Jesus and experience his healing power. Telling the man to stretch out his deformed hand, Jesus heals him at once.

          Jesus’ critics are infuriated. They meet at once with the friends of the puppet ruler, Herod, who serves at the pleasure of the Roman rulers of the land, to see how they can rid themselves of Jesus by putting him to death.

          None of this remains unknown to Jesus. He continues his course nonetheless. Nothing can stop him from doing what is pleasing to God, rather than man. He asks us to do the same.

"YOU ARE THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Third Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C (Jan. 27, 2019)

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. That encounter was so important to Paul that it is recounted three times over in the Acts of the Apostles. We find it first in chapter 9. You know the story. AAs Saul [his Jewish name, for he had not yet received his Christian name of Paul in baptism] approached Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed about him. He fell to the ground and at the same time heard a voice saying, >Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?= >Who are you, sir?= he asked. The voice answered, >I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.=@

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.  This is what she said:

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 in our second reading. The Church is Christ=s body. That means that the Church is all of us. We don=t just go to church. We are the Church. If the Church is truly Christ=s body, and not just a spiritual service station, then there can be no passive customers. We are all called to be active messengers of Christ=s mercy, healing, and liberating love.   

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.

THE LORD OF THE SABBATH

Homily for January 22^nd, 2019: Mark 2:23-28.

          “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day,” is the third of the Ten Commandments. We find the Commandments twice in the Old Testament: in the 20^th chapter of Exodus, and in the 5^th chapter of Deuteronomy. Both versions say that we keep the Sabbath holy by refraining from work. Exodus says that the Sabbath rest commemorates God’s resting on the seventh day after creating the world and everything in it in six days. Deuteronomy doesn’t mention God resting; but it spells out in greater detail what Exodus says more briefly: that the Sabbath rest is for all, domestic animals as well as humans, masters and slaves alike: “for you were once slaves in Egypt.”

          By Jesus’ day there was an enormous collection of rabbinical interpretation of this commandment, distinguishing between forms of work that were lawful on the Sabbath, and those which were unlawful. The controversy continues in Judaism today. Orthodox Jews walk to the synagogue because they consider driving a car a form of work. Reform Jews reject this rigorism.       

          In today’s gospel reading some rigorists criticize Jesus’ disciples for picking heads of grain on the Sabbath, rubbing them in their hands, and eating the grains. Jesus appeals to a precedent in the Jewish Scriptures, when David took bread offered to God, and which only Jewish priests might eat, ate it himself, and offered it to his companions. The precedent was weak: David had not violated the Sabbath rest, though what he had done was unlawful.  

          Crucial is the final sentence of our reading: “The Son of Man [a title for Jesus himself] is lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus never abrogated any of God’s laws. But he made charity the highest law of all. That is why he healed on the Sabbath, for instance. And that is why Pope Francis, celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in a prison on the first Holy Thursday after his election as Bishop of Rome disregarded the liturgical law which says that only the feet of baptized men should be washed, in order to wash also the feet of some Muslim women. The highest law of all is charity.

A QUESTION ABOUT FASTING

Homily for January 21^st, 2019: Mark 2:18-22.

          To understand the question about fasting in today’s gospel we must know that for Jesus’ people fasting was a way of mourning and of expressing sorrow for sin. Still today observant Jews fast on the Day of Atonement, to express sorrow for the sins they have committed in the past year. The people who ask Jesus why his disciples do not fast are aware that John the Baptist taught his disciples to fast. He did so because repentance was central in the Baptist’s preaching.

          Responding to the question about why Jesus has not taught his disciples to fast, he replies simply that as long as he is with them, fasting is inappropriate. This is a time not for mourning, Jesus says, but for joy. God has come to earth in human form. Taking up a theme which is frequent in the Old Testament, Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. Israel’s prophets said repeatedly that despite the sins of God’s people, God would not always remain estranged from them. He was going to invite them to a joyful banquet, a symbol of unity between God and humans. (See Isaiah 25.)

          This invitation is renewed every time Mass is celebrated. Despite our unworthiness God uses us priests to extend his invitation: “Everything is ready; come to the feast.” God, the host at this banquet, longs to have you with him. He wants to fill you with his goodness, his power, his purity, his love. 

          He cannot fill you unless you come.

          He cannot fill you unless you are empty.

He cannot fill you unless you confess your need, which means acknowledging your unworthiness.

          How often have you heard this invitation before? How often will you hear it again? One day you will hear it for the last time. Then you will receive another invitation: to appear before your divine Master, your King, your Creator, your ever loving Lord. Will you encounter him as a stern judge, before whom you shrink in fear? Or will it be an encounter with a familiar, dearly loved friend? Think about it. Even more importantly – pray about it.