The symbolism of St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this weekend is well-known to us: the Church is the Body of Christ, and just as a body has many parts that carry out various important functions, so each of us are parts of the Body of Christ who carry out important functions in the life of the Church. In many ways, this seems like a fairly straightforward point that could be made about any group of people, couldn’t it? In any society there are various people who carry out various roles that are important for that society to function. On any team, there are various players who have certain positions that allow the team to be victorious.
Is the Body of Christ any different from other types of human associations? Was St. Paul just doing what any other good leader does: urging his people to overcome divisions and work together?
Well no, right? The Church is not an earthly human association. It is different. It is not a body of people who are united by a common idea or history or race or personality, but who are united by the Spirit of God shared with us by Christ in baptism. Christ poured this Holy Spirit out upon the Church and continues to pour the Spirit out upon all those who are baptized, such that we share in Jesus’ fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah that we hear about in the Gospel. We can also say with Jesus: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.” We are a body united to by its Divine Head, Jesus Christ, whose Spirit animates us and gives us life, as blood gives life to our bodies.
But St. Paul encountered a problem that continues to plague our poor church to this day: parts of the body that do not acknowledge or accept their role as a member of the Body of Christ. As St. Paul expresses it, the foot says, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body” or the ear says “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body.“
We might call it a kind of disembodied perspective - a spectator or consumer perspective: we look at the Church as if it were something happening outside of us, that we are watching, like spectators in the bleachers. As if what was happening to the body of the Church was not happening to our body, to us. This failure to understand and take responsibility for our connectedness in the Spirit that was infecting the Church in St. Paul’s’ day has become a pandemic of severe proportions in our time.
It was this sickness that the Second Vatican Council sought to remedy when it called for a rediscovery of the Universal call to holiness. In other words, a rediscovery that we are all members of the Body of Christ, of the Church animated by the Holy Spirit and responsible for living in the Spirit according to our manner of life.
Yet this effort of the Vatican Council has languished as far as I can tell. So many of us have a tendency to look upon the Church as if we were on the outside looking in. I have seen this even in the clergy. I remember walking around a church at one point with a pastor and remarking about how the roof was falling apart. And he said “Yeah, someone is going to have to deal with that.” Someone. I remember thinking to myself “You’re the pastor, who do you think that someone is???” And if a priest is seeing himself in this kind of disconnected way, how much more is this the case for many of us in the pews?
I was traveling a few years back and I ended up sitting in the pews for a Mass for the first time in a long time. And as I sat there, I thought to myself – wow, this is weird. I can watch people. It was the first time I had been at Mass in a long time when I did not feel like I was the one who was on the field, on the stage, on the docket, on the record, on call. On. And I thought to myself – this is a problem. I understand how if I sat here every week I might not think that what I am doing, what I am saying, what I am thinking matters. I might think that I am just here to observe and evaluate, I might not associate myself directly with the Church as someone on the inside, I might not realize that I am part of the action, part of the body.
And I think that has happened for far too many Catholics. Even though they may sit in the pews, their minds are on the outside looking in, forgetting that the Spirit has been given to them and that they have been entrusted with the responsibility of giving witness to the Catholic faith in our time and ensuring that it is handed on to the next generation. But St. Paul reminds us, no one can say “I am an ear, that responsibility belongs to the eye.” The health of our Catholic body belongs to all of us.
What does that mean concretely? That means that when we see weeds and junk around our Cathedral, we don’t say “What is going on that they can’t find someone to keep this place up,” but we go and figure out a way to help. That means that when we see a lot of empty pews we don’t say “they really need to do something to reach out to Catholics who have drifted away” but we think of who we know that we haven’t seen at Mass in a while and we reach out to them. That means that when we hear someone saying something derogatory or false about the Church, we don’t think to ourselves “The church really needs to do a better job getting the truth out there” but we open our mouths because we are the Church in that moment, and as a member of the body is our responsibility to speak on her behalf.
How many of you do just this every day. And it is so encouraging. To see others who take responsibility for the health of our body and see it as their own. In so many small ways – like the middle school students who were helping clean up trash from around the grounds this fall, to the way that so many parents work hard to teach their children their prayers and guide them in living a virtuous life. Just walking into the church and seeing that someone turned on the lights, unlocked the door, and prepared everything for Mass. It is a great comfort and a great relief and encouragement.
We must leave behind the clericalism that only recognizes men with collars around their necks as the ones who act on behalf of, speak for, or bear responsibility for the Church. Your clergy cannot bear that weight alone, and nor should we. We have a limited role – to teach the faith in its fullness, to celebrate the sacraments faithfully, and to administer the goods of the Church assigned to our care. But there is a whole world out there – the world that you live in. And maybe the best way to think of it is to pretend that when you are out there you all wear collars too: when you are at home doing the dishes, or at work talking with clients, or at the gym, or at school, or in the voting booth, or on vacation. To pretend that in those moments you are all ordained, on the field, on the stage, on the docket, on the record, on call. Because it’s not pretend. You all are anointed - members of the Body of Christ. And the only way that our Church, our body, remains healthy and strong and grows when each of us takes to heart that the prophecy of Isaiah is meant to be fulfilled in every single one of us: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.”