Homily for the Third Sunday Ordinary Time, Year C
Nehemiah 8:2‐6,8‐10
1 Corinthians 12:12‐30
Luke 1:1‐4,4:14‐21
As soon as he began his public ministry after his baptism, Jesus was never alone. He always had disciples with him. There was the close team of the Twelve, but also the group of the Seventy-Two. St Luke notes a very important and active group of women. And of course, there must have been at times proper throngs walking with him. Jesus went to people as a leader wishing to bring them together and to give them direction – to “gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” as St John has it (Jn 12:52). Naturally He was a leader and a head. This head called for a body. Christ was looking for the Church.
The Messiah’s first body was of course the Jewish people. They were, and remain, the people chosen by God. At first, as we heard in the Gospel, they were very happy with Jesus’s message of liberation and healing. But it did not take long for them to be shocked by some of Jesus’ words or attitudes: didn’t He spend too much time with sinners? Didn’t He welcome pagans? Didn’t He “work” on the Sabbath day? Didn’t He criticize the Pharisees and the Scribes who were the great and the good of the People? That was more than many could take, and, despite the healings and the signs of mercy and hope, they could not give Him their trust. Most of them did not welcome Jesus: “He came to his own home and his own people received him not” (Jn 1:11).
It became slowly clear that Christ’s body would not be recruited only from the limited pool of the Jewish people, but would welcome, along with Jews such as the Apostles, Paul and many others, members coming from all the nations of the world – those which are already symbolically present at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. From the start, the Church was Catholic, that is to say, universal, welcoming all, irrespectively of their race, nation or people, gender or condition.
On the one hand, Christ’s body is one: “all the many members of the body, though many, are one body; by one Spirit we were all baptized into the one body – Jews and Greek, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit”. We have just finished the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity asking that the Lord convert our hearts and open us all to the One Spirit and One Life which comes from Him, our Head, and mercifully make us visibly One again.
Unity is not uniformity, though. We each have a role in the body. We assume different functions. We have different charisms. Our diocese runs a very good programme “Called and Gifted” which helps Christian men and women to discover their vocation in the Church, the way each of us can contribute in a unique way to the life and the beauty of the Body of Christ. One is good with flowers in church, the other one is a redoubtable cleaner; this one sings beautifully, again another has great compassion for the sick, and so on. Even those who seem to do very little may have a gift of faithfulness, being always present in the assembly, while others have a hidden life of prayer and sacrifice which is essential to the life of the Body – just as the sick and bedridden can make an enormous contribution by uniting themselves with Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection.
Of course, each of us is responsible for his or her own Christian life, but at the same time we constantly receive from one another – and much more than we are usually aware of. We are members of the same body. The same life coming from Jesus fills our souls. If one of us gets closer to Christ, we all benefit from this. When, on the contrary, one of us sins, the whole Body is, as it were, drawn down with him or her. And we give the Life coming from God to one another. Think of a sailing boat, how the sailors all depend on one another and must be aware at every moment of the consequences for others of the way they behave, where and how they stand and sit, how they perform their task for the benefit of all.
We are called to live our Christian life together, and to grow closer to Christ together. We are called to be the Church, the Body of Christ and Peter’s sailing boat. Most especially, the present Jubilee Year calls us to walk together as pilgrims of hope. Our faith is not an isolated journey but a participation in the journey of a people: the People of God, the Body of Jesus, the community of the believers called to be “one heart and soul” in faith, hope and love. Hence a few questions for each of us today: How do I contribute to the life of the Body? How can I do it better? What do I receive from others for which I am maybe not grateful enough? How could I be a better brother, a better sister to the very persons who are around me this morning?