The Church is not a democracy. Our beliefs and our leaders, for instance, are not determined by popular vote. Yet there are many Catholics who seem to be as apathetic about their Church as millions of Americans are about politics. To such Catholics, the word “church” means either a building or the clergy.
People who view the Church in that way see their role in it as something akin to a motorist at a gas station, they drop in once week to get their tanks filled. When they need a tune-up, they may go to confession (Advent and Lent?). Otherwise, they’re content to leave the running of the station to others. Many Catholics like it that way — it’s easier and less bothersome.
This view of the Church was once common 50 years ago. Increasingly, however, it’s no longer as easy as it once was to distinguish those operating the pumps at the station from the customers. Laypeople now share many functions previously reserved for the clergy. They are now lectors, extraordinary ministers of holy Communion, they now visit the sick and the shut-ins at home bringing Christ in word and sacrament to them. The laity also share in Church governance through their membership on parish and pastoral councils.
These changes and others like them stem from the decisions of the bishops at the Second Vatican Council. They rediscovered an older concept of the Church, put forward by St. Paul in this weekend’s second reading (1 Cor 12:12-30): “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it. … Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary.”
This is strong language. What does it mean? It tells us that our relationship with Jesus Christ, and with others, is not what many Catholics assume it to be. Let’s look first at our relationship with Christ Jesus.
If, as Paul tells us, the Church is Christ’s body, it means that Jesus wants us — all of us — to consider our universal call to be mission disciples, divinized by the Eucharist and sent out into the world as the mystical body of Christ. In the same way that Jesus uses his body during his time on Earth, we are to become what St. Teresa of Ávila described: “Jesus has no body now on Earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which he is going about doing good; yours are the hands in which he is blessing people now.”
If being a Catholic means that, then we can hardly think of ourselves as passive customers in a spiritual service station.
If baptism made us active members of Christ’s body, whom he depends on to continue his work in the world, then our relationship with Jesus Christ, who is head of the body, cannot merely be a one-to-one private affair. As members of Christ’s body, we are related not only to Christ our head, but also to other members of his body as well. As St. Paul wrote in our second reading: “If one member suffers all members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all members share in its joy.”
St. Paul’s doctrine of the Church as Christ’s body in which all the members share an intimate relationship with Christ as the head, and with one another, stems from his conversion experience, which we celebrate on Jan. 25. That great encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus changed Paul’s life. Jesus did not ask him, “Why do you persecute my Church?” Rather he asked, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4).
The implication of those words is clear — there is no service of neighbor that is not a service to Jesus Christ. There is no neglect of sister or brother that is not neglect of Jesus Christ.
The difference between the members are differences of function. If we turn a final time to our second reading, we find St. Paul telling us that every member’s function is not only important but indispensable: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you’ any more than the head say to the feet, ‘I do not need you.” All members of the Church are important, all are active. None is passive, all of us, as members of Christ’s body, are joined to intimate fellowship with one another. All together, we have a close and intimate relationship with the head of the body: Jesus Christ, our savior and our Lord.
In his motu proprio, “Aperuit illis,” Pope Francis declared this Third Sunday of Ordinary Time to be a devoted celebration of study and dissemination of sacred Scripture. This Sunday of “The Word of God” should be a time of year when we are encouraged to strengthen our bonds with our brothers and sisters of God’s word. Devotion to the Bible should be seen as a yearlong event, for we urgently need to grow in our knowledge and love of the sacred Scriptures of the risen Christ, who continues to speak his word and to break bread in the community of believers.
Father Haugan is pastor of Lumen Christi in St. Paul.
Sunday, Jan. 26
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
