Words on the Word

3. Sunday C

Neh 8.1-10: The people were all in tears as they listened to the words of the Law.
1 Cor 12.12-30: The body is one. 
Luke 1:1-21: A year of the Lord’s favour. 

These last few years — it feels like quite a long time — we’ve heard a lot about the synodal character of the Church. ‘Synodality’, we know, signifies ‘joint progress’, ‘fellowship on the way’. The concept presupposes two Biblical images, one from the Old, the other from the New Testament.

First we think of Israel’s exodus through the desert, the journey that made a heap of individuals into a people. Synodality came about in as much as the wanderers, all of them, followed the Lord’s lead, visible as a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. ‘And whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tent, after that the people of Israel set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people of Israel encamped’ (Numbers 9.17). To set out apart from the Lord’s command, or to stay behind when he urged departure, was fatal. This Israel learned by experience.

The other great image of synodality is that of the flock of sheep which Jesus uses in the Gospel of John. Such a flock is not marked by a spontaneously ordering collective instinct: anyone who has herded sheep knows that. The flock moves synodal in so far as it follows the Shepherd’s call: ‘the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice’ (Jon 10.3f.).

The Church recognises herself both in the pilgrimaging people of God and (less flatteringly) in this woolly, bleating muddle. 

Thus we have been reminded of the conditions for synodal movement. It presupposes keen listening to God’s voice incarnate in Christ Jesus; a sharpening of our spiritual senses so that they can recognise the Lord’s guidance; ability to wait patiently when God does not give evident signs; and a readiness to find our joy in being part of a whole, without at all costs having to stand out and be recognised. These are good, wholesome lessons.

The thought of God’s people (and livestock) on the march is not sufficient to express the Church’s mystery, however.

The image Paul gives us today is more essential. We ought to look at it with care. The Church, says Paul, is not just a crowd of pilgrims. We have to envisage it as a body: ‘Now you together are Christ’s body; but each of you is a different part of it.’

We have just celebrated Christmas. We have confessed that God has become man, the Word flesh. More than anyone else, Paul has helped us understand what this means for ourselves.

For the incarnation is not limited to a passing, thirty-three-year episode in the history of mankind. No, it introduces a new humanity. By assuming our nature, God enabled us to share in his being. To be truly human in the wake of the angel’s message to Mary is to live in union with the Son of God. This union concerns more than allegiance in principle and moral consent. To become a Christian is to get to know the mystery of Christ from within. In baptism we are incorporated into Christ. Uncreated grace flows into our existence conditioned by flesh and blood. We live with our feet on the ground, gratefully rooted in our humanity; at the same time our spirit may soar, longing for boundless life, for absolute oneness with the true, the good, and the beautiful, a state of being Scripture calls ‘beatitude’.

The Church is the space within which these two tendencies, the earthy and the heaven-bound, become one. The Church introduces us into the tension Christ unites in his Person, drawing us into it gradually, each of us in his or her unique way, to occupy a providentially assigned place. We now know even better than people in Apostolic times to what extent the body is a whole. A reflexologist can treat neck pain by pressing the sole of your foot. Whether our place within the body is visible or invisible is of no importance. What matters is that our true nature may grow optimally, according to God’s purpose and plan, so that the body as a whole may thrive. In addition, we must never forget this: without the other members, united under Christ, the Church’s head, we are nothing.

We ought to remember, too, how Christ, God’s Son, accomplished the task to which God the Father called him in the Holy Spirit: ‘On the night before he was to suffer’ in order, by the cross, to defeat the deadly pestilence that plagues Godless man, ‘he took bread in his holy and venerable hands; giving thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.’

To be incorporated into the body, to become a member of the Church, is to let oneself be made ready as an oblation, in union with Christ, unto the glory of God and the world’s salvation. The criterion for ecclesiastical life is not privilege or exalted status. It is self-giving like his who ’emptied himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross’ (Philippians 2.8)

When we think of the demands of our Christian vocation, we may be tempted to burst into tears like the Israelites did when, at the time of Ezra, they heard the words of the law (about which they had quite forgotten) and were distraught by their evident shortcomings. But we are not to grieve. The goal we cannot reach under our steam has been brought close in the Anointed, the Spirit-filled One who proclaims a year of the Lord’s favour. He lets us know his power as long as our lives unfold in him. Let us then remove ourselves from all that might separate us from him.

To be cut off from Christ’s grace by irresponsible, perfidious choices: this is the only thing we really have to fear in this life.