one body - 31st week tuesday

Today we read from the letter to the Romans and Paul begins with a critical statement on which all that follows depends.  He says, “we, though many, are one Body in Christ, and individually parts of one another.”  This is the basis for everything that follows. We cannot live in isolation concerned only of our well-being.  We cannot live apart from the community without regard for what is happening around us.  Christianity is not praying the rosary and shutting yourself to the concerns of the world.  It is not going to mass concerned only of saving your own soul.  It is not going to mass concerned only of hearing a beautiful homily and feeling good afterward.  No, Paul says, we are one body, we are not isolated individuals.  We can only love and serve Christ when we love and serve each other.

I have always advocated a return to the parish, to our own parish community especially on Sundays.  If you ask me I will not recommend masses in the malls unless there is a real community existing there.  But most often nowadays people just go to mass and that’s it.  We go to mass just like we go shopping, we do the groceries, we watch a movie and then we go home.  Going to mass fulfills a need, a personal need, the individual’s need.  But where is the community?  Where is the one body?  This happens especially in cities where we can have a wider choice that would cater to our own needs and temperament.  We do not like a particular priest here so we look for another.  We do not like a particular community here and so we look for another.  We love a particular priest there and so off we go wherever he is assigned.  May gin-away ako diri, so pangita ako iban.  Indi ako kasaho sang choir diri, so pangita ako iban.  May na-initan ako diri nga minsiter so pangita ako iban nga parokya nga puede ko maserbihan.  But what about commitment to a community?  What about forgiveness, what about rejoicing in hope, enduring every affliction, what about persevering in prayer, what about loving with sincerity and holding out to what is good?  We can never be one body, one community when we demand that everything will be tailored fit to what we prefer.  In a way our gospel speaks of the same reality; to insist on our individual preferences and liking; to insist on what we want - this is a refusal to be community.  This is a refusal to become one body.  I should be very careful about this attitude nga kon indi ka makasaho pangita ka lang sang iban.

Let us think about this.  The first Christian community, the community of Jesus was not a perfect community.  There was a Judas, there was a tax collector, there was a zealot somebody akin to an NPA, there was James and John and their hilabtera nga nanay.  This was Jesus’ community and it is only in this imperfect world that real loving, commitment and service becomes a virtue.