September 18, 2018

1 Cor 12: 12-14, 27-31A

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.

The Body of Christ

I’m blessed to live with a Bishop Emeritus Carlos A. Sevilla, SJ. I told him this week that I would soon meet with benefactors in Southern California who support the works of our Jesuits West Province. I admitted my confusion about how to defend or explain the state of our Church. What mending words could I offer others out of my own upset and shame?

He said: “The Church is in one of the most challenging storms in its history. Assure those with whom you visit that Jesus is with us in the storm. I’m certain that the changes that must be made will make us a better Church and seen more clearly to be The Body of Christ.”

How this gentle man’s reassurance— along with that image— comforted me when I prayed with today’s readings. The Church has weathered storms from its start. St. Paul encountered them throughout his ministry: in Rome, Galatia, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica, Ephesus, and in Corinth, where today he gives the Corinthians the precise image that Bishop Sevilla shared with me: the Body of Christ. If any part of it suffers, the entire body feels it.

The Body of our Church suffers today. Pray with me that Jesus walks with us in the storm!

—Joe Kraemer, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic of the Jesuits West Province currently starting his second year of Regency in the Advancement Office in Los Gatos, California.

Prayer

O thou, who at thy Eucharist didst pray
That all thy church might be for ever one,
Grant us at every Eucharist to say
With longing heart and soul, ‘Thy will be done’:
O may we all one bread, one body be,
Through this blest sacrament of unity.

For all thy church, O Lord, we intercede;
Make thou our sad divisions soon to cease;
Draw us the nearer each to each, we plead,
By drawing all to thee, O Prince of Peace:
Thus may we all one bread, one body be,
Through this blest sacrament of unity.

—Excerpt from, “Thou, Who at Thy First Eucharist Didst Pray,” by W.H. Turton (1881)