The Body of Christ

How quickly time passes by: Advent, Christmas & Epiphany have come and gone, and we are back in “Ordinary Time.” However, there is nothing ordinary about the inner life and relationship within the Trinity, the life of Jesus Christ, His Church, Sacred Scripture and His Holy Sacraments.

The Church is not simply the constructed building of a local church or cathedral, as important as they are as houses of worship, but the Church, Christ’s Body, is made up of all of us, clergy and laity alike.

A scriptural foundation for this can be found in the Book of Nehemiah, written in a very difficult time for Judaism, which was trying to maintain its identity in post-Babylonian Captivity Israel, known as post-exilic. Yes, the exile of 597-536 B.C. was over, but the chaos remained. Nehemiah was the man of action who rebuilt the shattered walls of Jerusalem and introduced very important administrative and legal reforms. Ezra was the great priest/religious reformer who worked to re-establish the Law (the Torah) as the religious constitution of the returning post-exilic community. Nehemiah, governor and layman, and Ezra a priest, worked together to re-build the “secular” and “religious” aspects of Jewish life.

Oh, how we can learn and teach from their examples today, including those of us who are pro-life and work with secular politicians and workers antagonistic to our beliefs. Ezra was re-teaching the people the beauty of the law but they could not see this at first—they felt it a “burden” because many realized they weren’t living it: “they were weeping as they heard the words of the Lord.” Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levitical priests were all instructing the people on the meaning of the Law. Aren’t ALL Catholics supposed to learn the faith and gently and faithfully share it with others, who may “feel” burdened by the Catholic Church’s teaching, because they do not understand what the ethos behind the ethic truly means? Pope St. John Paul II taught the ethos behind the ethic in his masterpiece Theology of the Body.

Many Catholics today are struggling with their Catholic Identity, as the Jews did so long ago, this time under the onslaught of militant secularism, moral relativism, and the affects of some well meaning, but very misguided secular feminism. We are now in a kind of “Captivity”, and need modern day Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s to re-teach us the beauty of our faith and why we teach what we teach, and Theology of the Body is genuine part of that beautiful Catholic Faith. It teaches not just about our beauty but also about who we truly are, as male and female sexual beings and who God truly is—our loving Father, our papa. St. John Paul II shows us our original holiness, unity, solitude and nakedness before the fall due to “original” sin. But, the sin wasn’t “original,” the inherent dignity and holiness was! We need a deeply faithful, catholic understanding of the human person and Theology of the Body is the key that unlocks that understanding for us. St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 12 presents a beautiful analogy between our body, its individual parts and the Body of Christ, the Church. St. Paul reminds us of the dignity of different vocational callings within the Church which make up the Body, with Jesus as its Head. Indeed all are important and all have some measure of dignity inherent in them. St. Paul teaches us that we are not simply body parts but that all the parts are important and that we must not be deconstructed to the point that we forget the sum of the parts is the human person, who is endowed by their Creator with great dignity and inalienable rights, heavenly (not monetary) value and infinite worth. The current disgraceful and shameful display of abuse of power perpetrated by Planned Parenthood, who illegally sold body parts (crime against humanity #1) of God’s aborted, murdered children (crime against humanity #2) shows a deep lack of understanding of who a human person is and their great dignity.      

St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teaches that persons cannot simply be reduced to body parts. Men are far more than just a pair of nice “buns” and women cannot be reduced to a nice “back side” or pair of breasts. We are all far more than just collected body parts, we come from God and are destined for the Father, who created us holy, innocent and undefiled, in His Image in the Garden of Eden. Yes we are fallen and broken, but not “dung” covered over in the snow of Jesus, which is a heresy of Martin Luther and a very distorted notion of the human person. We are not fully corrupted and beyond doing anything good with no possibility of choosing well. Catholic anthropology, as taught by St. John Paul II in Theology of the Body, is much more beautiful and hopeful that while we are broken, we have great dignity and ability with God’s grace and healing to do great good and grow in holiness.

I truly believe we are living in glorious hope-filled times and as Jesus was ridiculed in Mark 3:20-21 and throughout the Holy Gospels, and David wept over the deaths of Saul and Jonathon in 2 Sam 1:1-4, we should realize we will be ridiculed for being true disciples and we should weep and pray for our persecutors as Jesus, our love, did from the Cross of glory.        God’s words bring life and we, as the Body of Christ, must teach them to others, according to our vocational calling, of which all are important, parts of the same beautiful Body. Many will hate us for it—Blessed be God forever. Read the Sermon on the Mount by St. Matthew or St. Luke and do not be afraid, as Pope St. John Paul II said for 27 years. What a great time to be Catholic and in the words of Ezra the priest-scribe: “do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!” He is with us until the end of time!

Praised be Jesus Christ—now and forever. Amen.