Gospel Reflections
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
26 January 2025, Church Year C
Christ’s Love
Luke 1:1-4: 4:14-21
Rev. Jack Peterson
Reprinted by permission of "The Arlington Catholic Herald"
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In our second reading today, St. Paul uses the analogy of a
body with many
parts to both proclaim a unity that already exists and encourage
a greater
unity within the church, the body of Christ.
The unitive aspect of the church is both enormously
important and
multifaceted. Let’s
explore a few
critical elements of Paul’s exhortation.
Before we look at Paul, I think it is worth noting that Our
Lord made
unity a major focus of his last night on this earth. John the Evangelist
presented a powerful prayer
for us in the 17th chapter of his Gospel. At the conclusion of
the Last Supper, Jesus
raises his eyes to heaven and prays to the Father. This priestly prayer
incudes a plea for
unity: “And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that
they may be one,
as we are one. I in
them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world
may know that you
sent me, and that you loved them, even as you loved me.” (Jn
17:22-23) Jesus
knew that our pride, selfishness, and stupidity would tempt us
to all kinds of behaviors
and attitudes that would cause division among his followers and
in his
church. This prayer
reveals a great
concern of our Savior’s Sacred Heart.
St. Paul as one of the twin towers of the early church,
shared Jesus’
concern for unity among Christ’s disciples.
He saw the growing need for unity in the life of the
young church. The
analogy of the body with many parts
enables Paul to encourage his audience to strive for unity as a
result of
seeing its grave importance.
“But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in
the body as he
intended. If they
were all one part,
where would the body be? But,
as it is,
there are many parts, yet one body.”
Jealousy is one cause of division in the church. Some Christians become
jealous of the part or
role that others played in the church.
Others have a more important part in the body (the eye
versus the hand
or the head versus the foot); others get coveted leadership
roles; others get
more recognition and praise; others have their opinions
respected, etc. Paul
invites us in humility to accept the
part of the body granted us by God “as he intended.” The body, the church,
is a very; good thing
instituted by Christ himself.
Each part
of the body is important and is critical to the proper
functioning of the
whole. We need to
be grateful for the
part chosen for us and seriously invest in the role given to us
to build up
that body.
Paul makes it clear that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a
driving force
for unity in the body of Christ.
“For in
one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews of
Greeks, slaves
or free persons, and we were all given to drink of the one
Spirit.” How can we
not harken back to Pentecost when
the Holy Spirit was poured out as tongues of fire upon those
gathered in the
Upper Room. Immediately
after, as the
Apostles began to speak about the Risen Christ, visitors from
all over the
world understood these Galileans in their native tongues. Everyone present at
Pentecost was shocked at
this miraculous gift. It
was a sign that
Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, had come to
restore unity to our
broken world, to cancel the punishment resulting from the pride
and selfishness
that drove the construction of the Tower of Babel and resulted
in the
multiplication of languages spoken across the globe. The Father and the Son
have given us their
Spirit
to make us one with them.
Another force for unity in the church is the gift of
charity. Paul, in
the midst of this exhortation,
challenges the church in Corinth to “have the same concern for
one
another.” Love is
sacrificial by
nature. Love makes
us willing to die to
self in order to build up and serve our neighbor. Love sets aside
personal preferences for the
good of our neighbor, the good of our family and the good of the
church. As Paul
says in the next chapter of the same letter:
“Love is patient, love is kind.
It is
not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not
rude, it does not
seek its own interests, it is not quick tempered, it does not
brood over
injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with
the truth. It bears
all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails,” (1 Cor 13:4-8a) Love by is very nature
builds up the
body of Christ.
Lord, grant me a strong portion of the zeal of Jesus and
St. Paul for unity
within the church. Stir
up the Holty Spirit
within my heart and inspire me to be an agent of unity. Tear away from my
heart whatever tempts me to
not believe in the unity of the church and to disrupt that
unity.