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Catholicism Week 11The Church – The Mystical Body of Christ Part 1

Bishop Barron continues his ground breaking series on Catholicism with a great topic, the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. Right out of the box, he gets my

attention, pointing out that in our Creed, we say out loud at every Mass, “We believe in one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. That is interesting since we start the Creed affirming our belief in one God, the Father Almighty, then the Son and then the Holy Spirit. But why is the Church in that same Creed, why do we believe in the Church…what is that all

about? That almost sounds like blasphemy to mix the divinity of the Godhead with a human institution like the Church. But the reality is, she is not just a human institution, the Church is the Sacrament of Jesus. In the same way the Eucharist is Sacrament of the real presence of Jesus, the true body and blood of our Lord…the Church is the true Body of Christ. If you were to ask most Catholics, do you realize you are the true Body of Christ, many would not know what you are talking about, others might acknowledge they have heard that, but question what does that really mean?

Organic is the word that Bishop gravitates to, saying that we are the cells, molecules, and organs of Jesus’ body, a

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living breathing body on this earth. We get several pictures of this from Sacred Scripture, my favorite is this one, John 15:4–5 (RSV2CE) 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither

can you, unless you abide in me. 5

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. That is about as organic as it gets. But we can get more extreme if you want, “eat my body and drink my blood.” Bishop used the example of admirers of Abraham Lincoln, you can like the man even love the man, but have you heard of anyone eating the body of

Lincoln or drinking his blood? But those are the things we say about Jesus, and that is truly radical. No wonder the Roman Empire called the Christians cannibals. We are the Body of Christ, His blood courses through our veins, and we have the mind of Christ because He is the head of the body, His thoughts become our thoughts if we abide in Him. If we live separate from Him, we have no blood, and we lose our mind. 1 Corinthians 2:16 (RSV2CE) 16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

These next scriptures really show us that we are the Body of Christ in this earth.Matthew 25:36–40 (RSV2CE) 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’

And of course, the conversion of St. Paul, Acts 9:4 (RSV2CE) 4 And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” We are truly the Body of Christ; the question becomes what did Jesus do through

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us today to touch our world and make it better. In the same way your body has to get up and move and do things today, the Body of Christ has to do the things that

Jesus wants to accomplish today, what does that mean for you and me as the arms and legs and eyes of the Body of Christ? Reality sets in when we say, “I didn’t do anything for Jesus today, I didn’t even know He wanted to do anything through me today.” Can you imagine Jesus getting up and not doing what God the Father wanted to do through His Son that day? Organic is organic, every day should be a sappy day, another day connected to the sap life of the vine, as we are the branches.

God is a gatherer, the devil is a scatterer…I don’t think that is a word,

but that is what he does. Satan wants to separate us, to divide us, isolate us from the rest of the Body of Christ and eventually separate us from Christ Himself. We see this far too often. You see a loved one start missing a Mass or two, and then three or four. Then we don’t see them for weeks or months, it doesn’t take long before they are questioning their faith altogether. God has always been a gatherer. He gathered a people to Himself through Father Abraham, and the twelve tribes led by his twelve sons. Then God called the nation of Israel through Moses and then David. Then God wanted to gather the entire world to Himself through the nation of Israel. Eventually the Son of David came to earth to draw all men to Himself through the cross, John 12:32 (RSV2CE) 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

Jesus was and is the resurrected King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the leader of the New Israel, His Church that He established and commanded to go to the whole world and

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gather them in. What the old Israel failed to do; we have been tasked to complete as the New Israel, the Church of Jesus Christ. The Greek word for church is ecclesia, it means to “call out from”, which raises three very important questions; who is doing the calling; what are we being called out from; and then what are we

being called into? I think we know the answer to the first question; God does the calling; people don’t just decide to join the Church. God had to call and prod and to push and

pull Jackie and I for almost ten years until we answered His call. But first we were called out of the world, the realm of the dead and all those separated from God, and we are called into His family, the Church, into the very life of Christ.

Bishop used the example of seeing Notre Dame Cathedral as an ark, like Noah and the ark. Noah gathered his family and all the animals to save them from utter

destruction, but eventually he led them out of the ark to spread new life to the whole world. Jesus gathered all of us into His Church, an ark of safety and nurturing, but not so we could hide out forever.

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Bishop Barron then turned to the life of young Karol Wojtyla of Poland who began his religious studies in 1939, exactly when the Nazis attacked and decapitated Polish society, killing or imprisoning the brightest of the bright. Karol Wojtyla went underground and continued to study to become a priest. After the war, the Communists took over and a new kind of persecution took power. Now Father Wojtyla, he continued to do what he could to build the Church, several Catholics at a time, realizing that God was in control behind the scenes and somehow God would set this generation of Polish Catholics free. In some ways it must have been similar to what the early

Christians had to do during the very early days of the Church under the persecution of the Roman Empire. How could Father Wojtyla have known that

someday he would become Archbishop of Poland, and finally Pope John Paul II, successor to Peter. Like Noah, Pope John Paul II hunkered down and waited upon God for exactly the right time for the flood waters to recede, and then he obeyed God and spread new life to a world imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. Karol Wojtyla could not have known that he would someday become the supreme leader and pastor of the Roman Catholic Church and be linked in a special way with the President of the United States, Ronal Reagan. History clearly tells us that

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these two were instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain and the evil of Communism.

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The last part of the video today laid out the four marks of the Church also spoken of in our creed. The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic and we end today’s class on the first one of those marks…she is One. First and foremost, we need to understand how dangerous it was to declare to the whole world that God was one. Today it is pretty normal, Jews believe in one God, Muslims do as well, and along with Christianity those are the major religions of the world in our time. The ancient Roman Empire was a pagan empire that made room for lots of gods, but declaring one god, and that one God was not Caesar, was grounds for being exterminated, most likely by crucifixion. Next, we see Bishop at the Pantheon in Rome, the temple dedicated to all the gods, now a Roman Catholic Church. It is an amazing structure beautifully preserved from ancient times. The dome is one of

the most spectacular in the entire world. Jackie and I had the joy of seeing that structure during our trip to Rome. It truly takes your breath away, and Bishop stood in the center of that place and related the Pantheon to the oneness of the Catholic Church. He immediately began to talk about what Origin, St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose did when they assimilated the some of the teachings of Plato into Catholic theology, or St. Thomas Aquinas adapting some of the teaching of Aristotle into Catholic truth. The Church has always had the genius and the willingness to assimilate truth wherever it may be found in cultures around the world, not to compromise our Catholic faith, but to affirm it and make it every

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richer by embracing all truth. Jesus declared that He is the way the truth and the life, so all truth, wherever that truth is found had to have its origins in Jesus, the living word and truth of God. As Catholics, we are not afraid to acknowledge that all the great religions of this world hold some truth, and down through the ages the Catholic church would find those bits of truth in each of the cultures they evangelized and assimilate what truth they could find and affirm into our faith, and faze out what was not truth. Mexico is a good example, that nation was evangelized in one decade, and in the process certain cultural practices were assimilated, like the Day of the Dead. Other practices, like human sacrifice were ended. That is only one example, there many more. That is why Bishop Barron could stand in the center of the pagan temple to the gods, and declare it a Catholic Church, St. Mary of the Martyrs, now assimilated into the Catholic cathedrals of worship.