Join The Catholic
Reformation
Twenty-Ninth Week of Year II Saturday October 22, 2016
The Responsorial verse tells us: “I rejoiced when I heard them say: let us go to the house of the Lord” (Psalm 122).
In
Ephesians 4: 7-16 Paul gives us
reason for rejoicing when we assemble in the “house of the Lord.” Each of us
has gifts from God “for … ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
Through Jesus acting in each of us, “the whole body grows and builds itself up
in love.” We assemble to experience this.
Some
have the gift of authority, whose
function is to hold the community
together, in union with each other and with the Church “catholic”; that is,
“universal” or “throughout the world.”
Only
a few are authorities. But every single member of the community has the gift of
leadership, whose function is to move the community forward. Whoever
happens to see what needs to be done — whether through inspiration or insight,
expertise or experience, or just by chance! — has the duty of making that known
and trying to lead the community in the right direction. Authorities should
encourage leadership, because it does not undermine authority, but nourishes
and supplements it. But whether authorities encourage leadership or not, every
Christian has the right and duty to keep trying to lead the community into a
more authentic embodiment of Gospel goals and values. This is inherent in our baptismal
consecration as stewards of the kingship
of Christ. No one can take this away from us. No one can dispense us from
it.
In
Luke 13: 1-9 Jesus makes it clear
that we must all take responsibility for reforming the Church — in every age.
The Church as a whole will eventually survive and triumph; Jesus has promised
that. But Christianity can decline or die in any particular place or time. We
have seen once-Christian countries swallowed up by apostasy and atheism. In
some instances, separation of Church and state, which is wise and good, has
been distorted into militant secularism, into government-sponsored opposition
to any public expression of religious values at all. We can hear Jesus saying
to us, “Unless you reform, you will all come to the same end.”
Who
is responsible for bringing about reform? Everyone who has been consecrated by
Baptism as a “steward of the kingship of Christ.” We all have to ask if Jesus
could be talking about us when he says, “For… years I have come looking for
fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be
wasting the soil?“ If we are just taking up space in the pews, someday we may
find that we don’t have enough faith even to do that.
Initiative: Be Christ’s
steward. React against anything that keeps people from “rejoicing when they go to the house of the Lord.”
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