In my Jesuit community in Boston, I live with men from over twenty different countries, representing all six inhabited continents. And where I study at Boston College, I take classes with students and professors who are priests, religious brothers and sisters, and laypeople from around the world. The environment is not without its challenges, but it also points to the beauty of the universal Church, a beauty that encompasses many experiences and perspectives.
Saint Paul’s analogy of the Body of Christ, one of the primary images for the Church, is helpful for entering into a contemplation of the Church’s rich unity-in-diversity. In today’s first reading, Paul explains that as a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For we were all baptized into one Body… and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. And as the different members and organs of the human body all have a role to play in the growth and well-being of the whole, so also we; each of us, with our unique history, personality, and culture, bears a unique gift that only we can bring to the Body of Christ.
Today, let us contemplate the richness of Christ’s Body, the Church, asking that we might experience gratitude and wonder at our own role within the Body and give thanks for the many and varied gifts of our brothers and sisters.