18 September 2018
Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s reading from First Corinthians contains the important analogy which has become known as the mystical body of Christ. Paul describes that there is one body, with Christ as its head, and that within this body there are different members who carry out different roles. This analogy of a body fit the world view of Paul, with his urban audience. It is interesting to note that Jesus uses an image of community that deal with sheep, a comparison familiar to his audience. Although sheep and shepherds permeate the imagery in the gospel, there is not one sheep in the writings of Paul. Perhaps Paul is accommodating the truths of the gospel to the the city-slickers of Corinth, Rome, and Ephesus who only saw sheep cut up in the market. No mention of this passage from First Corinthians can pass without making reference to the great encyclical of Pius XII Mystici Corporis Christi, written in 1943 during the height of the Second World War. It was in this encyclical Pius stood firm on embracing the human community and the fundamental dignity of all its members against the claims of racism and an overpowering State. Here too we see Pius noting the important role of the laity in promoting this Mystical body as this same pope later commented on the nature of the Mystical Body of Christ in 1946.
Within the Church, there exists not an active and passive element, leadership and lay people. All members of the Church are called to work on the perfection of the body of Christ. … Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.
The writings of this great pope, Pius XII, as well as those of previous pontiffs, demonstrate that the call to universal holiness and the importance of the laity is the extension and health of the body of Christ.