The Body of Christ Is Alive!

Fr Tony continues in his homily:

“The second point to draw from Paul’s metaphor of the analogy of the body is that the body is alive. It is meant to grow, to live. What does it mean for the Church to be alive? Today’s Gospel (Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21) is a bit odd, in the sense that it takes the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke, in which Luke explains why he’s authoring the book, and then it skips forward over the passages about Christmas and the baptism of Jesus to when Jesus announces his presence in his home synagogue in Nazareth.

He proclaims who he is, that he is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. Reading these two sections together puts the emphasis on the proclamation of the Gospel, on evangelization, telling the story of Jesus in order to attract people to him as his disciples. This is what it means for the Body of Christ to be alive.

If the body is not growing but declining, it may be that we need to test ourselves for the autoimmune disease Paul warns us of. It may be that instead of looking outward to tell the story of Jesus, to be fishers of men, we are focused inwardly, fighting over an ever-shrinking piece of turf. This bureaucratic disease is especially a danger for people like me, who are full-time Church employees, but the solution I think involves us all.”