The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Nehemiah 8:2-4,5-6,8-10 + 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 + Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
January 24, 2016
“Now the body is not a single part, but many.”
Today’s Gospel passage is unusual in that it’s taken from two non-consecutive chapters. The two sections from Luke don’t seem related at first hearing. The first section is the first four verses of Luke. It’s a prologue, in which St. Luke gives his rationale for you to listen to his Gospel account.
In this prologue, Luke mentions many members of the early Church. But he only mentions one by name: Theophilus, for whom St. Luke compiled his Gospel account. So who are the others St. Luke mentions here, and why does he mention them? He mentions them in order to put his account of the Gospel within the context of the Church.
Sometimes you’ll hear of Christians—especially our separated brethren—calling Christianity a “religion of the book”, the “book” in question being the Bible. However, while the Bible lies at the heart of our Christian Faith, Christianity does have a more primary foundation on this earth, and that is the Church. Christianity is more truly a “religion of the Church” than it is a “religion of the Book”. To be clear: it’s not that the Bible is not at the heart of the Faith, but rather that we need to put the horse before the cart.
In other words, the Bible came from the Church. The Church did not grow out of the Bible. The Church came into existence on the day of Pentecost. Fifty-two days earlier, at the Last Supper, Jesus had instituted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the ordained Priesthood. All the fundamentals of our Catholic Church were already in existence decades before even the first book of the New Testament was written.
It’s in light of this that St. Luke the Evangelist points out in his prologue that “just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed [the events of Jesus] down” by word of mouth, so Luke himself in turn decided to write his Gospel account “down in an orderly sequence for you”. Why does St. Luke do this? He tells us: “so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.”
The Bible did not fall out of the sky, bound in leather. The Holy Spirit, who is the primary author of Sacred Scripture, chose ordinary Christians in those first decades of the Church to pass on by word of mouth the teachings and actions of Jesus. In the twenty-first century, although we’re blessed to have free access to copies of Sacred Scripture, general literacy in our culture, and even study guides written by faithful Catholic Scripture teachers, we should not leave to the wayside that original means of handing on the Good News: that is, ordinary Christians sharing the Gospel by sharing their lives.
Being a Christian is not just about “me and Jesus”. Being a Christian means recognizing that our own lives are bound up with the other members of the Body of Christ. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, more often than not, flows into your life through the Communion of Saints: that is, through your fellow members within the Body of Christ. This is by God’s design.
God promises to give us always the grace we need to face any situation, but sometimes we refuse His grace because we refuse the means by which He wills to give us that grace. Within the body of the Church, God strengthens us through each other. How many members of your parish family do you not yet know? How many of them does God want to use as your brothers and sisters in Christ in order to bear His grace to you?