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Read the reflection below:
Being Connected Nov. 2009 MM JL
I’d like to share with you a series of thoughts, ideas and quotations, from myself and from others, that I have come across over the last several months. Rather than try to give ‘meanings’ to these ideas, I will leave that for you to do during your sharing time. It probably began after World Youth Day 2008. The returning young people kept talking about the wonderful inspiring catechesis sessions they had received on the ‘theology of the body’. Being a bit slow on the uptake, it was some time later before I realised they were talking about the Body of Christ, the Church, Jesus-with-us, rather than some special sessions for young people about respecting their own bodies and other peoples, perhaps a follow-on from the letter of Pope Benedict XVI on the Theology of the Body. Since then, I have had images in my mind of many unified organisms and how they function. So often it seems to be a system within a system. We could start with our Universe – a system that astronomers are particularly focusing on at present with a special ‘Year of Astronomy’ currently in place. Within that there are many solar systems, including our own; our world is another system within that and then we can find so many other systems on our planet - the water cycle for instance. On a political level we have countries, towns, families, our own body – down to the complex system of each individual cell. I’m also still thinking of the image of the mosaic we discussed a few months ago – our life being made up of many broken parts and also our whole life then becoming one part of God’s plan for creation. I’d like you now to think of one system and how it needs to work together in unison for it to function at all – perhaps a beehive; or an orchestra; or your own body (pause briefly) – think of the co-ordination required for a fielding sportsman to catch out an opposition batter – from eye to brain then to muscles that control all parts of the body. We take it for granted that our brain is capable of such coordination: for sport, to play a musical instrument, to send a text message without even looking at the keypad, or for any and every activity of everyday life. And all the while, in the background, our heart, digestion and other vital functions continue. That’s awesome! If one part of our body doesn’t work in harmony with the rest, we can get dysfunction such as Parkinson’s disease or one of many different cancers. And again, if one part of our body is injured, all the rest comes out in sympathy and works together to heal the affected area. I heard recently that the total number of human beings that has ever lived in all of know time is less than the number of cells in one human body! (That number of cells is not known exactly by anyone, but lowest estimates put it at 10 trillion, that’s 10 with 10 zeros after it, and highest estimates make it 10 times more than that, 100 trillion, as opposed to the almost 6 billion people currently alive which is 6 with 6 zeros after it.) Learning that information made me think in a new way about the Body of Christ and God’s coordination of people and events – especially knowing how much I take it for granted that my head or my brain has total control over the actions of every part of my body. Saint Paul gave us the image of the Church as being like parts of a body with Christ as the Head when he wrote to the believers at Corinth: “For just as the body is one and has many member, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body.” (1Cor. 12:12-13) Jesus himself used images that tie in with this, such as the vine and its branches and himself being our sustenance. “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.” (John 15: 4-5) This is echoed in what St Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, wrote in the 4th Century, “For his body has been given to you under the appearance of bread and his blood under the appearance of wine so that, when you have partaken of the body and blood of Christ, you might be one body and one blood with him. … His body and blood are diffused through all our members: see, then, how we become participants in the divine nature! For Christ said: “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life in you.” (John.6:53) St Thérèse of Lisieux used images of being ‘at home in God’. This is from her reflection on the Trinity giving themselves to us so that we “will be able to share in the divine nature”. (1 Peter 1:4) God desires to share a family life with us and to draw us into his circle of friends. St. Thérèse sees that this family is not self enclosed – it is a family of hospitality and of compassionate solidarity with others. She also thought these images cannot work as ‘mind images’ – they are things that must be put into practice if they are to be meaningful in any way. If we imagine ourselves at the centre of our own universe, we could build outwards a structure of ever-larger systems – of family, as we discussed recently this can be our biological or faith family; of political structures; of ecological systems. But perhaps the most important network, crossing all boundaries of space and time is the family of God. As St Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “The life and death of each of us has its influence on others; if we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord, so that alive or dead we belong to the Lord”. (Romans 14:7) |
