Intensity of Love
Throughout Scripture, there is a constant pattern of behavior that can be found among the faithful. From the time of Adam and Eve up to the groups described in the book of Revelation, the “faithful” come into union with God, relapse into sin, incur punishment and seek repentance, and are finally brought back into union with God. This happens over and over, again and again. It does not matter if it is one of the first Israelites, a faithful and practicing Jew, or a believing Christian - everyone in Salvation History seems to go through this cycle. In fact, this is indicative of the human individual; every time we sin, we separate ourselves from God. He will always take us back if we seek forgiveness, but this cycle is all too common in our lives, and we must undergo a constant battle to rid ourselves of the pain of these relapses.
Catholics are not immune to this problem. Because the individuals within the Church make up the Mystical Body of Christ, our individual actions play a role in the health and well-being of our Church. We can look to St. Paul’s beautiful metaphor of a body made up of many parts. Since there are over a billion of us in the Catholic Church, this body is made up of over a billion parts; if one of these parts is behaving unhealthily, it may not critically damage the entire body. But if a majority of the individual parts within a body behave in such a way that harms the body, then clearly the body will be critically damaged. Our individual actions clearly play a role in the health of this body. Fortunately, God has promised that even if the Mystical Body of Christ is weakened to a critical point, it will never perish. We know this because Christ himself was weakened and damaged to a critical point, even to the point of death, yet he rose from the dead, triumphant over sin. We cannot lie to ourselves and assume that the Church will always remain strong simply because it will never die; just as we see throughout Scripture, the Church may come to a point when it is seemingly damaged beyond repair. It may even come to a point where it dies just as Christ did. We know it to be false heresy to claim that Jesus only appeared to die; he died a true death, and if we are to expect the Church to model the life of Christ, we must be prepared for the possibility of it modeling the death of Christ, as well.
Today’s first reading reveals what this actually means. The Church immediately after Christ’s ascension was already small, but because of the intense persecution faced by these Christians, they scattered and fled, leaving only the twelve Apostles to rebuild the weakened body. The strength of the Apostles more than made up for the weaknesses of the others - the intensity of their love for Christ was far more powerful than mere numbers of followers. Eventually, it was this intensity that led to Christianity’s greatest growth: St. Paul was one of these persecutors, yet because of the work of the Apostles at this time, the Church survived and Paul eventually converted and spread the Gospel throughout the world. The Church may become small and fragile in the future. Followers may leave and flee because of the persecution of the world. But if we maintain the intensity of love that the Apostles did when they went through this experience, we will always keep the Mystical Body of Christ alive, and we will participate in the restoration of its fullness after persecution, modeled after the Resurrection of Christ himself.
Today's Readings:
