10th Sunday after Pentecost 5.8.07 Our true identity
The epistle (1 Co 12) exhorts us to develop a communal sense of identity. We each have our place in the Body of Christ, different gifts, different roles. Strictly we have no identity of our own. We are automatically included in the team. We were never meant to have a separate agenda, any more than a part of an engine would think of itself separately from the rest of the engine.
Where we differ from parts of an engine is that we do have separate consciousness, but if we submerge that to the common good then we will reach our highest point. It is like being told: You have a separate mind, will etc, but submit that to the good of everyone else, and be humble and obedient enough to go along with whatever that requires. If you do that you will be exalted. If you try to go your own way you will come to nothing.
It is a test, and we are sorely tempted to go the individual road. The one who tempts us did go that road. Some of the glorious angels could not submit but wanted to assert their own individuality; so they crashed. If Lucifer had stayed loyal, how powerful he would have been.
The team identity actually enhances us. If I played for Manchester United everyone would be impressed, but if I just wore a red shirt and kicked the ball around the park by myself it would not count for much. So we actually gain prestige from belonging to the Church. The most powerful outfit there is, because the only team with God as captain and actually playing for the side.
The only hope for being ‘somebody’ is to converge with others in being the Church, as it is meant to be.
Thus Our Lord teaches us: humble yourself first and then the exaltation will come.
This requires a major shift of thinking.
We are so accustomed to thinking of ourselves as individuals – what suits us, what it cost us etc.
And then it is harder to join the ‘team’ when we can see that other ‘players’ are not thinking of the team identity either. We can sense the selfishness of others and we don’t want to join with them. So it gets very complicated.
Only remedy is that we all come in from the outer; we all climb down from excessively individual positions, and start to find out what we can do as the Body of Christ.
The main point is not to fear that we are losing anything of our precious ‘identity’ if we submit to Christ. No more than a branch lying on the ground would lose out if it suddenly became joined to a tree.
Catholics are accused of ‘leaving their brains at the door’ when they come into worship. Is that true for you? Do you feel you are not capable of thinking because you submit to the Magisterium? Of course not. We use our power of thinking to conclude that the Magisterium
is right. We choose what we believe as much as any freethinker.
We are free thinkers too. Free to pursue and embrace the truth. It should not come as any surprise if the truth has been largely codified in an existing body such as the Catholic Church. God intended us to look for the truth, but He did not intend to hide it from us. The truth has been looked for and it has been found.
We are fortunate to come in somewhat later on the scene and find out that other people have done a lot of the hard thinking for us (establishing things like the divinity of Christ). We can think those things through, but we will find they are right anyway.
No, if we are to use our brains, it will be to recognise that our true identity is found in a larger body than our own individual one – found in the Body of Christ.
