Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time (September 18, 2018): The Spirit of collaboration

St. Paul says in today’s first reading that the Holy Spirit takes all of us – the many parts of the Christian body (Catholics and Protestants, liberals and conservatives) and makes us one. Isn’t it interesting that this comes the day after the Church gives us a scripture about division (cf. 1 Cor. 11:17-26)!

Unity comes from the Holy Spirit. We cannot assemble as a community by our own power; left to our own willpower, we’d more likely snooze late on Sundays and then catch up on last week’s chores rather than go to church. And when we do choose to attend Mass, left to our own willpower, we’re likely to enter as an individual and worship as an individual and participate in communion as an individual, and then leave as an individual, even though “communion” means being community.

God designed us to live in community. That’s why the bishops of Vatican Council II wrote, in the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity (para. 18): “…it has been God’s pleasure to assemble those who believe in Christ and make of them the People of God.” God built into our hearts a need for community. When our faith deepens to the point of realizing this, we’re dissatisfied when our faith-filled friends are too few. We don’t feel loved enough when we hide behind walls of seclusion. Although we must have time alone with God to experience his supreme love, we also need to participate in community life to experience God’s sufficient love.

When we feel lonely, or when our prayers are not being answered, or when God isn’t giving us everything we need, it’s usually because we have not availed ourselves of the people in the faith community through whom God works.

Likewise, when our ministries are not making as big of a difference as they should, or when we feel burnt out from doing the Lord’s work, or when some of the needs of the parish or diocese are going unmet, it’s usually because we’re not collaborating with enough other servants of God. The bishops addressed that, too, in the same 18th paragraph of the decree for the laity: Since we’re “social by nature” and God has assembled us into one body, we are most effective in the mission of Christ when we’re collaborative: “…it offers a sign of the communion and unity of the Church in Christ.”

God never calls us to serve him as loners: “For that reason Christians will exercise their apostolate in a spirit of concord. They will be apostles … in the free associations they will have decided to form among themselves…. The apostolate calls for concerted action.”

All of us in the Catholic community – priests, deacons, religious, and laity – must offer our unique, individual giftedness to each other in a spirit of collaboration for the sake of the work of the Church. And all of us in the wider Christian community – Catholics and Protestants of all denominations – must form collaborations so that we can preach to the world that Christ’s love conquers all divisions.

This is only possible, however, through the Spirit of collaboration, who makes us one.

Let us pray together that this Spirit of collaboration is more clearly preached by example in all the divisions that the world has been witnessing in our Church.

Today’s Prayer:

My Lord: pour Your anointing upon me, so whomever I encounter on my way may recognize Your presence amidst us. Amen.