In the first reading we read yesterday, St Paul exhorted God’s people to be united. One body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism.
In today’s reading St Paul adds something very important. Unity is fundamental for witnessing to the world outside of the Church, but unity does not mean uniformity. Every baptized person, belonging to the body of Christ, has his own place and responsibility. And the Church is beautiful, alive, true precisely because of the variety of gifts that are bestowed on each one in different ways, for the different ministries, for the different liturgies and rites, for the different languages in which the liturgy is celebrated. And all for the sake of unity.
Christ alone is the head of the Church and the center of unity. He, directly, through the community, gives thevarious ministries, which stimulate Christians to live out their vocation. Beware, however! The gifts of God, the grace we receive, the ministry we hold, are not primarily aimed at achieving personal holiness. When we come to church, when we pray, when we exercise our ministry, when we express our charity by dedicating ourselves to the least, we are certainly on the right path. If we do this with a righteous heart, we grow in personal holiness. However, brother, sister, do not forget that you are not alone, that your vocation is to build the body of Christ, to build unity, and this you do in the Church, together with others, as a people walking together. A Christian who lives alone, aimed only at himself is not in the right way. Everything is aimed at the good of those around you.
We do not come to church to satisfy our desire for personal holiness but to learn more and more to resemble Christ, the one who did not keep his divine nature for himself but emptied himself to become like us. To look like Christ means love and service, let us never forget that.
Sometimes we risk reducing our being Christian to a series of actions to be performed or a series of devotions, an abstract spirituality that only serves to make us look good in God’s eyes. Loving and serving is the right way to put to good use the grace we have received and perform our ministries well.
According to St Paul, the purpose of Christian action is to attain the perfect man. Beware: the perfect man is not a superman. Perfect man does not mean a person without any defect (he does not exist!) but a mature man or woman, not a child, an accomplished man or woman. And St Paul reminds us that this maturity you do not achieve through your own personal effort, you achieve it because you are inserted in the Church, in the body of Christ and therefore in Christ himself, from him you draw strength
The more we are inserted in the life of the Church, the more we are in Christ and vice versa.
St Paul concludes this splendid passage by exhorting every Christian not to be tossed about by the waves of passing trends, by attractive philosophies that distract from the true faith. Brothers, sisters, let us remain anchored to the true faith, let us remain in the Church, let us not create a ‘do-it-yourself’ religion, suited to our own benefit. The people united, beautiful, rich in charisms, walk towards the light, towards Christ. Mary, whose memory we celebrate today, is the lighthouse that shows the way to the sailor sailing in the storm of the world towards the safe harbour.
On the day on which the Church celebrates his memorial, we recall the words with which St John Paul II inaugurated his pontificate on 22 October 1978. “Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows “what is in man”. He alone knows it.”