We are like one body, made up of many different parts. Just take a look around you and you will see the many different parts. Some are big and some are small, some are very young and others of us are, well, let’s just say more mature. Some are really good at one thing or another and others are, well, good at other stuff.
It’s just like the body. There’s a head and an eye and a foot. All very different, but all a part of the same body. All very different, but all “given to drink of one Spirit.”
Which makes us all equal and all one. Paul puts it well: If the hand were to say to the eye, I am better than you because I can grasp things and pick them up. The eye could say, “Yeah, watch what happens when I close my eye lids. Good luck picking. up anything now!”
Or the eye could say to the foot, “See how much better I am than you…way up here on top of the body. All you can do is shuffle through the dirt, but I can see the most beautiful sights in far flung parts of the world. “Oh yeah, the foot might respond,” good luck seeing all those great things, because I am going to stand right here and never move again.”
The parts of the body might well bicker with each other, each believing they are more important than all the others, but each remains a part of the body and each is indispensable to the work of all. And it is only by recognizing their radical unity and equality that they accomplish anything at all.
No one is better than anyone else in the Church, for in the Body of Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, Slave nor Free, Male nor Female, but all are one in him. There is neither French nor Irish, Bright nor slow, rich nor poor, but all are one in him.
And every time we get up on our high horse and think we are better than “that poor thing over there” we get into trouble. For we forget, as Saint Theresa used to tell us, that it is in our littleness that we find greatness and in loving, not being jealous of others, that we find happiness. Did you ever hear what she wrote about the flowers God gives us in the springtime?
“Our Lord has explained this mystery to me. He showed me the book of nature, and I understood that every flower created by him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtime beauty, and the fields would not longer be enameled with lovely colors. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but he has also created little ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at his feet, and whose mission it is to gladden his Divine Eyes when he looks down upon them. And the more gladly they do his will the greater their perfection.”
So, through the intercession of Saint Theresa and Saint Paul, may we love all the flowers of God’s Church and cherish the people sitting behind you and in front of you, in the back pew and the front, as truly gifts from God.
