Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth week of Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091812.cfm

Some kind of fungus
doing its recycling work
at Mt St Francis

As a body is one though it has many parts,and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,so also Christ.For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body,whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.Now the body is not a single part, but many.

"Oh Honey!" my mother would cry when she heard the hard crack of a kid's head on the floor, or the whoomp of baby butt on the floor. It was the natural cry of compassion of one human being for another, not unlike the OW! you hear from the men watching a football game as a receiver gets hit in mid-flight as he snags the ball. "I'll bet that hurt!"Human beings are made for compassion. We feel the other's pain. It comes with our being made in the image and likeness of God, who feels our pain and joy, our satisfaction and frustration.

Saint Paul heard was overwhelmed with God's compassion as he fell to the road on the way to Damascus. "Saul, Saul, why do you torment me?" God demanded of him. He had no idea! He thought he was serving God. This was what he was supposed to do in God's service. He was treating others as he had been treated in the hard schools of Jewish learning. "Knock some sense into them!" was his mission, whether it took ostracism, beatings, jailings or death. "We'll nip this notion in the bud!"

But the Lord, whose voice he instantly recognized, felt compassion for the Christians; and they were more than his people or his friends, as the Jews had always called themselves. They went so far as to consider Jerusalem the Spouse of God! But the Lord claimed the Christians as his very self! "Why do you persecute me?"

Saint Paul would never forget that cry and would learn from it an entirely new, breath-taking relationship with God. He would celebrate the Eucharist with his Christian disciples knowing they were sharing the very body and blood of Christ. It was not a reminder of Christ, nor a banquet in honor of Jesus. It was eating his body and drinking his blood so that all would become one body and one blood in the Lord.

The Christian's sense of compassion is not born with baptism; it comes with our human nature. But it's certainly heightened by our sharing the Eucharist so that we feel first with our companions in the congregation; and then the whole church; and finally all people.

I met a fellow who told me he would not support the Catholic Church because we give money to people beyond the United States. What could I say? We're guilty as charged! And so am I. I'd have it no other way. This well-intentioned patriot had shared our Eucharist at some point in his life but neglected to drink the Spirit. I have to suppose some part of his spirit is crying in pain but he cannot feel it. Compassion for every man and woman on earth has surely not atrophied in him, but it may have turned his heart to bitterness and a barely-disguised hostility.  

A snail goes about her business
on a dead tree

Saint Paul was born seventeen centuries before nationalism was declared a virtue; he knew nothing of such nonsense. As he announced the Gospel to one city after another, sharing "one Lord, one faith and one baptism" he felt the vitality of the Holy Spirit moving in him, binding him with cords of love to all Christians and all people.