Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

Paintings in the Monte Cassino
Shrine at Saint Meinrad, Indiana

Lectionary: 561

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received:
that Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the Scriptures...

The Church often celebrates the feasts of apostles because we appreciate our vital contact with these historical characters. If we have few details about their lives, personality or character we nevertheless honor their contact with Jesus. He sent them into the whole world to preach the gospel and they obeyed him even to the point of martyrdom.

Saint Paul said of the work of apostles,

“…how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring [the] good news!?”

For Saint Paul, the very thought of missionary preaching caused him to break into song, “How beautiful are the feet...!”

Today many Christian churches express grave concern about “unchurched Christians.” But “unchurched Christian” is an oxymoron. The Christian can no more be removed from the church than a fish can be removed from water. The Christian is umbilically bound to the church. There is no meeting with Christ without the Church.

This new understanding of Church has appeared since the Second Vatican Council. It was always there in the New Testament, with ample tradition in the Old Testament; but after the fall of the Roman Empire the Church was so ubiquitous we hardly noticed it as the "water" in which we "swim." It was something we could not only take for granted; we could ignore its importance.

But in our time, when millions claim to be Christian but deny their membership in the church and its spiritual authority -- and do not hesitate to flout its moral teachings -- we must ponder more deeply Saint Paul's insight. We encounter Jesus within the living organism that is his body.

One cannot hear the word of God and then leave it at church like an entertaining movie. One cannot be fed in the church as a car is refueled in a service station. Rather, we feed on the Body of Christ. It is constant sustenance like the air we breathe; it is protection like the skin around our bodies. Without it we die.

In his book, An Introduction to Christianity, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) shows how the Gospel must be announced from person to person and people to people through their human languages. Despite the admirable enthusiasm of the Gideons who would carpet the Earth with copies of the Bible, faith actually spreads like a contagion (or an enthusiasm) from person to person. It grows within the dialog of two mysterious beings in their I-thou meeting.

The Gospel is contained within the Body. Even if someone with no knowledge of Jesus were to pick up the Bible and read it and be thrilled by its words, she would have to be baptized into membership. She would need the Church to demonstrate and witness and exemplify faith. She must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus, and that Eucharist she will find only in the communion of the Church. 

The Holy Spirit is generated in the dialog when mind/heart meets mind/heart, just as the Holy Spirit is generated between the Father and the Son. As Saint Thomas wrote and we often sing,

Genitori, Genitoque/ Laus et jubilatio, / Salus, honor, virtus quoque / Sit et benedictio: / Procedenti ab utroque / Compar sit laudatio.

which translated reads, 

To the Begetter and the Begotten, / Be praise and jubilation, / Hail, honor, virtue also, / And blessing too:/ To the One proceeding from Both / Let there be equal praise. 

The Begetter is the Father; the Begotten is the Son; and the Holy Spirit is the "One proceeding from Both." The total love, pure devotion and mutual obedience of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. It springs from the I-thou of their meeting. 

In that Divine Dialogue of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit the Christian finds her place within the organic Church, built upon the apostles who first met Jesus in our human flesh.