Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072912.cfm

I, a prisoner for the Lord,
urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another through love,
striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:
one body and one Spirit,
as you were also called to the one hope of your call;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all,
who is over all and through all and in all.

This complex sentence from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians moves from a consideration of the way Christians should live to a profound creedal statement about the nature of God.

Seven times he uses the word one. That can be no accident, and was surely noticed by that Ephesian community the first time it was read aloud in their Christian worship. This series of ones symbolically advances the thought and directs our vision. As we hear this sentence we travel with him from our peaceful church on earth which tries to practice these virtues to the Halls of Heaven where we see the One God and Father of all.

Saint Paul describes the Church as “one body,” a concept that remains in our theology and is familiar to our spirituality but may be foreign to our experience.  Imagine, if you will, what it was like to stand in a crowd of several thousand people in a grassy meadow where Jesus spoke to them – without a microphone, out of doors. They must have been standing shoulder to shoulder, back to belly in a tightly packed mass of humanity. Emotions like laughter, astonishment or weeping moved like waves through this density. The human body, as we all know, is mostly water. What could be more natural than a wave of emotion sweeping through this crowd?

When Saint Paul speaks of the one body of the church he is talking about that very physical reality. There is no need in such a crowd to identify oneself as different from or better than anyone else. You're just glad and grateful to be there.

Today's Gospel recalls that beautiful day when Jesus fed five thousand people in the wilderness. The story leads us into Jesus' mysterious teachings about the Eucharist, and his insistence that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood. He gives his Body and Blood to us and his gift overwhelms all expectations. There is more than we can eat, as we discover in the twelve baskets of leftovers. 

called to the one hope of our call and sharing the one Bread of Angels we find ourselves united by one Lord, one faith, one baptism, standing shoulder to shoulder and back to belly in the Communion of Saints before the Holy of Holys, praising one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.