This week, the Universal Church celebrates the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. While Sunday 7th June this year marked the official occasion, throughout the whole week we are invited to contemplate the various facets of this great mystery.

During a Sunday afternoon conversation with some of my church aunties, I was asked a question which really spawned the idea for this post and that is, “if God has such great power to transform, why is it that He nevertheless, still leaves our world so fractured in its many conflicts and divisions? Added to this, why does He allow so many religious divisions including those of all the various non-Christian religions and Protestant denominations to flourish if there is truly only one real Lord of All, that being His Son, Jesus Christ the Redeemer, and One True & Holy Church?” The answer to that question lies at the heart of the mystery of this great Feast.

There is a scripture passage we are asked to reflect upon during the Sunday liturgy specifically chosen for the occasion of Corpus Christi and it is this:

The blessing-cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a communion with the body of Christ. The fact that there is only one loaf means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf.

(1Corinthians 10 : 16-17)

And the “many of us” St Paul refers to here refers not only to all the individuals that made up the early Christian community in St Paul’s era but it also refers to the many individual and collective varieties of charismatic expression present during the time we are in currently. Think on Christ’s closing discourse in His message to the Samaritan woman – The Woman at the Well – where He stated that in the age to come, “true worshippers will no longer worship on this mountain or at the Temple in Jerusalem but instead they will worship in Spirit and in Truth.“ Considering this then, it must be recognised therefore, that this expression “many of us” as used by St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, refers wholeheartedly to the definitive unity in diversity that uniquely characterises the body of Christ, hence the Church Universal far and wide.

We really need to open our hearts to the mysterious truth that although structurally organized and co-odinated differently from the Church governed under the provenance of the Holy See, the numerous other denominations far and wide, those which we broadly term “Protestant” due to the 16th century Reformation, are in their own unique way, still a part of Christ’s body – His Church Universal – in that they profess allegiance to Him through their many different styles of worship and honour given Him. These are to be rendered as like unto the numerous charisms or gifts of the Spirit St Paul talks at length about in his letters. For their vast expanse of difference in spirituality and in liturgical norms and customs are in many ways, not all that different to the charismatic variances observed across the different religious, apostolic, and missional congregations within both Western Catholicism and its myriad Eastern counterparts (Greek Orthodox etc.).

God is Love but because He is also Creator, His preference in the way He creates is an infinity of variance. And this is perhaps (for many stubborn humans who are so wanton and willful in their preference for an allegiance to the limited reasoning and ways of man as though these are somehow above the ways of God), one of the most difficult things for them to learn. Because it is “hard for them to kick against the goads” as Jesus Himself spoke of regarding St Paul’s own stubbornness before his conversion, the wars, conflicts, and unnecessary divisions abound. The “unnecessary divisions” I speak of here is not an instance of me referencing “diversity” but rather calling out the unnecessary conflict over this diversity, which needs to be quelled so that these diverse expressions of being Christ’s followers can brought together in a legitimate fraternal union, a brotherly-sisterly concorde, through mutually respectful and harmonious dialogue and appreciation of the creative differences this diversity lends us. There is an excellent video on YouTube which talks robustly on this topic and I heartily recommend you to take a look:

https://youtu.be/cRt6FFtxchY?si=Y1BkSCgrv2BbuzP2 ¹

I want to encourage you to become what Fr Mark Goring in this fabulous video here calls all-terrain. Are you an all-terrain faith-filled disciple of the Lord Jesus? Or, conversely, do you prefer to huddle within the closed-off mindset of a very legalistic clique? Btw, I am by no means challenging you to become “loose” or “wishy-washy” in your theology. Far from it. I am merely asking that you consider the beautiful and all-too-often ignored truth about our faith – that it’s meant to be that well of life-giving water that cherishes and honours legitimate God-given diversity. To marvel at how God co-ordinates the evolution of our collective human development here on this Earth has everything to do with marvelling too, at the awesome mystery of how God is continuing to re-shape and re-create us as the potter does the clay, and so produce from this evolutionary process, a new Man formed in the True and Holy likeness of God Himself. And so, in order for us to begin to appreciate the extent of this Work, we need to take a few steps back from becoming overtly fixated upon gazing at our own navels and instead ask the Lord earnestly and persistently over time, why is it that there is indeed so much diversity within the body of Christ? I guarantee He will tell you the answer and that this answer aligns perfectly with His holy will, as evidenced in scripture. And yes, I also use the word “legitimate” because there needs to be, accompanying this unity in diversity, a healthy discernment as to the difference between God-breathed spirituality and charismatic variety versus anomalies or abberations brought about by fallen nature or demonic influence. While the latter sounds extreme, we must recognize that scripture tells us Jesus came to cure the sick and heal all who were afflicted by the Devil. Therefore, healthy common sense also would tell us God cannot be mocked. What He has come to Earth to do, He accomplishes by the grace and power of His will holy, and His Spirit mighty. We need to be aware how important it is (as I said in my previous post) to learn to practice the Ignatian Discernment of Spirits so that we, over time without rushing the process, keenly, astutely and adroitly, discern whether or not someone or some group is operating under the unction of the Holy Spirit or whether they are purely or partially listening to the dictates of man and in what areas. Moreover, understanding the breadth and depth of charismatic variety in the body of Christ requires dedicated time and prayer, flowing with and not against the current of God’s evolutionary time-frame.

And so, we ought to praise the Lord for the myriad upon myriad of charismatic variety adorning His sacred body, instead of curse this variety because in so giving our Lord praise for this, we are helping to heal the terrible festering wounds caused by wars, conflicts, division, and added to this, we console the sorrowful heart of Jesus, Who laments over the persistence of hardened hearts in denying room in His Church and world at large for the many and varied charisms the Holy Spirit adorns Christ’s body with. Because, instead of helping to adorn the sacred body of our Lord, these needless rancours and conflicts over which charism/s is/are ‘right’ and which is/are ‘wrong’ continue to wound His body, continue to delay the coming of that Resurrection Power promised to us by Jesus. In delaying this Resurrection Power, the dawning of the New Pentecost is also delayed. That said, while it is equally true that God’s permissive will allows, with divine patience so alien to that of human power, permeation and proliferation of these sorrowful things, His will commands that they will not have the last word. The power of our prayer to seek for the true peace bourne of the spirit of reconciliation is not without its good fruit. For in due time an abundant and generous harvest shall be reaped provided that we have not been sparing in how and what we have sown.

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Additional References:

¹ I’m a Priest: Copy These Two Habits to Discern Anything, from “The School of Reading” by Fr Mark Goring

² See following link: Sunday GIFY Message: http://youtube.com/post/UgkxgZXCBiODtP3_YFGcKBh_KdRt8-AyzH4G?si=iI3UuSHXJHprH08A