Yearning for Oneness

​Yearning for Oneness
#12thandMass
May 9, 2023
 
As Christians, we believe the Church to be, first and foremost, a mysterious spiritual ever-lasting reality of which we become a part, into which are swept up by grace.  We are members of the Mystical Body of Christ.  And so, we are bound to one another wherever we may be, whatever we may feel.  This is Christ’s own doing!  As says Professor Scott Hahn (from my alma mater, the University of Steubenville), The Church is the Body of Christ, and as such it is both heavenly and earthly. The Church is the communion of saints, and it includes as members both angels and shepherds—cherubim and seraphim, and you, and me.  And, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who died in Auschwitz in 1945, reminds us, “The temple of God is the holy people in Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the living temple of God and of the new humanity.” (The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937).
 
Because we are bound to one another, we inevitably yearn for oneness.  Awareness of the yearning can come and go—but that is another question!  This yearning surely comes from the Holy Spirit, Who “intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).  Let us yearn for oneness.  Let us labor to welcome the oneness, tearing down whatever walls we, at times, allow to divide us.  And, in this labor, let us be encouraged by the words of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (d. 1892), English Baptist preacher: God loves the Church with a love too deep for human imagination: He loves her with all His infinite heart. Therefore, let her sons and daughters be of good courage; she cannot be far from prosperity (from “Morning and Evening”, published in 1865).
 
Yours in Christ, “Head of the Church” (BCP, page 369, Eucharistic Prayer B),
 
Dominique+