THE COMMON VOCATION OF ALL CHRISTIANS IS THE CALL TO UNITY

20150921 THE COMMON VOCATION OF ALL CHRISTIANS IS THE CALL TO UNITY

Readings at Mass

First reading

Ephesians 4:1-7,11-13 ©

I, the prisoner in the Lord, implore you to lead a life worthy of your vocation. Bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience. Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together. There is one Body, one Spirit, just as you were all called into one and the same hope when you were called. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who is Father of all, over all, through all and within all.

  Each one of us, however, has been given his own share of grace, given as Christ allotted it. To some, his gift was that they should be apostles; to some, prophets; to some, evangelists; to some, pastors and teachers; so that the saints together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ. In this way we are all to come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.

Psalm

Psalm 18:2-5 ©

Their word goes forth through all the earth.

The heavens proclaim the glory of God,

  and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.

Day unto day takes up the story

  and night unto night makes known the message.

Their word goes forth through all the earth.

No speech, no word, no voice is heard

  yet their span extends through all the earth,

  their words to the utmost bounds of the world.

Their word goes forth through all the earth.

Gospel Acclamation

cf.Te Deum

Alleluia, alleluia!

We praise you, O God,

we acknowledge you to be the Lord.

The glorious company of the apostles praise you, O Lord.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 9:9-13 ©

As Jesus was walking on he saw a man named Matthew sitting by the customs house, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.

  While he was at dinner in the house it happened that a number of tax collectors and sinners came to sit at the table with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When he heard this he replied, ‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners.’

THE COMMON VOCATION OF ALL CHRISTIANS IS THE CALL TO UNITY

SCRIPTURE READINGS: EPHESIANS 4:1-7, 11-13; MATTHEW 9:9-13

In the first reading, St Paul exhorts the Ephesians, “I, the prisoner in the Lord, implore you to lead a life worthy of your vocation”.  What is this vocation that we are called to live worthily?  Essentially, all of us have one vocation only.  It is the call to love and unity.  Indeed, St Matthew, whose feast we are celebrating today is an apostle of unity.  The theme of forgiveness and reconciliation is a dominant theme of the evangelist.  Matthew’s gospel underscores the need to forgive everyone, including our enemies, as we read in the Sermon on the Mount.  Chapter 18 also provides guidelines on how to reconcile recalcitrant Christians to the community. St Matthew saw the absolute importance of unity as a necessary prerequisite for the spread of the gospel.  Perhaps it is for this reason that the Church has selected the text from Ephesians Chapter 4 for today’s first reading, since this theme of unity resonates so strongly with the sentiments of St Matthew.

At any rate, to celebrate the feast of the apostle is to celebrate the unity of the Church and its pastoral and missionary outreach to all of humanity, within the Church and those outside the Church.  Christ has bequeathed to the Church the Apostolic College united under St Peter, the chief of apostles, so that the Church in the midst of changes and challenges could remain firm and strong in her beliefs and devotion to the Lord.  If the Church underscores the necessity of apostolic succession as a criterion of being in the Church of Christ, it is because this is the means by which the truth is guaranteed.  By remaining in union with our pope and the universal magisterium, we are assured that what we believe in is in fidelity to the faith handed on to us by the apostles.  In this way, the unity of faith is protected.  We must value unity above all else.  By insisting only on one’s way and by adopting an individualistic outlook, one will destroy the unity of Christ’s Church.  So when there are differences in opinions, we must look to the legitimate leaders of the Church who have been appointed by Christ for direction and focus.

This is what St Paul is urging the Christians.  He wrote to the Ephesians, “Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together. There is one Body, one Spirit, just as you were all called into one and the same hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who is Father of all, over all, through all and within all”.  Indeed, we know that the greatest scandal to the promotion and extension of the Christian faith is the disunity among Christians.  Without unity, we cannot carry out the mission of Christ effectively, as the diverse and often contradictory teachings among Christians from different denominations and communions confuse those who are attracted to the gospel of Christ.  Hence, St Paul appealed to the Christians at the very outset of the foundation of the Christian communities to strive for unity among themselves.  Only by living in this way, St Paul says, can we all “come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.”

Besides being in communion with the apostles and sharing the same faith, what else can one do to preserve the unity of the Church? We must play our part in the one Body of Christ, by employing the charisms and the gifts of the Spirit given to us for the building of the Church of Christ.   In the Church of Christ, we act organically, not just hierarchically.  No one monopolizes the gifts of the Spirit.  St Paul reminds us of the need to contribute to the growth of the community when he wrote, “Each one of us, however, has been given his own share of grace, given as Christ allotted it. And to some, his gift was that they should be apostles; to some, prophets; to some, evangelists; some, pastors and teachers; so that the saints together make a unit in the work of service, building up the body of Christ.”  The real setback in the progress of the Church today and her mission is that very few Catholics are giving their services and sharing their talents with the Church.  With so many diverse gifts and talents in our midst, one wonders how the Church could be short of professionals and workers to labour in the vineyard of the Lord.

Thirdly, we must strive to live a life worthy of our calling as Christians.  In other words, we must live a compatible lifestyle in line with our faith.  Specifically, St Paul says, “Bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience.”  Indeed, there can be no unity and love among ourselves if we do not deal with each other with compassion, understanding, tolerance and generosity.  It is ironical that quite often, working among Christians and Catholics, we are amazed at the lack of courtesy, justice, fairness and forgiveness at our workplace or in Church organizations.  If the Church environment is modeled after the corporate world, based on the principle of utility, then the Church is no longer a refuge and a haven to experience the merciful and compassionate face of God.

Today, we have the example of St Matthew.  In that brief sentence, “He rose and followed him”, the evangelist explains to us how Matthew understood his calling.  To follow Jesus is not just a matter of being with Him but to leave everything behind, especially a devious and disreputable lifestyle as a tax collector who made money using dishonest and unscrupulous means.  This of course meant that he had to surrender what he loved most, namely, money!  When we follow Jesus, we can no longer pursue activities contrary to the gospel values but to give up those things and habits that are incompatible with the teaching of Jesus.  “To rose” has also the connotation of dying to self and rising to a new life in Christ.  In order to rise, we must die to ourselves, our sins and our attachments to the world.  So when St Matthew “rose and followed” Jesus, it was his utter conviction that his life must now be aligned to the life of God.

Indeed, as Catholics, we must always remind ourselves that because we are the ambassadors of Christ in our own ways, to the world and to people around us, we must be mindful of what we do.  Sin, for Christians, is never just an individual action with repercussions for the sinner only.  Because we are all members of the one body of Christ, every sin of the individual Christian will inevitably have ramifications for the credibility of the Church.  More so, if we hold greater authority, whether as a religious leader, lay leader or simply being parents and teachers of our children.  Our failure as leaders causes unbelievers to distrust us.  It is sad that today, many people do not have confidence in the Church or their leaders anymore.  Everything their leaders do is under suspect.  This is the outcome of Christians failing to live a life that is worthy of their vocation.

But all these means to unity presupposes a more fundamental calling which is the call to be loved by Christ.  Precisely, if St Matthew was called to be an apostle and he responded so generously, it was not simply because he was inspired by Jesus’ teachings, but by His compassionate and forgiving love for him.  He never felt judged by Jesus or condemned by Him.  We can be certain that Jesus’ compassionate and loving approach to him must have won him over.  This experience of Jesus’ forgiving love is expressed in the gospel when Jesus was challenged and reproached for eating with tax-collectors and sinners. The evangelist captures the heart of Jesus in His reply to the criticisms of the Pharisees, saying “It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners”.  Only those who have understood their own sinfulness and taken the courage to surrender to Jesus, like Matthew, understand the real conversion of life.  The true conversion of heart to one of mercy and compassion for others must begin with an encounter with Divine Mercy.  When we are ready to acknowledge our sinfulness without excuses and turn to the Lord in humility and in truth, then we can experience the healing of our soul and body.

With the experience of His mercy and love, comes the desire to proclaim His mercy.  Unity is only possible wherever we are when we learn compassion.  What breaks up the family unity is always pre-judgment and prejudice.  The unity of the Spirit does not mean that the Christian community is perfect and all are living impeccable lives at all times.  Rather, whilst we must seek to live the gospel life as perfectly as possible, we must realize that we are pilgrims on a journey.  So with the call to live our life worthy of our vocation from the perspective of Christian conduct and lifestyle, we must also complement it with compassion and forgiveness.  Unity requires that we are in solidarity with each other, despite our differences and human frailties.

Truly, if the message of the Good News is to go out through all the earth, as the psalmist says, we must transform society, not by behaving like self-righteous Pharisees, as many active and supposedly good and religious minded Catholics do, but by a life of compassion and understanding, never judging others but thinking the best of them and their motives.  Only when we are able to see goodness in them, will we be able to help bring out the best even in the worst of sinners, as Jesus did with the tax-collectors and the prostitutes.  Love and compassion is the loudest proclamation of the gospel according to the responsorial psalm, “Not a word nor a discourse whose voice is not heard; through all the earth their voice resounds, and to the ends of the world, their message”, simply because God shows His divine providence to us all in His creative work.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore

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