How often do you take the people that you sit next to at Mass for granted? Not quite sure what I mean?
Picture this: you wake up on Sunday morning, and end up feeling extremely tired. You want to go back to sleep, but your family is going to Mass. Somehow, through your exhaustion, you made it through the entire Mass but spent the whole time just thinking of getting back to sleep once you get home.
Whether it be lack of sleep, or some event on my daily schedule happening later in the day, I’ve caught myself zoning out in Mass before, without really focusing on the significance of what is happening in front of me or acknowledging those around me. God has given us the greatest gift possible — the fact that He’s giving us Himself in the most precious body and blood when we come up to receive the sacrament during Communion. If we really knew that in the depths of our hearts, we’d have to share it with others! Why, then, have we not taken the time to get to know those sitting around us in the pews?
We are all one Body.
Saint Paul explains significantly the intimacy Christ longs for us to have with Him, as members of His body in 1st Corinthians:
“So that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.” – 1 Corinthians 12:25-26
Just think: every time we go to Mass, we come together as one community, as one family, united to Christ, in one Spirit. Each of us is given the gift of having Christ reside within us in the Eucharist, and we live out our responsibility to share that love he has given us in two different ways:
1. By living intentional community
Christ developed the Church to be a community of believers upholding discipleship: the goal to journey together and help each other live the faith in everyday life. The simple way of doing this in the Church today is through living out intentional community with the other members of this body. Whether it be simply through youth group or a Bible study in the Catholic club at your high school, approaching someone you’ve never truly had the chance to talk to before, and simply taking the time first to get to know the person allows room for discipleship to grow out of the friendship made. Christ was able to do just that with his disciples. Helping each other live the faith daily requires a sense of vulnerability. This allows there to be room to keep each other accountable and uplift each other through the struggles of life.
2. By spreading the Gospel
We as Catholics have a call placed on our hearts from our baptism to be missionaries. In other words, to “make disciples” as Christ says in Matthew 28:19. You may be thinking to yourself that, as one person, you might not have as much of an impact. That’s not true! By simply loving those around you through discipleship, others will be able to see his love within you. Your witness of living out the faith, even though you may not be able to see the work being complete, may be what brings that one person to God in their time of need.
Christ gives us the greatest gift: Himself, to be able to accomplish so much for the kingdom. However, we’re not meant to do so alone.
“Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
