“Only you can be you. God designed each of us so there would be no duplication in the world. No one has the exact same mix of factors that make you unique. That means no one else on earth will ever be able to play the role God planned for you. If you don’t make your unique contribution to the Body of Christ, it won’t be made.”

For the church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.- C. S. Lewis: (1898 – 1963: was a British writer and lay theologian)

Scripture Text: (1 COR 12:12-14, 27)

Brothers and sisters:
As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,

and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.
Now the body is not a single part, but many.
You are Christ's body, and individually parts of it.

This process of the Word of God taking shape in the New Testament by means of tradition teaches us an important lesson about the Church. Being a Christian is not just about “me and Jesus”. Being a Christian means recognizing that our own lives are bound up with the other members of the Mystical Body of Christ. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, more often than not, flows into your life through the Communion of Saints: that is, through your fellow members within the Body of Christ. This is by God’s design.

God promises to give us always the grace we need to face any situation, but sometimes we refuse His grace because we refuse the means by which He wills to give us that grace. Within the body of the Church, God strengthens us through each other. How many members of your parish family do you not yet know? How many of them does God want to use as your brothers and sisters in Christ in order to bear His grace to you, and vice versa?