Word to the Wise
Monday, October 28, 2019 - Oct. 28 - Sts. Simon and Jude, Apostles
[Eph 2:19-22 and Luke 6:12-19]You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into dwelling place of God in the Spirit. [Ephesians]
The Letter to the Ephesians was written to a community of believers who were never Jews. It presents a majestic vision of the church as the Body of Christ and as the household of God. The church is also imagined as a building with Christ as its "cornerstone" (meaning it orients the rest of the building geometrically" or "capstone" as in the final stone in an arch which holds the rest of the arch together. The foundation to the building is the teaching of the apostles and prophets. Each of us as believers are placed within the "household of God, and as part of the envisioned building. Thus, these two images are wound together.
When one realizes that in the Catholic "household" there are more than a billion members, the image of the household can overwhelm. Then the "building" becomes like one of those elaborate "Lego" structures. Another image that comes to mind is a current popular game, "Jenga," involving wooden blocks that are stacked into a tower and players try to remove blocks one at a time without the tower collapsing. There will always be that one block that cannot be removed without destroying the tower. That block for the church is Christ, but the other blocks are necessary if there is to be a game at all!
We celebrate today the feast of two of the lesser-known apostles. Simon would be called, charitably, a political activisit (Zealot) and Jude became the patron saint of hopeless cases (a popular appeal) but their ministry, other than being martyrs, is unknown to us. All of us who are baptized, are in debt to them for their foundational witness which provided the invitation to join the household of God. AMEN