Every Christian has a role to play in the Church

Continuing with St Paul’s vision of the Church, this column in the series focuses on every Christian’s responsibility.

Paul uses a number of symbols to describe the Church’s relationship to Christ, including that of the body or a building. In both 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, he refers to the various vocations and functions to which members of the Christian community are called: some to be apostles, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors, some to be teachers some to be administrators, and so on.

All of us in our different stations, must work together to build the Church as a building or a body, with Christ as the head.  As we work together, motivated by the spirit of unity and love, we become the supporting structures that help the body to grow  and become firm, united to Christ its Head: “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Eph 4:16).

Youths participate in a vocations fair during World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011. Emmanuel Ngara writes that all Catholics, consecrated or lay, have a vocation within the Church. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

I have highlighted the words “as each part does its work” because they are central to the theme of this column. I see the words “each part” as having a double meaning.

First, every Christian is called to a particular vocation — such as that of the priesthood, women religious, lay Christian leaders, bishops, administrators and so on. For the body of Christ to grow and become firm, each category or group of Christians must do its work faithfully and competently.

If the bishops mess up, the whole Church will be messed up; if lay Christians adopt the view that the responsibility of building up the body of Christ is reserved for the pope and priests and bishops only, the Church will function like the proverbial tail struggling to wag the dog. What a heavy task for the poor tail!

The second meaning of the phrase “each part” has to do with how each individual Christian responds to his or her calling. For the various categories or groups to be effective in building up the body of Christ, each individual member must play his or her part effectively.

Paul’s idea of each part doing its work is clearly demonstrated in 1 Corinthians 12, where he explains the workings of the human body. We sometimes do not realise the importance of some parts of our bodies. When all is well with me, I can completely forget about the importance of, say, my little finger, my little toe, my ear drum or a wisdom tooth.

But once something goes wrong with such a part, then I am forced to wake up to the fact that if that little part is painful, my whole body cannot function properly. I may, for example, find myself taking sick leave when I am suffering from toothache or middle ear infection.

The same is true of the Church as the body of Christ. If any part is ignored, the Church can easily become a sick Church.

This is, in fact, part of the malady that the Church is struggling to recover from since Vatican II. For centuries, lay Christians had been marginalised and become spectators while the clergy saw themselves as the only group that was entitled to evangelise. To this very day, the idea that lay Christians are “less important than the clergy”, and that consequently their views do not matter much, still holds sway. But Paul warns us that “there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Cor 12: 25).

For each Christian to be an effective participant in the task of building up the body of Christ, they must discover two things: their calling and their gifts.

All of us are called. It is unfortunate that we are taught to associate the word “vocation” with the clergy and religious only. Every Christian must work to discover the purpose for which God created him or her. In addition, we should know that when God calls us, he gives us gifts so that we can successfully fulfil the purpose for which he created us. These are the gifts that Paul talks about in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4.

This, then, is the challenge for all Christians: to discover their calling and their gifts, and to use both for building up the body of Christ and serving humanity.