The Body Matters

The psalmist proclaims the glory of the Reign of God in the texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for today the feast of John, Apostle and Evangelist. The glory confirmed and celebrated by the psalmist did not anticipate the essential declaration at the beginning of the Gospel of John that the Word is become flesh! The Incarnation is the scandalous Christian celebration of Christmas. Early Christians praised the action of God to humble Himself and be in human form. Friar Jude Winkler comments that the First Letter of John is the text which opened the eyes of early Church leaders to the full spiritual understanding of John. The Gospel of John is very spiritual and mystical. The community, from which it came, according to Friar Jude, was charismatically driven by deep love of Jesus. The Letter of John expresses the relationship with Jesus as involving the senses. Jesus is seen, heard and touched. The humanity of Jesus is core to Christian belief. The statement of experience of His humanity helped John to be declared an Evangelist. Disagreement and heresy have always been present in Church history. The Gospel of John presents an ongoing tension between Peter the Apostle representing the authority of the Church and John, the beloved disciple, who is the deep lover of Jesus. In the text today, Friar Jude notes that John arrives first at the tomb, not because he may have been a younger man but because he was driven by Love, the power which pushes back the walls. The beloved disciple waits for and follows Peter into the tomb as a sign of Love bowing to Authority. This gesture may be controversial, yet consider the situation if Love did not join Authority in human organizations. The interpretation of the faith writing of John as obedient and in full acceptance of the humanity of Jesus places it in the battle of the early Church to assert the importance of the body and the senses for our eternal life in communion with Jesus. Father Robert Barron takes up the theme of the importance of the body in Christian belief as he preaches Sermon188 on the occasion of the Feast of the Assumption. This talk was inspired by the book “Letters to a Young Catholic”, by George Weigel. Barron uses the Marion feast to illuminate the central role of Mary in the Incarnation and her modeling of the key tenant of Christianity that rejects Platonic, Gnostic and modern philosophy which separates body and soul. The Incarnation, the feast today, the earliest Christian creed, the Church which was Marian before it was Petrine or Pauline, declare that “the Body (and body) matters!”