
The other night I was working on my car, it’s something I used to do growing up. My dad basically taught me how to do everything; we had a garage full of tools and, well, it’s not the same here at the rectory. I found myself working for a couple hours on something. There was this wire that I was trying to tap into, so I had to cut this electrical tape that was wrapping those things. As I cut it, after working for three or four hours on this project, I cut into one of the wires and cut the wire in half. I called a friend at 10pm at night and he said, “You’d make a lousy bomb difusser.” (laughter) He made me laugh because I was so frustrated. I’d been working for hours on this and then I did even more damage than I wanted to and then before you know it, I’m just trying to move things and I slice my thumb open. I’m bleeding all over the place and I think, ‘Why do I do things like this?’
We hear about the body in the second reading today. Saint Paul says that all of us are members of the Body of Christ. We each have different roles, some of us may be the ears or the eyes or the hands or the feet. I realized at that moment that these hands are no longer for working on things, it’s just so frustrating. There’s a line that I don’t like, that priests use sometimes, they are joking I hope, but they say, ‘the hands of a priest are made for chalices not callouses.’
I want you to think about your being a part of the Body of Christ. Sometimes people say they don’t like organized religion, but organized religion comes from the word organ. Organized means that we are all part of this organ of the Body of Christ. There’s an organization to it that we have a place, every one of you has a place in the Body of Christ. Especially here at Saint Matthias, we depend on every one of you to take up your role, whatever that may be.
You notice of the front of the bulletin, our motto here is to Know, Love and Serve. I think about that in terms of the body: to know is the head, to love is the heart and to serve is the hands. Think about the last three Popes that we’ve had. Pope Francis is a Pope of tremendous service that he has shown to us, so I think of him as the hands. Before him was Pope Benedict who was German and he wrote lovingly and his intellect was amazing so he could be associated with the mind. Pope John Paul the Second, who in now a saint, had such a love for people, he had such love for the youth; he went all over for World Youth Days, so I think of him as the heart.
As I go through this Litany, I want you to think about what member of the Body of Christ are you? What is the strength that we have that other people don’t have? I know one of the sins is envy and if we find ourselves envying other people, it might be because we don’t realize the gift that we have. So, our Saints throughout the church are very bodily, many of the saints are patron saints, so if you have anything wrong in your body, there’s probably a patron saint that you can pray to for help.
Saint John Chrysostom was known as ‘the golden tongue,’ because he such a magnificent preacher. But that preaching could be very strong as well and sometimes he could use that tongue to cut like a knife. Sister Mary Margaret Alacoque was clumsy growing up, she suffered
Illness her whole life, had rheumatic fever, and was confined to bed for four years. During those four years, Jesus began to appear to her and he revealed to her the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So, she is the one that started the devotion to his Sacred Heart. She also started the devotion to frequent Eucharistic Adoration. I think she represents the heart.
Saint Ignatius. He was shot in the knee during one of the wars and because of this, he ended up in a hospital bed for nine months. When he had his knee surgery, he had to recover for that time. He was reading all these books and back then you know, they have women’s trashy books, back then they had those for men, and so that’s what Ignatius would read. When he had read every single book he could get his hands on, his brother finally said, “I don’t have any more books except I have Lives of the Saints and Imitation of Christ, how about that?” Ignatius said, “Well, I’ll read those.” As he read those books, he had his conversion and he went on to found the Jesuits and Spiritual Exercises, but none of that would have happened if his knee wasn’t injured.
Saint Damian of Molokai, I can think of him for the skin. Saint Damian worked with the lepers in Hawaii; I’d love to on pilgrimage just to see that. He worked with lepers there, so much so that he contracted leprosy himself. He said, “My greatest pleasure is serve the Lord in these poor children rejected by other people. I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all for Christ.”
Saint Lucy is the patron saint of blindness and of those with eye ailments because as she was martyred, they gouged out her eyes. Saint Odilia was born blind and she gained her sight in the Sacrament of Baptism. Saint Apollonia endured the breaking of her teeth with joy as she knew she was awaiting her crown after her martyrdom. Saint Edith Stein lived during the holocaust and as she was going to Auschwitz, she decided to march barefoot. By the time she got to Auschwitz, her feet were bleeding and injured. Before she died, her final words were, “The deeper the darkness, the closer we are to the light.”
Saint Maria Goretti was a young saint. She is known for the abdomen because when she refused some of the advances that were being made upon her, they stabbed her 14 times in her stomach. Her final words were, “I forgive Allesandro. May God forgive him.”
Saint John the Baptist could be known for his head, because he was beheaded after saying, “Christ must increase and I must decrease.” I think of doubting Thomas and his body part as the finger because Christ would say, “Place your finger in my wounds and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” And Thomas would say, “My Lord and my God!”
Saint Agatha of Sicily, Patron Saint of breast cancer because they were severed right before her martyrdom. Saint Gerard is the Patron Saint of mothers and infertility. Saint Roch is associated with plagues and sores because he had this on his own leg and was disabled. Saint Erasmus had abdominal pain because when he was martyred, he was disemboweled. Saint Alphonsus Liguori suffered his whole life with arthritis and so became the patron saint of arthritis. Saint Peregrine survived a cancerous leg tumor after a miraculous healing of prayer, and is now the Patron Saint of cancer.
Saint Bernadette of Lourdes suffered from asthma and tuberculosis during her life and she was already considered weak by everybody. It was to her that Mary would appear and reveal herself as the Immaculate Conception. I think of Mary Magdalene; she dried the feet of Jesus with her hair. She used her hair as her gift. Saint Ovidius is the Patron Saint of healing hearing, so I think of him as ears. Saint Rita received the crown of thorns, and she had the piercing of Christ in her forehead.
Finally, Saint Francis Xavier. I was in Rome right after I was ordained. I went there for my ordination trip and I wanted to say a mass at the tomb of Saint Ignatius but they were doing construction so I couldn’t say the mass there. So, they said we have Saint Francis Xavier’s arm and you could say mass over there. I said, no I wanted Saint Ignatius’ whole body. I didn’t know why the arm was so special until I got back and researched it. They kept Saint Francis’ arm because when he went to Asia, he baptized over 100,000 people and brought them into the faith.
These Saints were known, either because of how their body helped them live their life or from what they suffered from or from how they were martyred or from miracles that were attributed to them. I want you think about your body and physically that whatever it is, wherever your weakness is, Saint Paul says it’s the weaknesses that we most protect. So many of the people in this parish who suffer, we pray for them, but also, we care for them. So many of you give people rides here to mass, you pick them up and you go to see them.
But also, it’s important for us to know that we are part of the body of this spiritual Body of Christ here at Saint Matthias. For this parish to be what it needs to be, every single one of us needs to know how we are part of the body. Every one of you, we need you to contribute in some way to this church. Your gifts and talents might be different than somebody else’s, maybe you don’t think yours are anything special, but I just want you to think of one way that you can serve here at Saint Matthias. What’s one way that you can use something in your life to give to this church and to be a member of this body?
Because you are the Body of Christ, and your membership may be different, your skills may be different, the part of your body may be different but without all of us, the body is not complete.