The Head, the Body and the Uniter

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

October 17, 2020: Celebrating St. Ignatius of Antioch 

Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 12: 8-12

We have a head, none less than the Son of God; We are a body nothing less than the very body of Christ - what a reminder from Paul! Let us not be lost in petty problems and needless anxieties - of course someone will respond saying, 'only when you go through it, you will know which is petty and which is needless!' But in Paul's parlance and in Christ's thinking every problem is petty and every anxiety is needless, because we have an existence, a body, a being so deeply significant! St. Ignatius whom we celebrate today, and every other martyr we have, stand witness to such an experience! 

The Head: Let us be worthy of the Head we possess. As the head directs so the body goes, at least such is the understanding in the mechanical world. But for us as people who have Christ as our head, we have the freedom with which we can decide to act out of our personal choice - let those choices be worthy of our Head. 

The Body: Let us be one body in Christ.The Church being a body of Christ is not in the hands of the Head... it is in the way the Church and its every member, identify themselves to the One body, instead of claiming differences of origin, status and everyday operations! 

The Uniter: The Head-body rapport is not automatic, it is an act of the Spirit, the Uniter, the one who unites them both. It is the Spirit who relates us to the Lord and it is the Spirit who sustains us in that relationship. 

St. Ignatius of Antioch whom we remember today understood this relationship perfectly. He belongs to the earliest of the Christian communities, right during the Apostolic times, and is said to have been a student of St. John the Apostle. He was the Bishop of Antioch and is a representative icon of the first Christians who were persecuted and killed. They had no other concern, no other word, no other justification, than what the Spirit held out for them. They were ready to lay their lives to preserve this Head-body link intact! How fervent are we about our relationship with our head: Christ our Lord?