Saturday, May 17, 2008

1 Cor 14, 26-33 Do everything for building up

(1 Cor 14, 26-33) Do everything for building up
[26] So what is to be done, brothers? When you assemble, one has a psalm, another an instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Everything should be done for building up. [27] If anyone speaks in a tongue, let it be two or at most three, and each in turn, and one should interpret. [28] But if there is no interpreter, the person should keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God. [29] Two or three prophets should speak, and the others discern. [30] But if a revelation is given to another person sitting there, the first one should be silent. [31] For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. [32] Indeed, the spirits of prophets are under the prophets' control, [33] since he is not the God of disorder but of peace. As in all the churches of the holy ones,
(CCC 795) Christ and his Church thus together make up the "whole Christ" (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity: Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man.... The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does "head and members" mean? Christ and the Church (St. Augustine, In Jo. Ev, 21, 8: PL 35, 1568). Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself (Pope St. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, praef., 14: PL 75, 525A). Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III, 48, 2). A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter" (Acts of the Trial of Joan of Arc).

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