know your role, do your part

Homily
3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
Holy Spirit Parish
24 January 2010
Year for Priests

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Bill Self is the best coach in college basketball. Well, I'm biased. I'm a big Jayhawk fan. But even if you don't like the Jayhawks, most people know who Bill Self is. And most people know of the success he has had. Even devoted Wildcat and Tiger fans, without loving their own teams any less, know that Bill Self is a formidable foe. He recruits great players. And he gets them to play. Not without a lot of second-guessing, mind you. Bill Self has a very difficult job. He has 9,10, 11, 12 players who deserve to be on the court. He has to decide how to keep everyone happy, everyone involved, and how to get the players to work together in a way that meets the insatiable expectations of KU fans. Bill Self gets criticized all the time. Some players get unhappy with their playing time. Fans who know almost nothing scream at the tv when things aren't going the Jayhawks' way. I'm one of those fans who screams bloody murder whenever Bill Self plays zone. Or if he does not substitute the way I would.

Those of you who are fans of the Wildcats and Tigers probably do the same thing. You disagree with game plans and substitutions, wondering why Mike Anderson and Frank Martin do this or do that. What a rivalry is building this year. All three teams are really good. The games ahead should be a blast, including the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City. I posted some anti-KState comments on my facebook page this week, just to stoke the rivalry, and I found out very quickly that the rivalry did not need to be stoked. K-Staters are on fire, ready to fight, ready to go. Game on.

Well, all of us belong to a team infinitely more complicated than the basketball teams we cheer for. We belong to the Church, quarterbacked by the Holy Spirit. We belong to the Church which is the living, breathing presence of Christ in the world. St. Paul reflects on how we are all an indispensable part of the Church. All of us members of one body, none of us being able to say to anyone else that you are less important or you are non-essential. The Church just completes today a week of prayer for Christian unity. Christian unity is unique in that it is a gift that Christ gives to His Church. Christian unity is not a human accomplishment, an ability for us to agree on everything. That is impossible. We are too diverse as a people to agree on everything. No, Christian unity is a gift that has to be recognized and accepted and preserved. It is a gift from Christ our head, who by His Spirit makes us all his children, all members of his body, and by that same Spirit empowers each one of us to share in his mission to reconcile everything to the Father.

Bill Self, in coaching his team, is always looking for team chemistry, for a way that everyone will be able to value his role and be able to execute that specific role in a way that benefits all. So too, by virtue of our confirmation, where we have received the fullness of God's Spirit, the Spirit coaches us into contributing to the mission of the Church in a way that is uniquely ours, and in a way that fosters the communion to which we belong. The communion of the Church is a unity born not so much of our choosing to belong, but of our being chosen to belong and to contribute our gifts to a unity that cannot be broken.

We see in the tens of thousands of our fellow Catholics who chose this week to stand up for life in Topeka and Washington on the 37th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and we see in the thousands who have rushed to the aid of our brothers and sisters in Haiti, that there will be no end to the ways to which Jesus sends us to bring glad tidings to the poor, and to proclaim liberty to captives. It is our greatest privilege as members of Christ's Church to be called to serve, and to spend our lives in fostering a communion of life and love.

May each one of us this weekend recommit ourselves to the promises of our Confirmation, whereby in accepting the fullness of God's Spirit we are sent into the world ready to defend and to promote our faith, and by that same Spirit to discern and to fulfill a special vocation that belongs to us and to no one else in the Church. Each one of us is called by name to a vocation which will foster the unity of our Church, a vocation which allows us to make a perfect gift of ourselves in the service of others. May we be better at discerning these vocations, and fulfilling our role more precisely within our great communion. May we never be a Church where 20% of the people do 80% of the work, while 80% do the minimum. No, we are Christ's body, and each of us individually members of it, sent by God for some work that he has given to us, and to no one else! +m