Sacred Flesh

Twenty-Fourth Sunday of the Year. Fr Thomas Mannion reminds us of the bodily reality of Christ and of our own salvation.

In today’s second reading, St James is clear: what we do (a bodily action) communicates to others who we are and what we believe. This is also true of Jesus. Jesus says in the Gospel of John: ‘If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father’. This is what we see in Jesus’ works: Jesus is the God who saves.

How?

Our first reading has been read from the earliest days of the Church in the light of Jesus Christ and it is easy to see why. An innocent man attacked in his body who offers does not respond with violence, a man who trusts he will be vindicated by the Lord. The bodily suffering of Jesus was not only foretold in the writings of prophets from centuries before but also by Jesus himself as we see in today’s Gospel: ‘… the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again…’ This is the work of the Lord, how he saves.

Reading our psalm as a Christian people, making the psalmists words our own, we proclaim our faith based on the works of Jesus Christ our liberator and redeemer. The Lord liberates every part of us, even our bodies which are united with his. Knowing there is a love stronger than death for each of us, we can have the courage to love others so that people can see our faith by our works and in so doing we become Christified.

It matters profoundly that Jesus, who is God, had a body. The body is the place in which we do holy works of love or we sin and so God chooses to defeat sin by his love in this place.

The body matters because God is not an esoteric concept but one whom we have touched; as we read in 1 John: ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us — that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you.’ John is laying it on thick because this is no myth. People saw Jesus, saw what he did, what he endured for our sake in his flesh and then spread the good news. Jesus ‘… whom you crucified…’, as Peter says in Acts, the one who bled and died rose from the dead.

We see who Jesus is by what he chose to do for us, his works in other words, in his body. Look to the work, the action of Jesus, look to his body, the place the nails pierced and then you will see he loved us before we ever loved him and that is what matters most. His love for us. God chose to communicate with us in a way most profound and intimate for human beings, through flesh. God knows we express love most deeply through our bodies. Flesh is in a sense the sacred language. This love will be manifest not only in his body but in our bodies when we are raised from the dead by virtue of our union with him, in every victory we have over sin. A union we can enjoy even now, as St. Paul says: ‘… By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?’. How can we not have confidence in the resurrection of our bodies if we are united to him here and now? How can we not have confidence when he won victory in the flesh?

That is the good news!

Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9 | James 2:14-18 | Mark 8:27-35

Image: detail from a stained glass window by A. W. N. Pugin in Bolton Abbey, photographed by Fr Lawrence Lew OP