Vigils Reading

THE BODY OF CHRIST

From the writing of St John Henry Newman

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That all Christians are, in some sense or other, one, in our Lord’s eyes is

plain, from various parts of the New Testament. In his mediatorial prayer for

them to the Almighty Father, before His Passion, He expressed His purpose that

they should be one. St Paul, in like manner, writing to the Corinthians, says, “As

the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of that one body,

being many, are one body, so also is Christ… Now you are the Body of Christ,

and members in particular.” To the Ephesians, he says, “There is one Body, and

one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling: one Lord, one faith,

one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

And, further, it is to this one Body, regarded as one, that the special

privileges of the Gospel are given. It is not that this person receives the blessing,

and that one, but one and all, the whole body, as one being, one new spiritual

reality, with one accord, seeks and gains it. The Holy Church throughout the

world, “the Bride, the Lamb’s wife,” is one, not many, and the elect souls are all

elected in her, not in isolation. For instance: “He is our peace who has made

both (Jews and Gentiles) one,… to make in himself one new humanity.” In the

same epistle, it is said, that all nations are “fellow-heirs, and of the same body

and fellow-partakers of His promise in Christ;” and that we must “one and all

come,” or converge, “in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of

God, unto a perfect creation, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of

Christ;” that as “the husband is the head of the wife,” so “Christ is the Head of

the Church,” having “loved her and given Himself for her, that He might

sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word.”

These are a few out of many passages which connect Gospel privileges

with the circumstance or condition of unity in those who receive them; the

image of Christ and token of their acceptance being stamped upon them then, at

that moment, when they are considered as one; so that henceforth the whole

multitude, no longer viewed as mere individuals, become portions or members

of the indivisible Body of Christ Mystical, so knit together in Him by Divine

Grace, that all have what He has, and each has what all have.

The same great truth is taught us in such texts as speak of all Christians

forming one spiritual building, of which the Jewish Temple was the type. They

are temples one by one, simply as being portions of that one Temple which is the

Church. “You are built up,” says St Peter, “a spiritual house, a holy priesthood,

to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” Hence the word

“edification”, which properly means this building up of all Christians in one, has

come to stand for individual improvement; for it is by being incorporated into

the one Body, that we have the promise of life; by becoming members of Christ,

we have the gift of His Spirit.