As I’ve mentioned before, I help coach for a Cross-Country running team in the Fall. The name of the club is Body-In-Training, and we’re comprised of runners from age 5 up to 18 years of age. We’ve been pretty successful over the years, and we’ve produced numerous runners who have excelled at the state and national level.
But what’s truly unique about our team is that we are a Christian-based team, founded on Christian morals, most notably Romans 12:4-5 where St. Paul writes, “For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.” Scripture is a key element of training, where we have a verse every week and a corresponding theme that we coaches build into the training throughout the week, not only coaching on running, but on virtues as well.
You see, Body-In-Training is also a Track Club in the Spring, and so even though runners compete as individuals in various track and field events, and on the cross-country course, together, they score and contribute as an overall team. And in a sport like Cross-Country, where only the top 5 runners score for the team, if you are a strong overall team, the non-scoring runners can still affect the outcome by placing ahead of another team’s scoring runners.
Everybody counts and makes an impact. Everyone plays a role, even if it is through simple encouragement. A team of many parts – many different kinds of runners, each with unique gifts and talents, ethnic and social and demographic backgrounds – all with unique ways to contribute, working together to form one team. One body.
Many parts, One Body! That’s our team cheer we huddle together and scream before each race.
This is the same message Paul writes to the Corinthians in today’s second reading, “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” Many parts, one body through Christ.
Today, on Pentecost, as it was almost 2000 years ago, we are coming together from many different backgrounds to form one body through Christ and His Holy Spirit. And this is one of the things I reflected on the most as I read the readings today, one of the things I never really paid attention to before. At the time, Judaism as a whole was fragmented. It’s even stated in the reading from Acts today how the Jews staying in Jerusalem at the time were from many different regions and backgrounds:
“We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs”
But after the resurrection and most definitely the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, it was the start of something new. As it says in the Psalm today, God sent down His Spirit, and renewed the face of the earth.
This was the start of something new. There was a renewal. The new covenant was sealed and it was a game changer. In the Gospel, Jesus breathes on the disciples and effectively breathes new life into them, and into us. We are filled with His Spirit.
No longer are we Parthians, Medes, Egyptians, Elamites. No longer are we English, Italian, Hispanic, Nigerian, Kenyan. No longer are we from the Philippines, or from the United States, or from India, or Australia. Starting at Pentecost and up through today, we are simply Christian.
We are One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Sure, we have diversity, we are all unique, and that should be celebrated. But just as when my family and I were at the World Meeting of Families Papal Mass in Philadelphia 2 years ago, when we heard readings and prayers in Spanish, Vietnamese, Latin, Italian, and English – with the diversity of all the people attending that Mass – we were all one. We were all Catholic, hearing the same readings and celebrating the same Mass and receiving the same Eucharist that 1.2 Billion other Catholics were around the world that Sunday.
We were truly many parts, One Body in Christ.
And this is the one thing that I wish all people from around the world could experience and see and feel – the joy and love and power of the Holy Spirit when people come together in Christ, whether its 1 million Catholics on Ben Franklin Parkway, or 125+ adults and kids of various Christian denominations for a running team, where we can evangelize by our example, and give glory to God through running.
To witness the Holy Spirit at work in both these seemingly different, but at the same time strikingly similar realms is truly amazing and inspiring. It is and only can be, the work of the Holy Spirit, though which we truly are many parts, One Body!
ACTS 2:1-11; PS 104; 1 COR 12:3B-7, 12-13; JN 20:19-23
The Lesser Road
For more thoughts and reflections on my personal journey through life, check out my personal website, http://www.thelesserroad.com/
