Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The Body of Christ-- A Network System

From the wonderful book The Gift of Faith by Tadeusz Dajczer comes the following words of wisdom.
Growth in grace through a greater faithfulness to God intensifies one's specific influence on others like invisible radiation......As Romano Guardini has said:
The prayers of others belong also to you just as their actions, spiritual growth, and purity of heart do.  Have you ever reflected on the community of the suffering, on the fact that the graces flowing from somebody's suffering are transferred to others?  If, united with the suffering of Christ you offer your painful experiences to God for others, then your experiences become a living, beneficial, redemptive, power for them.  Beyond all obstacles and distances, you bring help where nothing else can be of help. ("II senso della Chiesa in La realta della Chiesa [Breseia, Italy: Morcelliana, 1999], p.38.)
     No one is a solitary island.  As the Mystical Body of Christ, we constitute a unique network system, similar to a system of connected vessels.  Your good as well as your evil has a social dimension, because it creates a specific supernatural pressure of good or evil on others.
What a beautiful description of the interconnectedness of prayer, good works, and suffering upon the Body of Christ.  Yes, it does matter what each individual chooses to do.  Good begets good.  Evil begets evil.

Every moment matters for the good of the whole, all of us.  Every decision is significant.

May we keep this truth ever before us, that we might live always for the greater glory of God.

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