Third Sunday after Pascha – Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Tone 2; The Holy Priest-Martyr Basil, Bishop of Amasia (c. 322)
Read
Acts 6:1-7; Mark 15:43-16:8
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Try as you might, you will not be able to accomplish all the things you want to do in a lifetime, let alone a single day! Last Sunday we reflected on the reality that we need to join the Apostles in their work, that Christianity is not a “spectator sport.” This Sunday we see that there is no room for spectators and that Christianity is in fact also “team sport.”
Controversy was growing in the Church in Jerusalem because the Greek widows were being neglected. Whether it was a fight generated by difficulty in communication between the Hebrew and Greek people, or it resulted from down-right prejudice we don’t know. What we do know is that the Twelve were concerned for these poor widows and realized they could not tend to them and continue preaching and ministering the Word as they were called and commissioned to do. The solution to this dilemma was twofold: to call for reinforcements and to maintain priorities. Serving the widows was a good work. Preaching the word of God was a good work, and something that Christ Himself sent the Twelve to accomplish. In order to continue with their ministry, the Twelve realized they would need help, and so the first deacons (servants in Greek) were ordained through to laying-on of hands to minister to the widows and allow the Twelve to continue with their appointed task.
Cooperation in this regard is a win-win. Often the danger we face is to succumb to clericalism, deciding either that everything is the priest’s job, or everything is the laity’s job. We must remember that we are Christ’s Body, each organ with a different function working together but differently which serves the whole.
Pope St. John Paul II commented on this in one of his ad limina visits. The clericalization of the laity and laicization of the clergy occurs when “it is not service but power that shapes all forms of government in the Church, be it in the clergy or the laity, [when] opposing interests start to make themselves felt…what the Church needs is a deeper and more creative sense of complementarity between the vocation of the priest and that of the laity.”
Having the humility to realize we cannot and should not try to do everything ourselves and remaining in humble service to the specific roles what we have been asked by the Lord to fulfil (whether bishops, priests, deacons or the lay faithful) will richly serve Him in His Church!