foundation

“Christ, the one foundation of the Church” (cf 1 Cor 3:11)

In 50 A.D., the apostle Paul arrived at Corinth, the great city in Greece known for its strategic commercial port and its active cultural circles influenced by many different currents of thought. The apostle spent 18 months there proclaiming the Gospel, and he founded a flourishing Christian community. Others came after him and continued the work of evangelization, but these new Christians tended to identify with the person who had brought Christ’s message to them, rather than with Christ himself. Factions arose: “I belong to Paul,” some would say. Others, referring to their own favorite, would state, “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas” (cf 1 Cor 1:12).

Faced with the divisions that rocked the community, Paul vigorously intervened. He compared the Church to a building or a temple and insisted that, although the builders of the Church can be many, only one is the foundation, the living stone: Jesus Christ.

This month, especially during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Christian churches and communities come together to remember that Christ is their sole foundation, and that it is only by following him and living according to his Gospel that they will reach full and visible unity among them.

“Christ, the one foundation of the Church.”

To base our lives on Christ means to be one with him — to reason as he does, to want only what he wants, and to live as he lived.

But how can we become grounded, rooted in him? How can we be fused into one with him? By putting the Gospel into practice.

Jesus is the Word, that is, the Word of God who became flesh. If he is the Word who assumed our human condition, we will be true Christians by being men and women who imbue our entire lives with the Word of God.

If we live according to his words, or better yet, if his words live in us and make us “living words,” then we are one with him, as if bonded to him. I, or we, will no longer exist, but the Word will live in all of us. We believe that by living this way we will contribute to bringing about unity among all Christians.

As the body breathes in order to stay alive, so the soul finds its source of life in living the Word of God.

One of the first fruits is that Jesus comes to live in us and among us. This calls for a change in the way we see things: it injects the same sentiments into the hearts of everyone (whether they be European, Asian, Australian, American, or African) that Christ had in the face of any circumstance, individual people, or society at large …

The word lived out sets us free from human conditioning. It is a source of joy, simplicity, fullness of life and light. It helps us to follow Christ and little by little to become like him.

“Christ, the one foundation of the Church.”

But there is one word that summarizes all the others, and it is “love”: to love God and neighbor. In these two commandments Jesus sums up “the whole law and the prophets” (Mt 22:40).

Since the words of Scripture, even though expressed in human terms and in different ways, are the words of God, and since God is love, all his words are love.

What should be our aim this month? How can we draw closer to Christ, “the one foundation of the Church”? By loving as he taught us.

Saint Augustine once said, “Love and do as you will.” In effect he was summarizing the law of love of the Gospel because by loving we cannot go wrong. Love will lead us to fully carry out the will of God.

- Chiara Lubich