The English poet John Donne has a very famous book of meditations known as Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. It consists of countless meditations that he penned while suffering from cancer. Although, the book may not be familiar to you, there is a meditation, known simply as meditation XVII that may be very familiar. It is the meditation wherein a very famous and beautiful paragraph has come to be known simply as “no man is an island.” Though the entire paragraph is incredibly moving, it is the first sentence which has become very popular and of which I would like to quote right now.

It says: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” It was a recognition, on Donne’s part, that, on some level, we are all connected and in communion with each other. On some level the person sitting right next to you is your sister or brother. On some level, we are part of a great human family. He explains this earlier in his meditation when he says: “The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author.”

In Christ, then, we are all part of one body.

That is the mystery and the beautiful message that St. Paul, in our second reading today, conveys to all of us. That we are part of a larger Body, a Mystical Body, that is not limited by city, state, world, universe, time and even death itself, because Christ has restored what was divided, Christ has reconciled what was once separate.

For, as St. Paul beautifully puts it:

“God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended.” And, as he further says: “God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.”

So, that when we look upon the world, upon each other, when we see someone in need, we don’t see a person without purpose, without importance, but as one who needs to be supported, one who needs to have a voice while theirs is still developing, one who is not weak, but needs the strength of the body before them.

That is why people marched for life this past Friday to be that voice for the unborn, to be a witness of what it means to be pro-life. That is why, too, when some of those same pilgrims, students and chaperones, from Omaha to Green Bay, 500 in all, got stranded on the PA Turnpike, they helped others who were also in need, giving them food, drink and place to sleep.

And, what’s more, is that those same students went out, gathered ice and snow and created an altar. The priests, who were with them, put on their vestments, they set up a sound system, and on the side of the PA Turnpike, in a blizzard, over 500 people went to Mass.

So that in a very real way we understand those words of St. Paul that we: “are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.”

We build up that Body of Christ, when we look beyond ourselves, that, indeed, we are not an island entire of itself but a larger part of the main, part of the greater and beautiful Mystical Body of Christ, part of the true communion that we experience and will receive in the Most Holy Eucharist.

For, truly, to see Christ in our neighbor is to know who we see in that Eucharist, and, by doing so, the Body, the Mystical Body becomes a tangible reality, in the world, in our neighbor and in our lives so that we then see the part that we make up, who and what we are in that Body, and truly live it, the way those 500 pilgrims did, the way all of us are called to live, indeed, as one Body in Christ.