THE CALL IS PERSONAL, BUT WE ARE CALLED TO A COMMUNITY

And let us now take a step further. This word “call” is followed by the ecclesial dimension. We have now spoken of the vocation as a very personal call: God calls me, knows me, waits for my personal response. However at the same time God’s call is a call to a community, it is an ecclesial call. God calls us to a community. It is true that in this passage on which we are meditating the word “ekklesia”, “Church”, is not found but the reality is all the more evident. St Paul speaks of a Spirit and a body. The Spirit creates the body and unites us as it were in one body. And then he speaks of unity, he speaks of the chain of being, of the bond of peace. And with these words he refers to the word “prisoner” at the beginning: it is always the same word, “I am in chains”, “chains will bind you”, but behind them is the great, invisible, liberating chain of love.

We are in this bond of peace which is the Church, it is the great bond that unites us to Christ. Perhaps we must also meditate personally on this point: we are called personally, but we are called to a body. And this is not something abstract but is very real.

...accepting, supporting, enlivening the whole parish, the people, those who are likable and those who are not, becoming integrated into this body. Body: the Church is a body so she has structures, she really has a law and this time it is not so simple to integrate. Of course we want the personal relationship with God, but we often do not like the body. Yet in this very way we are in communion with Christ: by accepting this corporeity of his Church, of the Spirit who is incarnate in the body.

--Benedict XVI, Address to Seminarians of Rome, 2011