Reply #158: The Christian tenet of the Mystical Body of Christ, of which Christ is the head,

[Joe Chi Minh]

also in the Scriptures, metaphorically, the True Vine, of which we are the branches, corresponds pretty precisely to this.

As human beings, we all have a competitive instinct in one direction or another, but it has always struck me as curious that Christians should covet an elevated status in Heaven, since we will all be members, cells, of the Mystical Body of Christ, with our own created, but sublimated souls, vivified by his own Holy spirit. Kind of spiritual clones of himself, "other Christs", as Scripture puts it, though obviously uniquely individual, at the same time. To me, it seems that the ultimate honour would be to be at the bottom of the pile helping to support the rest of mankind, anonymously to all except God. In fact, I believe that is pretty much what is happening here below, now, in this life. The Anawin, the poor, because they chose, however preternaturally, unworldly priorities, are the real giants. Similarly, Saint Joseph is seldom referred to in either the scriptures or the liturgy, yet the Church long ago designated him as Patron of the Universal Church.

This certainly compounds the iniquity of oppression of the poor, as intuited by our mammalian compassion, and which was designated by the Church, however unwittingly in conscious terms, as a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance. The poor are slandered as worthless, when they are the definitive Children of Light and their detractors, the devil's own spawn. Our salvation lies in identifying with less worldly, more endemically spiritual people and their welfare.

After all, God would not have created his less worldly children, in order for them to be exploited and cruelly treated by the more worldly, would He? It always tickles me when I read in the Gospels about the Pharisees completely "losing the heed", when, in response to a controversy among themselves, the people point out to them some elementary truth... "What? Would you presume to teach us!" It happened a couple of times at least: once with a group of the people, when the Pharisees described them as a "rabble" the "devil's spawn!" The very term Jesus used to describe them, adding that "they would die in their sins." Another time, when the patience of the young man blind from birth was cured by Jesus, and he asked them, "Why? do you want to become his followers, too?" Great outbursts of fury and outrage, much rending of garments, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Interestingly, in view of your reference to "all living things", Christian scripture also describes the whole of creation as being in travail together with mankind, until the Parousia. And this corresponds with a more recent postulation by a Jesuit palaeontologist called Teilhard de Chardin, of a Cosmic Christ.