This coming Sunday the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.  As we noted at the beginning, a large part of the Matthean narrative is devoted to questions: (a) who is Jesus, (b) what does it mean to be his disciples in the light of his identity, and (c) what choices will you make because of his call.  Those are questions that could be asked of the community as well as the individual.  Fr. Ronald Rolheiser  makes that point well in his reflection “The Width of Our Ecclesial Embrace”

Nikos Kazantsakis once said “the bosom of God is not a ghetto, but our hearts often are.” So too, sadly, are our ecclesiologies.

In church circles today, both liberal and conservative, our ecclesiologies are often anything but inclusive and Catholic (“Catholic” meaning wide and universal). We are pretty selective as to whom we consent to worship with and to whom we will accord the grace and wisdom of God. We tend to pick our fellow-worshippers along ideological lines rather than along the lines that Jesus suggests and we are getting ever more fastidious. More and more within our churches the sincere are divided from the sincere and the old tensions that used to exist between denominations now also exist within each denomination.

Given all of this, it can be helpful to reground ourselves in a critical truth that Jesus revealed.