"Grow Up": St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, Sermon by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

• There are five Sundays during this time of the year that the epistle of the Sunday is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: 16, 17, 19, 20, 21.
• Even if we add up all of the verses from Ephesians that we read in those five Sundays, we only get 36 verses, which is only 23% of the entire epistle to the Ephesians. This shows us that we are only getting a small part of the entire epistle each Sunday.
• I hope that you take the time periodically to read the whole of these epistles that you only read a little bit of on Sundays. Really, you should read the whole of the New Testament at least once a year.
• Since we only see a little bit of an epistle on Sundays, I thought I would take some time today to talk about the whole epistle to the Ephesians: what it is about. I thought this would be particularly opportune on this Sunday because St. Paul touches closely on the main theme of his epistle today.

The Mystical Body of Christ

• The main topic of the epistle is the Mystical Body of Christ. Our Lord has a physical body that belongs to His human nature, just like we all have a physical body.
• But He has, in addition to this, a mystical Body. We can think of it as a spiritual organism. Unlike a physical body, this mystical body does not belong to one person alone but rather is composed of many persons.
• Christ is the Head of the Mystical Body, Our Lady is referred to as the neck, and we are referred to as the members of the Body, like the arms, feet, fingers and toes.
• Later in chapter 4, of which we have the beginning today, we hear St. Paul saying: “We are to practice the truth in love, and so grow up in all things in him who is the head, Christ.”
• The purpose of our life is to grow spiritually and we do this by our life in Christ. As faithful Catholics, we are living our lives in the body of Christ; we live in Christ and by doing so, we grow up spiritually.

St. Paul Writing to the Ephesians

• In all of his missionary journeys, St. Paul had spent a longer time in Ephesus than in any other place. When we think of St. Paul, we think of him as always on the move, traveling from place to place in Asia Minor and Greece in order to spread the Gospel.
• And so we might be surprised to hear that he spent three years in Ephesus, from approximately 53-56 AD.
• Perhaps the fact that St. Paul spent so long a time in Ephesus is the reason why he talks to the Ephesians about such a deep topic as the Mystical Body. It was some years since he was in Ephesus and he is now a prisoner in Rome. He is going to write a letter to them to explain what that Mystical Body is and how it works.