Each week we recite in the Nicene Creed that we believe in “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” It sounds pretty clear: there is one Church, gathered by the Holy Spirit and made holy by the body of Christ. She is catholic on account of her totality and being endowed with the fullness of faith. And she is apostolic because she is taught, ministered to, and shepherded by the Apostles and their ordained successors, the bishops. But as we all know, there are Christians who live a moral life, read the Bible, and have a prayerful relationship with Jesus, but they are not members of the Catholic Church. How should we understand our relationship to them?

Our readings today give us a roadmap to answering that question. The Book of Numbers says that God commanded Moses to select seventy elders to be prophets who would assist him in proclaiming God’s message. Moses picked seventy and then the Spirit fell on them in the tent, the place where God was to be worshipped. God’s command to select seventy, however, involved a bit of mystery. How did Moses fairly select seventy elders from the twelve tribes of Israel? Mathematically, ten tribes would have gotten six elders, and two tribes just five. Not fair?

The Jewish rabbinical tradition wrestled with this mathematical dilemma. Eldad and Medad, the text tells us, experienced the Holy Spirit’s inspiration outside the tent, in the camp. Perhaps they came from tribes which were underrepresented among Moses’s seventy. Counting them as prophets meant that an exact multiple of twelve was possible: six elders per tribe. It turns out, God planned seventy-two prophets after all. Yet Joshua’s first reaction was to reject them. “Stop them,” he says. Moses, however, replied in wisdom: “Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets!” Moses, it seems, did not feel threatened by those prophesying without his authority.

The seventy-two prophets recounted in the Book of Numbers correspond to the seventy-two that the Gospels later report were sent out for ministry by Jesus. Yet the same problem of authority arises. Mark’s Gospel tells us that someone is casting out demons in Jesus’s name. Just like with Joshua, the Apostle John tries to stop him. John says that this man “does not follow us.” What John is saying is not unimportant! Imagine claiming to be a Jesus follower at the time of Jesus — who happens to be close by — but not following Jesus or his Apostles? Certainly, it would be a defective way to set up a ministry! Yet Jesus replies like Moses: “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me.”

Our first takeaway should be a warning against jealousy. Are there ways one’s ministry for the kingdom might be outshined by someone else laboring in the same vineyard? How should we react when one ministry seems to have more success than another? Or what if a family in the parish sends a son to the priesthood or a daughter to religious life, but despite your prayers, yours does not? Is your first reaction to be jealous, or to rejoice? All of us are called to be prophets and missionaries of the Gospel, and so humility requires us to give thanks when others bear fruit.

That said, I do not think Joshua and John were jealous. Their apprehension was probably good-willed, correctly identifying the problem but offering the wrong solution. They were right that without apostolic leadership the people would scatter. What if everyone chose not to follow the Apostles or their ordained successors — those who handed down the liturgy, the sacraments, and the scriptures to us? We would not have a Church, nor even a Bible. We would not know Jesus. Jesus says to the seventy-two: “He who rejects you rejects me” (Lk. 10:16). The apostolic foundation is necessary. It comes with the authority of Christ, who sends the Apostles as he tells them that “as the Father sent me, so I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21).

That said, history tells us that reasons for division are many and messy. And the Holy Spirit sometimes acts outside the tent, “in the camp.” The Bible tells us that the Spirit blows where he wills (cf. Jn. 3:8). He is active in unexpected ways, taking extraordinary measures when cracks need to be filled in the work of the Church. Sometimes, God’s plan is simply beyond our own limited understanding. One can see this dynamic especially in the Church, which we say “subsists” visibly in the Catholic Church. One of the consequences of the incarnation is that the Church is both a bodily and spiritual reality: an incarnate, Spirit-filled, body of Christ. The sacraments, likewise, confer spiritual realities through material signs that we can touch and feel. Yet the Church’s bodily configuration does not limit the Holy Spirit’s action outside visible, material boundaries. This is a great paradox. St. Augustine puts it succinctly: “[T]here may be something Catholic outside the Catholic Church.” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Book VII, Ch. 39).

John’s Gospel tells us that Christ intended his Church to be so united that people could look at the Church and believe — precisely because of her unity — that he was sent of the Father (cf. Jn. 17:21). Yet the way to bring about that unity is not necessarily to halt the Spirit’s activity outside the tent. When we recognize the Holy Spirit’s activity elsewhere, we place our hope in the love of Christ that is capable of forging the unity he wills. In fact, our recognition of the action of the Holy Spirit in others is perhaps the best way to help others see the same in us. It shows them that we are of the same Spirit. Jesus says that “anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.” Works of charity demonstrate that Christ’s body, while visible, spiritually extends beyond what we can see.

The Second Vatican Council’s decree Unitatis redintegratio teaches that “anything wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can be a help to our own edification.” (UR, 4). We must always be willing to learn from our Christian brothers and sisters when their ministry and works are inspired by the Holy Spirit. Their methods and insights in Bible study, youth ministry, and preaching come to mind as particularly helpful when considering ways to communicate the Gospel to the world today. As Catholics, we have no need to be insecure about the good works of others. We can rather encourage each other in them.

The fourth-century Church Father St. Basil the Great explained some of today’s scriptural passages with the insight that the Holy Spirit is the place of sanctification, the place where Christians are made holy. “It is an extraordinary statement,” Basil says, “that the Spirit is frequently spoken of as the place of them that are being sanctified.” Basil was a Catholic bishop and no stranger to the institutional Church. Yet he teaches that when other Christians act under God’s inspiration, “the Spirit, far from being degraded, is rather glorified.” (On the Holy Spirit, Ch. 26).

Let us therefore put aside all pretense and jealousy and open our hearts to the action of the Lord “in the camp.” Let us rejoice when we find others both inside and outside our communion who minister in the same name of Christ. In this Eucharist today, let us glorify the Holy Spirit who comes into our midst and conforms us to Christ’s body, guiding us into perfect unity.

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