The Mystery of the Church as a Sacrament

To deepen our understanding of the Church is one crucial way to deepen our love for the Church. The servant of God Pope Paul VI so often made the point that one must love the Church as she is, not some spiritualized version of a Church of the past, not some idea of what one hopes the Church might one day become, but the church as she is today, visible and invisible, holy and in need of becoming holy. That same spirit animated the fathers of the Second Vatican Council as they prayed and worked to produce the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

The eight chapters that make up this central text of the council are very carefully constructed. There is an inner coherence to them, such that one can easily misinterpret one chapter if it is taken out of context or looked at independently of the whole. That is why it is important for our reflection that we go week by week, chapter after chapter, in the order of the text itself. For those of you who might want to do some deep studying of the text with a commentary, I would still recommend the first volume of Vorgrimler's Commentary on the Documents of Vatican Two, first published in 1966 with an English translation in 1967. The commentators include Vorgrimler, Philips, Rahner, Semmelroth, Wolf and Ratzinger.

The first chapter is entitled "The Mystery of the Church." So much is established by the title alone that it bears some reflection. "Mysterion" in Greek and "sacramentum" in Latin are inter-related terms. In both the Church of the East and the church of the West, the Church is experienced as a mystery, a mystery because, within her, calling her into being is the life of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As such this mysterious reality is a sacrament. It is a holy reality through which the mystery of God's life and love is lived and communicated. What is communicated is "Christ, the light of humanity." It is the task of the Church to be the sacrament that communicates him to the world. The text says the Church is "a sign and instrument of communion with God and of unity among all men."

Immediately we can grasp, even if not fully, that the Church is in the world but is not a product of this world in the way a nation or a state or any particular group like a labor union or a university or a business might be. It is not the product of human toil and human ingenuity alone. It is willed by God as part of his divine plan. "He determined to call together in a holy church those who should believe in Christ."

He sent the Son "to inaugurate the Kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us the mystery. The church already present in mystery grows visible through the power of God in the world." Our Church symbolically came into being through the blood and water that flowed from the side of the crucified Christ and becomes the visible manifestation of God's love through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Mary and the apostles at the first Pentecost. Those apostles are then empowered by the Spirit to live and proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ for the salvation of all.

To approach the Church then, one must be ready to measure her not by the standards of sociology or politics or any other discipline that is only rational. To understand her is to heed who she claims to be: the mystery of God's life and love extended in space and time as this visible community nourished by Christ's sacraments and witnessing in the Spirit the truth of his salvation. "The universal Church is seen to be a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."

While she is the very visible Church whose members can be counted and whose leadership can be named, the Church as mystery and sacrament can never be reduced to just one element or one description. Hence, the fathers of the council call attention to the many beautiful biblical images that shed light on the truth about the Church. No one of them can exhaust the mystery but each one, like pieces of a mosaic, offers us another insight into the richness of this inexhaustible treasure which is his Church here on earth. Some of them come from the Old Testament or from familiar realities like the family, the cultivation of the land or the image of the shepherd. The Church is seen as a field cultivated by God or the very building of God where he dwells. Jesus is the cornerstone, rejected by men but foundation of his church. The Church is the household of God, the dwelling place of God whose members are "living stones" which build up the Holy Temple where the true worship of God takes place.

Jesus makes his followers a "new creation" and "by communicating his spirit mystically constitutes as his body those who are called together from every nation." This image of the Church as the Body of Christ is constantly set forth by St. Paul and is one of the richest and most helpful images we have of who we are as Church in every generation. We though many members with different roles and charisms constitute one body in Christ. This body is endowed with so many gifts and of these "the primacy belongs to the apostles to whose authority the Spirit himself subjects even those who are endowed with charisms."

The Church, while constituted by invisible gifts of the Spirit, is visible in the world and thus one reality, not two. She is a community of faith, hope and love and is the sole Church of Christ we proclaim in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. "The Church subsists in the Catholic Church which is governed by Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."

Finally the Church in her participation in the mystery of God's plan and in her sacramental witness to the world seeks no kingdom in this world but stretches forward eagerly awaiting the kingdom of heaven. In her desire to make Christ known, she reaches out to everyone but especially to the poor and suffering in whom "she recognizes the image of her poor and suffering founder."

It is as that mystery of God's love brought into being by the sacramental and salvific death and resurrection of Christ that the Church, the Body of Christ, is formed into the people of God about whom we will speak next week.

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