We are now within the novena between the Lord’s Ascension and Pentecost Sunday. On Ascension Thursday we saw that as the Lord was ascending to heaven, He left His disciples with a mission, specifically His mission.
Baptizing in the name of the Blessed Trinity — This communion toward which we’re called is something beyond our own abilities. We need God’s help for it to be achieved and He gives us that help through baptism and the sacraments to which baptism leads.
Teaching others to carry out everything Christ has commanded us — To remain in communion, we must live the Christian moral life, doing what Christ told us we would need to do to keep our union with Him in all our choices. The Christian moral life is summarized in the dual commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. Jesus says “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (Jn 15:10).
The Church was founded by Christ at the end of this first novena between His Ascension and Pentecost in order to be the “sacrament of communion,” the external sign of communion with God and with each other that brings about what it signifies. The Church is meant to be a visible witness of communion with God and with each other and is the means God has chosen to achieve that communion. Pope Benedict, in his beautiful first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, released four month ago, shows that the essence of the Church involves the three elements Christ described right before His Ascension. He referred to them by the Greek terms used by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles: kerygma/martyria, leitourgia, and diakonia.
The Church first must be distinguished by kerygma, which is the Greek word for the proclamation of Christ’s saving work. The is the first step in the building of communion, because no one can come to faith in Christ unless others proclaim the Gospel. St. Paul asks the early Christians in Rome, “How are they to believe in One of Whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim Him?” (Rom 10:14). For others to come into this communion, the Gospel must be preached. We wouldn’t be here today unless the first Christians took up this mission, unless the second generation was faithful to it, unless the third did their part, unless our parents did their part, and unless so many priests, religious and catechists did their part during our lifetime. And others, in our own generation and succeeding generations, will not come to this communion for which Jesus died unless we do our part. This proclamation to which Jesus calls us is not done exclusively with words.
This is what the second word Benedict gives us signifies — martyria, which literally means “witness.” The Gospel is proclaimed not just by our lips but by our body language. Mother Teresa’s message would have been just as strong even if she had had laryngitis her entire life long, because she was a Missionary of Charity, and gave a tangible witness to the Gospel by teaching others how lovable they are in God’s eyes. But this word martyria also refers to martyrdom, when we proclaim by the witness of our choices that Jesus is someone worth living for and worth dying for, the pearl of precious price (Mt 13:46) worth giving up everything else we have, including earthly life itself, in order to obtain.
The second thing which the Church must do to symbolize and effectuate communion with God and each other is leitourgia, the worship of God through the sacraments. We get our word “liturgy” from this Greek root. Liturgy refers to all the public prayer of the Church, but particularly the most important public prayer, the celebration of the sacraments. The liturgical actions of the sacraments bring us into communion with God, restore us to that communion, or deepen it. Baptism, for example, wipes away sin and brings us, as God’s beloved sons and daughters, into His family. Holy Communion brings us into communion with God, through the reception of Jesus’ body and blood, and into communion with each other as members of that same body. To have true communion with Christ we need to have communion with each other.
The third and final essential aspect of the Church’s nature is diakonia, the Greek word for loving service. We get our word “diaconate” from this service, because deacons are supposed to carry out the love of Christ in service to the needy. If we recognize the communion that God wills to exist, we realize that everyone is called to be our brother or sister and we’re called to love them as we would a brother or a sister in need.
The Holy Spirit has been given to the Church to help us to accomplish the very mission for loving unity that Jesus entrusted to us. As we get ready to celebrate next week the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the first generation of disciples, we ask Him to come and fill the hearts of us, His faithful, and enkindle in us the fire of His love, so that we may always remain in that love of God and love of others which is the whole mission of the Church. We have no greater teacher of what this means than she who is the model of the Church, Mary. She meditated on the word of God so much that the word actually took on her flesh. She was so docile to the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit overshadowed her not just at Jesus’ conception but throughout Mary’s whole life. And after Jesus’ Ascension, so that they might be made ready to be sanctified by God’s word and strengthened for the mission of love He gave them, the Apostles huddled around Mary to learn from her these lessons. Today, as this month dedicated to Mary draws to a close, we do the same.
Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, ordained in 1999. After receiving a biology degree from Harvard College, Fr. Landry studied for the priesthood in Maryland, Toronto, and for several years in Rome. He speaks widely on the thought of Pope John Paul II and on apologetics, and is currently parochial administrator of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. An archive of his homilies and articles can be found at catholicpreaching.com
This article is adapted from one of Father Landry’s recent homilies.
