(Again I apologize for the wonky formatting.)
Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
(Actually, today’s lesson is all Fr Will – not Fr Staley.)
Church of the Holy Cross
August 3, 2008
Part 20
Let us Pause and reflect (again) on Catholicity and the Church
- Last time we looked at the meaning of catholicity. It means universality, because God wants his creation, which was primordially broken by sin, to be reconciled to himself. That was God’s intention all along: for us to be united to him. We blew it. There was a fragmentation in the beginning. It is as though “Adam” (“Man”) stands for one universal man, one humanity, which (who) is fragmented and shattered through sin. De Lubac, following St. Maximus the Confessor (early 600’s AD), says: “Whereas God is working continually in the world to the effect that all should come together into unity, by this sin which is the work of man, ‘the one nature was shattered into a thousand pieces” and humanity which ought to constitute a harmonious whole, in which ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ would be no contradiction, is turned into a multitude of individuals, as numerous as the sands of the seashore, all of whom show violently discordant
inclinations.” St. Maximus says: “And now we rend each other like wild beasts.”
o This happens immediately after the fall. With Cain and Abel, the third and fourth people on the scene, there is jealousy and murder – and not just murder, but fratricide. Violent disharmony, not just between man and God, but between man and man.
- But God did not abandon us to this condition, because he is love. He made us out of love, and he was not content to see us turn away from him into nothing (into death).
o St. Irenaeus of Lyons said (c. 180 AD): “God, in the beginning of time
plants the vine of the human race; he loved this human race and purposed to pour out his Spirit upon it and to give it the adoption of sons" (Adversus Haereses).
o So we read that Fr Henri de Lubac said: “And when Christ as last appeared, coming as the ‘one bridegroom’, his bride, once again, was the ‘whole human race’.”
o And St. Paul said: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5.19).
- The whole purpose of God’s plan is harmony and peace. He wants togetherness – we with him, and therefore with one another. Think of it as though we were spokes on a wheel. God is the axle. Through sin, we have removed our center of consciousness far out, toward the rim. But the closer we get to God, the closer also we get to one another. This is a way of understanding the universality, the reconciliation, and the peace God intends for us to have in the Catholic Church.
o Again, St. Paul (Ephesians 2.13-18): “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the
dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and
peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
o When you read something like that, in the back of your mind you should have the story of the Fall in Genesis: the shame of Adam and Eve, the corrosive mendaciousness of the Serpent, the murder of Abel, the confusion of tongues at Babel, the inability of men to understand one another, literally and figuratively, all the elements of the curse, the abuse of women, the necessity of toil and struggle, licentiousness, jealousy, physical pain. All of that is the “fragmentation” of man St. Maximus talked about. And its all of that that God undoes in Jesus Christ.
§ It’s a collective Fall – it’s the Fall of “Adam” – the fall of “Man”.
§ And it’s a collective redemption: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15.22).
§ All shall be made alive. That is God’s purpose.
o So man must be “renewed”, recreated. There must be a new Genesis, and a new Adam. Christ became the new Adam, the new mankind, in whom “all shall be made alive” – recall Ephesians: “For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man.”
§ Because Christ is the “one new man” – the recreated mankind, the new Adam, the single, universal man – he is truly the one and only “Catholic” because he is the oloz, the whole. And as soon as we have mention of this “wholeness” – this catholicity of Jesus Christ, we have mention of the Catholic Church:
· For God “has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1.22-23).
o Because Christ is the whole, universal man, because he “fills all in all”, because he is the “one new man”, the Church likewise is universal, is Catholic, encompasses all, because it is “his body” by being his bride with whom he has become “one flesh”, an indissoluble unity.
Recall last time we discussed the whole marriage vows: “With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Jesus endows his bride with all that he has, and all that he is. He gives her his own selfhood, his life; and so she bears a mystical IDENTITY with him. Christ is the sacrament or icon of God, and the Church is the sacrament or icon of Christ, giving to men freely from what she freely receives from Christ, re-presenting him in every time and in every place.
§ So the Church is catholic because Jesus Chris is catholic. And we must be catholic Christians in order, in the end, to be reconciled to God – because this is God’s plan and purpose of reconciliation and peace, the one and only plan and purpose, his one and only Son. There’s no other way but the Catholic Church, because there is no other Son of God, no other qeanqropoz, God-man, but Jesus Christ. Therefore, as St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258 AD) said: extra ecclesiam nulla salus – outside the Church there is no salvation. Because in Jesus Christ alone Go “has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1.13-14).
§ Now, Jesus himself gives us a glimpse of this scheme in John 17 (which we’ve looked at before): Jesus says that for the sake of the Apostles he has consecrated himself in the truth, that they might be consecrated in the truth, because he has given them his word, which he received from the Father, and they have kept it, and he prays not only for the 12 Apostles, but for those who believe in Jesus through their teaching, their “word”, which they pass on (tradere), from him.
· And St. Paul says: ““So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is
joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2.19ff).”
· This catholicity is therefore (partly) doctrinal – which is to say, it is important for us to hold to catholic doctrine:
o “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (St. Paul to St. Timothy – apostolic succession – 1 Tim. 4.16)
o And we see the how it is that doctrine is “catholic” (in the theological sense above) explicitly when St. Paul says: “Him we proclaim, warning EVERY MAN and TEACHING EVERY MAN in all wisdom, that we may present EVERY MAN mature in Christ” (Col. 1.28), and this connects with what St. Paul says in
Ephesians about building up the body of Christ (the Church) “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4.13).
So we see that a unity in catholic doctrine is part of what it is to “grow up into” or be conformed to Christ, the “one new” universal (catholic) man, the new Adam, in whom mankind is renewed and recreated.
Lastly, and most importantly, Paul says: “Let the elders [Greek: presbuteroi, “priests”] who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5.17). (Jokes.) (Sort of.)
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