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Pure Faith in the Church

Homily
Sunday, March 4, 2007, 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year C

St. Joseph Parish, Detroit

Part of the purifications of Lent require us to purify not only our bodies and our passions, but also our minds, or more precisely, our faith. We all know that in our world today, we find all sorts, Catholics and non-Catholics, who enjoy many suppositions about God, the Church, the world, and are often in error. A young lady, for example, living in sin with her boyfriend, was sure that she was a good Catholic because God wasn’t judgmental. A priest once told me that the Church was this family of those who gathered around the “table” and affirmed each other’s talents; indeed, from this erroneous theology, he defined the Liturgy as the place where each manifested his talents. Needless to say, his liturgical celebrations were probably always completely out of control. Someone else once said to me, that God is everywhere, so why do we need the church buildings, the laws of the Church, etc. Many think the Church’s teachings are up for grabs, and the opinion of the majority, or of a special group, should hold more sway over the teachings of the Magisterium. And we are all familiar with the great heresy, “We are church.”

Today’s readings bring us to reflect upon our faith in the Catholic Church, to purify it. What do I think about the Church? What do I believe? And does my faith coincide with what the Church requires of me?

I therefore now present a small ecclesiology, a brief catechesis on the Church per se. I will proceed in three points. First, that the Church is the people of God. Second, that it is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And third, that it is the body of Christ. These three definitions of the Church are all necessary, for they describe the essential relationships the Church has with each of the persons of the Trinity, who is one God in three divine persons. People of God the Father, Temple of the Spirit, Body of the Incarnate Son. These three definitions are explained, for those who wish to continue on their own afterwards, in the Catechism, paragraphs 781-801.[1]

First let us consider that the Church is the people of God. To Abram, later re-named Abraham, a covenant was drawn. Abram’s descendents would be as numerous as the stars, and they were given a land.[2] The Church teaches that the moment God drew this covenant with Abram, he established the “remote preparation for the gathering of this People of God.” The immediate preparation began with Israel’s election, who was given twelve sons. But the Church was not to end there. The covenants with Adam, Abram, Israel and David would be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the eternal Son of God born of the Virgin Mary. The new land of the new people was the whole earth, and the circumcision which marked the old covenant was replaced with the circumcision of baptism given to us by the Lord himself. This people of God would have four characteristics: it is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. Therefore the Church that God promised, and which Jesus Christ created, subsists in the Catholic Church. There are other “churches” who have taken, expropriated, perhaps even “stolen” some of the goods of the Church, such as baptism and the Scriptures, but by rejecting the whole, they bring upon themselves many errors and sin, and great division besides. In the first Eucharistic prayer, we refer to the “people” which Jesus “won” for the Father. So we are the people who worship God the Father, and we do so essentially through the Eucharistic sacrifice.

Yet the Church is also defined as the “temple of the Holy Spirit.” St. Augustine says, “What the soul is to the human body, the Holy Spirit is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church.”[3] I’ll get to the “body of Christ” part of that in a moment; I just wish to address the relationship St. Augustine declares between the Holy Spirit and the Church. The only way we can explain, in fact, the union of all the different parts of the Church into one is by the presence of the Holy Spirit within the Church, who makes the Church and causes all transformations of grace to happen. As the whole soul is in each part of our bodies, the whole Holy Spirit is in each one of us, especially by Confirmation.[4] He spoke the word – the Word who is the Son – through the prophets. He heals, purifies, vivifies, enlightens and sanctifies. He gives charisms, which are gifts God gives not for the good of one, but he gives to one for the good of everyone else; let us strive for the charisms, particularly the ordinary ones, such as faith, hope, charity, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and all the virtues.

The Church is also the Body of Christ. That is why, when the Father instructs us to “listen to him,” as in today’s Gospel, we must listen to Jesus, as he is flanked by the law and the prophets, symbolized in Moses and Elijah.[5] The Body of Christ includes Christ himself, all the angels, all the saints, the souls in purgatory, and the baptized on earth. This is why the refrain, “We are church,” is erroneous. The Church exceeds us, all of us who can say “we” together; it includes the Holy Trinity, first of all, but then all the angels, and the saints who lived in ancient and even less ancient times. We should say, “We are part of the Church,” as a finger cannot claim to be the whole body but only part of it. The Church is his body, as the bride is her husband’s body; this is why St. Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives as your own body.”[6] This body has lots of parts, and as the hand should not stab or cut off the foot, so too we have a duty to love one another and not criticize, backstab or attack one another. Our head is Christ himself, and we are his body; he manifests this visibly through the Pope, the visible head of the Church on earth, the guarantee of our unity.

So the Church is something bigger than we can understand; let us not tinker or tamper with it, or try to re-invent it, for only evil and things alien to God will come forth. Let us obey, let us always sacrifice our own opinion on matters trusting in the infallible teachings of the Church, let us learn to pray from her instead of following our own fancies, let us learn to think, to act, to love and to serve, not just in general, not just according to my own opinion on the matter, but learning from our Church as from our own mother. The Church isn’t about us, it’s about the communion of saints in heaven.

Let us therefore renounce worldly ways of understanding the Church, and set our hearts on minds on the things that are above, working out our salvation with fear, with trembling, and with unconditional trust in God’s divine mercy. Amen.