Tuesday, April 08, 2008

What does it mean to be Church? The Church is the sacrament of salvation. Sacraments are tangible realities that mediate intangible realities. So when people encounter the Church, they should experience a concrete tangible encounter with the love and mercy of God. The Church, however, is not the buildings in which we worship nor is it the hierarchy, though those pieces are certainly part of the Church. First and foremost the Church is all of us, those gathered in the name of Jesus Christ, baptized into his death and resurrection. It is not up to the cardinals and bishops to be signs of God's love in the world (though hopefully they are), it is up to us! At Easter we renew our baptismal vows. We recall that we have been chosen by God to be Church, to mediate God's compassion and love to the world. As baptized members of the Church, we are the body of Christ. We have been chosen to be members of the body of Christ, the tangible ongoing presence of Christ to all those we encounter. As I frequently remind those who are being Confirmed, the sacrament of Confirmation is not about you confirming your faith, it is God who confirms you, confirms that you have been called and chosen to be a disciple of Christ. The question is do you accept? The acceptance proclaimed in the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation must be lived out in our daily lives. The Amen we say to the Body of Christ each time we go to mass is our commitment to be that body of Christ for others.

What a tall order! I am frequently overwhelmed to think that ideally when people enounter me, they are supposed to be encountering a concrete expression of God's love for them. How often I fall incredibly short of that, or even give the opposite impression. The good news is that we are not called to fulfill this vocation through our own efforts. We are called to be open to God working within us. We are called to be open to the gift of grace that enables us to mediate God's love and forgiveness to others. So often we fall into the trap of thinking we have to do everything on our own, and yet when we depend on our own resources is usually the time we end up in the most trouble! I do not mean, however, that we are not meant to make use of the gifts and talents that God has given us. Of course we should be using those gifts, but always with a sense of humilty, acknowleding that just because we think we are doing right, just because we think we are on the right side, does not necessarily make it so. Luckily we do not simply mediate God's love and forgiveness, we experience it ourselves and in fact can only be sacraments of that love and forgiveness because we have already received it ourselves. We love because God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19)!

We are also not called to this mission individually, but communally. Being Church emphasizes our interconnectedness with one another. We do not exist in isolation. In fact, we cannot exist in isolation. Humans are social creatures. We need one another. We depend on one another. We have been created to be in relation, in the image and likeness of our God who is Trinity, who is by definition relatedness. We come together because no one of us can possibly express the infinite love and mercy of God. We come together to experience the love and mercy of God in and through one another, to be community for one another and to accept the loving support of the community ourselves. Only in that way can we go out to the world and hope to share some glimmer of what we ourselves have been given.

No comments: