The family of God
 UR
CHURCH IS REALLY BIG.
 By
this I do not mean just that a lot of people belong to the
Catholic Church. Although, this certainly is true. I am
talking bigger than that. I mean our Church is really,
really huge, bigger than we can imagine.
The
Church is the Body of Christ. Our membership exists as a
deep communion. Those still on earth, those who have died
and are being purified and the saints in heaven,
collectively make up the Church. Together, we are the family
of God.
This
is one meaning of "communion of saints." Another, perhaps
more profound, is the holy things we share, particularly the
Eucharist, which sanctify us and make us one body in Christ.
So by "communion of saints" the Church means "communion 'in
holy things (sancta)' and 'among holy persons (sancti).'"
(cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 946-962)
As
the family of God we share in God's mercy. Not one of us
deserves to be a part of this wonderful fellowship destined
for eternal life. As scripture tells us:
All have sinned and are deprived of
the glory of God. (Rm 3:23) None of us merits a place
in the Body of Christ, nor can we earn a place. However, by
the mercy of God, we have been given a place among the holy
elect:
Though
our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and
at peace with God, since it is by faith and through Jesus
that we have entered this state of grace in which we can
boast about looking forward to God's glory. (cf. Rm 5:1-2)
God
loves us so much that he has caused mercy to triumph over
judgement. He cares for us so deeply he sent his own dear
Son into the world to "break the chains of death and rise
triumphant from the grave," so that we might have salvation
from what we truly deserve and, instead, be given heaven.
The
Easter Exsultet puts it:
Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.
The
magnificence of the treasure we share is accentuated by the
fact that none of us deserve it. Having been made brothers
and sisters by an act of divine grace, it is important that
we treasure what we have been given.
Once
we have aquired the grace of God through Baptism, we need to
respond faithfully to that grace with lives of service to
God and others. As St. James said:
Faith without works is as dead as a
body without breath.(Jas 2:26)
Mercy: given and received
In
the sacrament of Baptism each of us is given the gift of
eternal life and adopted into God's family. The fundamental
importance of this gift makes it vital that we live in
faithfulness to the mercy God has given us.
Think
about the greatness of God's gift. My sin and your sin is a
serious matter, so serious that it would separate us from
God forever. God's gift of reconciliation is both
unimaginably costly for him and given freely to us. Whether
or not we accept God's free gift of mercy is the central
question of our lives.
Any
encounter with mercy must always be a shared experience. If
someone does something against me and I forgive him/her,
this is good, but it is not yet an experience of mercy.
Mercy occurs only when forgiveness becomes reciprocal, when
I am able to seek and receive forgiveness from the one who
came to me for forgiveness. Forgiveness flowing only one way
is incomplete, because the one who asks forgiveness is like
a beggar, and the one granting it a benevolent lord. This
may be just, gracious, or whatever, but it is not mercy.
Consider
the way God treats us when we approach him for mercy. In the
sacrament of Penance, we are brought face-to-face with Jesus
on the cross. As we are confessing our sin, the
contemplation of our lack of love for God in the face of his
infinite love for us is more than a little disconcerting.
However, as we surrender without reservation to the presence
of Jesus crucified, we can sense his words coming to us from
the cross: "I thirst." (Jn
19:28)
With
these words, "I thirst," Jesus
is actually asking us to have mercy on him! Not only has
almighty God never done the slightest wrong against any of
us, his ever-attentive love holds each of us in existence.
This same God has reduced himself to such a state that he
became as all men are, and being as
all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death,
death on a cross. (Phil 2:7,8)
The
thirst that Jesus expresses is very real. It is this thirst
that drove him to the cross; the thirst for our souls. This
is the thirst that drove the great apostles. As St. Paul
proclaimed: We are ambassadors for
Christ; God as it were appealing through us. We implore you,
in Christ's name: be reconciled to God! (2 Cor 5:20)
God
humbled himself to the Cross to bring us his forgiveness. In
the divine economy, this humbling also makes it possible for
almighty God to call out to us for mercy. And so, in the
sacrament of Penance, we can experience going from the
wretched state of facing our lack of love for God, in the
face of his infinite love, to the most elevated position in
the universe: that of being able to give mercy to our
Creator. And each of us can say, I am truly the only one who
can give that particular gift to God, for it is for me that
he longs.
And
so, by God's condescension he makes it possible for us to
experience mercy with him; not just by his wonderful
forgiveness, but by so emptying himself that his creatures
can minister in a real way to him.
More mercy
Jesus
was not satisfied with even this. Jesus longs for his people
to live entirely in his mercy, and so, outdoing even
himself, Jesus gives us many more opportunities to enter the
flowing stream of his merciful love. He does this by
identifying himself completely with his followers.
St.
Matthew records Jesus showing us the path he wanted us to
follow by revealing to us what to expect at the Last
Judgement (Mt 25:31-46). To the saved, Jesus will say that
whenever they did an act of mercy "for
one of my least brothers, you did it for me." To the
damned he says "I assure you, as often
as you neglected to do it to one of these least ones, you
neglected to do it to me."
By
extending mercy to others we are saved; by withholding it we
are damned. As we forgive all who have harmed us, we enter
the fullness of God's own forgiveness. On the other hand, if
we refuse to forgive, we are refusing to enter mercy. To say
that we want to be forgiven by God while refusing to forgive
another, we are fooling ourselves. To be forgiven by God
means to forgive everyone, because in reality the offenses
of anyone against us are trivial when compared with our own
offense against God.
We
enter mercy through faith in the Son of God. If we truly
believe in God's mercy, then we will practise it in all our
affairs. It would be ludicrous to say that God forgives me,
who in no way deserves it, and yet refuse to forgive
another. So, if we believe in God's mercy we must be
faithful witnesses in thought, word and deed.
Peace
When
we first discover the great power of God's mercy, we also
encounter its potential to transform us and all of our
relationships. Forgiveness changes from something we
grudgingly give to others, into a marvellous tool for
entering into God's love and building God's kingdom. Instead
of fearing the lack of control over the actions of others
that giving and receiving forgiveness implies, we look
forward to the joy of surrendering all things into the hands
of God who cares so deeply for each of us.
Along
with the happiness of this newfound faith in God, comes an
unexpected, surprise: Peace.
Peace
is extraordinary, utterly unlike the everyday concept of it.
We are used to thinking of peace more in terms of what it is
not, rather than what it is. For example, peace as absence
of war, or absence of noise. This is fine, but the peace
Jesus promised us is God's own peace, a peace the world can
neither give us nor understand. Jesus's peace comes to dwell
with us and it is powerful and dynamic, wonderful beyond
anything we could have anticipated.
Peace
initially establishes herself in our lives in two ways. The
first is to free us from our fears, and the second is to
confirm us in the fellowship of our faith.
Freedom
from fear often comes as a revelation, because we are so
accustomed to dealing with fear as a matter of course that
we do not see it as something apart from ourselves
oppressing us.
For
example, fear of economic insecurity usually has very little
to do with financial realities. Jesus told us that it is
impossible to serve God and money. We must love one and hate
the other. If we have chosen to serve money, the result in
our life has to be economic insecurity. Serving the enemy
always results in fear. Consider the people who, although
very well-off financially, are always striving for more.
Why? They are terrified of losing what they have. When we
are embraced by God's mercy we come to know that Providence
is real and rightly to be relied on. We learn not to be
fearful about tomorrow.
Mercy
lets us be confident of our heavenly destiny, and this in
turn causes all dread to disappear. Shame gives way to
contrition for past sins as our fear of them withdraws
before God's merciful dealings with us. Waking up with a
knot in our gut becomes a distant memory.
The fellowship of peace
In
God's peace relationships take on a new dynamic of love. We
see ourselves and others as possessing the God-given dignity
which makes authentic friendship possible. While we were
living in fear, friendship could exist only in a severely
restrictive sense. But, in God's kingdom the harmony of
peace promotes the true fellowship of the communion of
saints.
Shared
experiences of mercy open us to love the saints of heaven.
They, too, are our brothers and sisters. "As Christian
communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to
Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to
Christ." (Lumen Gentium, 50)
The
Virgin Mary comes very close to us. She is the mother Jesus
himself gave us. Drawing from the storehouse of her Son
Jesus, Mary leads the Church in bringing out things both old
and new to help us be formed in the true worship of the New
Covenant. Mary is an "image and beginning of the Church as
it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she
shines forth on earth,... a sign of certain hope and comfort
to the pilgrim People of God." (L.G., 68)
The
sign of Mary is so effective that, as we pray the Rosary, we
are brought to an awareness of heaven. The Archangel Gabriel
said the first Rosary at the Annunciation:
"Hail full grace the Lord is with
thee, blessed art thou among women."(Lk 1:28) So it
is very natural that our Guardian Angel would be praying the
Rosary with us whenever we pray it.
(As
I was writing this Monsignor - not Msgr.(!) - Chartrand
pointed out to me that, in fact, the first Rosary was prayed
by St. Dominic in the 13th century. I do not think this
destroys my point.)
Sent forth in peace and mercy
Convinced
of the truth of God's mercy, we are called as ambassadors
for Christ to go out to announce Jesus's intense desire to
extend salvation to everyone.
Our
Holy Father, John Paul II, said as he departed from
Stapleton International Airport following the youth rally in
Denver:
Do
not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public
places like the first apostles who preached Christ and the
Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns and
villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is
a time to preach it from the rooftops. Do not be afraid to
speak, to break out of routine and comfortable modes of
living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ
known in the modern metropolis.... The Gospel must not be
kept hidden because of fear or indifference. It has to be
put on a stand so that people can see its light and give
praise to our Heavenly Father.
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