For the average student of the Bible, who starts his or her study ‘“in the beginning” with the book of Genesis, it doesn’t take long to realize that names play…
For the average student of the Bible, who starts his or her study ‘“in the beginning” with the book of Genesis, it doesn’t take long to realize that names play a significant role throughout sacred Scripture.
They reveal a certain characteristic, or mark an event, in the lives of people and the history of places. Names are sometimes changed as well. In fact, it only takes 17 chapters into Genesis before the great patriarch of Israel, Abram, becomes Abraham.
Why is that? Why does God change people’s names?
The short answer to that question is that a name change signifies a new call in life. It is symbolic of a new identity.
From Abram to Abraham
In the case of Abram, whom God would make Abraham, the change in names reflected a new status. At age 75, Abram is called by the Lord to go forth from his native land and begin a new nation (see Gn 12). He is told that he will receive a plot of land as far as his eyes can see and given descendents as numerous as the dust of the earth (Gn 13:15-16).
He was attentive to the Lord’s directives throughout his journey in the land of Canaan. When Abram is the age of 99, the Lord calls him and says, “no longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations” (Gn 17:5).
In Hebrew, the name Abram means “exulted father,” while Abraham means “father of a multitude.” The name change became a benediction of sorts. God memorialized Abraham’s obedience and faithfulness and blessed him for the road ahead. As the saying goes, behind every great man is a strong woman. Abraham had Sarai. God changed her name to Sarah, or “mother of multitudes,” and thus a new calling. “God further said to Abraham: ‘As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai; her name shall be Sarah. I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. Him also will I bless; he shall give rise to nations, and rulers of peoples shall issue from him’ ” (Gn 17:15-16).
God appointed a royal couple in Abraham and Sarah. The patriarch now has a matriarch, and she will give birth to a noble son, Isaac, who will continue to bear witness to the Old Covenant.
Also in the Old Testament is the story of Jacob, who becomes Israel. Jacob means “deceitful one” (literally, “leg-puller”), and the son of Rebekah lived up to his name sake. His older twin brother, Esau, points this out when he explains that Jacob took away his birthright and “now he has taken away my blessing” (Gn 27:36). However, God turned the deceitful Jacob into the “prince of God” as he is given the new name Israel just five chapters later. God says to him, “You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel” (Gn 32:28). Under his new name, he is called to be the leader of the 12 tribes of Israel and becomes a key Old Testament patriarch.
In with the New
In the New Testament, two notable name changes are those of Peter and Paul. Peter is the second-most mentioned name in the New Testament after Jesus. However, he wasn’t born Peter. His birth name was Simon son of Jonah (see Mt 16:17). He and his brother Andrew grew up together fishing on the Sea of Galilee. They were among the first disciples chosen by Our Lord.
“Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You will be called Kephas’ (which is translated Peter)” (Jn 1:42).
Why did the Lord call this man “Rock?” Because of the mission he was about to receive. The Lord said to him, “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it’” (Mt 16:18). The fisherman from Bethsaida had become the rock, or the building stone, of the Church. God had chosen him with a new mission. He was now a fisher of men. His new name gave him his identity as the first pope and leader of the Church.
A name change took place as well to Saul, who became Paul. However, it wasn’t God who changed this Jewish man’s name. Not unlike his contemporaries of the time, it is believed that Saul, a Hebrew living under Roman rule, would have acquired more than one name. The story of Paul’s conversion is narrated three times in the Acts of the Apostles. However, in none of these stories is God mentioned as the one changing Saul’s name. On the contrary, it is Jesus who says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). His new name is mentioned briefly in Acts 13:9: “But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him.” While the name change from Saul to Paul doesn’t exactly fit the same mold of Abraham and the others, it can be reasoned that it signified his new identity as the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Devotion to the Holy Name
Reverence to the Holy Name of Jesus began in the early Church. The apostles and the first disciples were the first to cultivate devotion to the sacred name of Jesus.
St. Paul, in his Letter to the Colossians, writes, “And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:17).
During the time of the Council of Lyons in 1274, Pope Gregory X issued a call to the universal Church to take up this devotion to the Holy Name. Soon after, the Dominicans took up the Church’s pleas and began preaching on the virtues of the Holy Name.
Why Do Religious Change Their Names?
In generations past, it was the norm that religious nuns and, at times, orders of priests or brothers ran Catholic grade schools. The presence of these dedicated women was regularly recognizable through their distinct religious habits, and quite often the nuns carried unique names.
For any third- or fourth-grader who had Sister Mary of the Cross as his or her teacher or Sister John the Baptist in the classroom across the hall, the question might have arisen of where did she get that name from? Didn’t her parents know she was a girl? Why did they name her John the Baptist?
The answer lies in the fact that the taking of a new name symbolizes the entering of a new state in life. Think of marriage. When a woman marries, she normally drops her maiden name and takes on the name of her husband. She is no longer a maiden, but rather is now a married woman.
While this tradition was most prevalent among female orders, it was not un-common for male religious, particularly monastic orders of men, to change their names when they professed vows or were ordained.
Customs varied on what a newly professed name could be. Sometimes the women were allowed to suggest a new name. In other instances, sisters were assigned a name. In either case the ultimate decision was in the hands of the mother superior.
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Throughout its history, the Church has insisted upon its visibility. Especially in these latter centuries as the Church — visible for so many years as some strange political entity —…
Throughout its history, the Church has insisted upon its visibility.
Especially in these latter centuries as the Church — visible for so many years as some strange political entity — has changed its aspect, it has nonetheless still insisted that it is not just an immaterial, invisible society. It is, rather, quite visible. The Church is hierarchical and charismatic; it is an incarnate thing, visible and ethical, obedient to the teachings of Jesus. Echoing the Sermon on the Mount, it’s a “communion of life, charity and truth” that is “sent forth into the whole world as the light of the world and the salt of the earth” (LG 9; Mt 5:13-16). One simply can’t define the Church only in material terms or only in spiritual terms, opposing matter and spirit so absolutely. That is actually heresy.
Rather, as Lumen Gentium teaches, the Church is an “entity with visible delineation.” The risen Christ “continually sustains here on earth His holy Church,” not just as a Mystical Body, but also as a “society structured with hierarchical organs.” The “visible assembly and the spiritual community” are not to be thought of as “two realities” but as “one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and human element.” Again, the applicable analogy here is the incarnation: the idea of the divine and human present in the mysterious and visible (LG 8). Thus, the visible and material aspect of the Church cannot be completely separated from its invisible spiritual reality. That the Church is always visible simply follows from the fact of its nature as sacrament. This is basic Catholic theology, shared though also by the Orthodox and many other Christian traditions.
It’s at this point, however, we encounter some of the unique claims of Roman Catholicism. Simply put, how does this Church we’ve been describing since John 17 relate to the Roman Catholic Church? The answer is complicated. Thus, Lumen Gentium speaks here carefully: “This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG 8).
Now, this is a loaded paragraph! As we’ve already seen, the Church, as sacrament, is a visible organism — hierarchic, charismatic, spiritual, material — but not entirely circumscribable. That is, the Church we’ve been describing since John 17 is not exclusively identifiable with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church is bigger, more mysterious than that. But still, in a very real sense, the Roman Catholic Church is the Church. So, how do you get your head around that?
Lumen Gentium teaches that the Church “subsists in” the Catholic Church — the Church governed by the successor of Peter. Now, this little Latin verb — subsistit — is probably the most controversial word ever to come out of Vatican II. It does indeed mark a change in how the Catholic Church describes itself in relation to other Christian bodies, but it needn’t be controversial. Before the Second Vatican Council, most Catholic theologians were content simply to say that the Church is(est) the Roman Catholic Church. However, Lumen Gentium changed that, adding actually quite helpful nuance. By saying the Church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church, Lumen Gentium is not saying the Roman Catholic Church is the ideal Church or the real Church in the sense that other Christian communities are unreal; rather, it’s saying that the Church described in the New Testament is always fully present in the Roman Catholic Church, that by its sacraments and apostolic and Petrine structure, the oneness Jesus prayed for in John 17 is never absent from it (Unitatis Redintegratio, 4). It’s saying that the Roman Catholic Church, ecclesiologically speaking, will always be fully and substantially the Church described in the New Testament and throughout Christian history.
But what about those churches and communities not part of the Roman Catholic Church? What about non-Roman Catholics? The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Christian Church subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, the Church in communion with Peter and his successors, the popes. And yes, it also teaches that non-Roman Catholic churches and communities are different from the Roman Catholic Church, that they “are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those to whom he has given new birth into one body … that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim” (Unitatis Redintegratio, 3). However, non-Roman Catholic churches and communities do indeed possess “many elements of sanctification” and also many gifts belonging to the great Church of Christ, all of which are innately “forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG 2.8). Thus, for Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and so on — anyone with an inkling for truth: such truth, in whatever community it flourishes, tends toward the perfect unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit given to the Church in Christ.
But how can we get our heads around this very bold claim? The image that helps me think about this is a simple one — a broken flower pot. If I dropped a big potted plant on the floor, breaking it into several pieces, and if I looked at you and said, “Pick up the plant” — what would you do? You’d likely pick up the root stock, the big bit. It’s unlikely you’d pick up that smaller fragment off to the side or the even smaller one farther away. When I say, “Pick up the plant,” you’re going to pick up the part you know is more fully the plant. But, of course, all the pieces belong together. All the fragments matter. That’s what Lumen Gentium means when it says the Church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. The one fragment off to the side may be Baptists with their great preaching; another fragment, Anglicans with their beauty and humor; another, Methodists with their hymnody. You see what I’m saying? That’s basically the idea. All the broken pieces belong together, but the fullness of the thing is what it is — the Roman Catholic Church.
That’s the unique claim of Roman Catholicism; and undoubtedly, it’s quite a claim. Speaking personally as a convert, I had to explore and wrestle with this for quite some time. I understood that Jesus meant us to be one; and I also understood (as we’ll explore later in this series) that being one meant being one eucharistically, visible one. But does that therefore mean Roman Catholicism? I mean, I had been around Roman Catholics and was not bowled over. And so, for me, it became a historical investigation, questions regarding the claims of the papacy. Is it true, for instance, that all Christians should be in communion with Peter and his successor? I did indeed come to believe this, yes. At this point, suffice it to say that I had to come to grips with this theology, and it wasn’t easy. But in the end, my accepting it stemmed from this idea of God’s mission for glory — that the Father sent his Son and that through the Son and the Spirit, the Church was created in holy, catholic, and apostolic oneness, a divine and human communion. Now indeed, this is an outstanding claim the Roman Catholic Church makes for itself. Yet, like it or lump it, believe it or not, for twenty centuries the Church has found the guts to proclaim it in season and out. Disagree, that’s fine — it’s understandable and even respectable in some instances. But, nonetheless, the outstanding claim remains; there it is. The Church we’ve been following since John 17 “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. It was the blunt stubbornness of this teaching that made me wrestle with it so much. Which really is all I can say to you — wrestle with it. Because this is what we Catholics really believe.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.
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In exploring the Church — this sacrament of salvation, this communion in Christ enlivened by the Holy Spirit — many symbols and images are used as descriptors. And as a…
In exploring the Church — this sacrament of salvation, this communion in Christ enlivened by the Holy Spirit — many symbols and images are used as descriptors. And as a sacramental mystery, that only makes sense.
As Lumen Gentium put it, “the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building or even from family life and betrothals” (LG 6). The catechism even offers a small catalog of names and symbols traditionally applied to the Church — sheepfold, flock, cultivated field, building of God, temple, Jerusalem, mother, body of Christ — but there are, of course, even more than that (see CCC, Nos. 751-757). Describing a mystery not fully describable — like any real, organic thing — it makes sense sometimes to use poetry or metaphor to get at it. Try describing your child or your spouse or even yourself accurately and completely; you can’t do it. That’s because organic, mysterious things are like that; they demand a different mode of description. And the Church is no different.
Of course, the most famous image applied to the Church, an image strongly emphasized in the documents of Vatican II, is “people of God.” However, it’s an image of the Church as debated as it is famous. As the historian John O’Malley wrote, there is indeed a “strong horizontal line” implicit in the image; it’s an image reminding us of the fundamental equality of all baptized believers. Lay people are not subjects of the clergy; both clergy and lay people are one and equal in Christ (“What Happened at Vatican II,” 174). Yet, that doesn’t mean the Church is anything like a modern democracy with, as Karl Rahner warned, a ballot in everybody’s hand (“The Spirit in the Church,” 62). Such is where there has been much confusion about calling the Church the “people of God” — by politicizing the image. Which is not at all what the Second Vatican Council intended. Rather, in calling the Church the “people of God,” the Second Vatican Council was simply speaking biblically and theologically.
Drawing on the Church fathers, Lumen Gentium, early on, describes the Church as “a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (LG 4). Immediately, we learn that we’re talking about something theological — in the deepest meaning of the term, of God — rather than a social or political construct. In the Church we are indeed made holy, but not “merely as individuals” but instead “together as one people” (LG 9). The point, counter to our many modern individualisms, is that by saying the Church is a people, we’re saying first that we’re drawn together into salvation as one — in communion. As always, remember John 17, that the disciples of Jesus are to be one; calling the Church the people of God is but another aspect of that reality. The people of God is, fundamentally, simply the ecclesia, the called body, called into being by God. It is simply the people described in the Scripture. It is the people called first in Abraham and then in the patriarchs and prophets; it is the people called by Christ, called to be holy, free in truth — the disciples, their disciples, and us.
Such is the explicitly biblical character of the people of God often lost to those who mistake the image for something political, ethnic or demographic. Cardinal Ratzinger, in his writings, repeatedly made this point: that when “understood in terms of ordinary political usage” the image “becomes a slogan, its meaning is inevitably diminished; indeed, it is trivialized” (“The Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church, Vatican II, ‘Lumen Gentium,’” 88; “Eucharist, Communion, Solidarity,” 74). Inevitably, such misunderstanding makes the Church vulnerable to various political whims and machinations.
Remembering the Church is the people of God does not do away with or in any way denigrate its hierarchy. It puts neither the faith nor the morals of the Church to a vote. Rather, it reminds the Church to which story it belongs—not to the story of nations or political movements or trends, but to the story of God. It reminds the Church that all believers are fully part of this story, not just clergy and the consecrated. From beginning to end, the image is biblical. It is thus identical to that other image of the Church—the Body of Christ. The people of God is that particular people whose story is told in the Bible, the people gathered by the word of God in Christ, born into Christ in baptism and nourished with his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
Such is what we mean by calling the Church Populo Dei. It is not to be confused with politics or ideologies, not without ruining one’s understanding of the Church entirely. Rather, it’s to remind the Church of its biblical origin and its nature as sacrament, that it is Christ’s body, the gathering into one people of faith in the Spirit disparate peoples into one royal priesthood (LG 9). Not a cultural or political construct, but something more akin to a miracle, the people of God belong in essence to that mission for glory Jesus prayed for the night he was betrayed. It is, therefore, more primeval, more sacred than any politics — this Catholic Church of Jesus Christ.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.
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Judas Iscariot has long been one of the most fascinating characters in the New Testament. As Jesus’betrayer, he has an unequaled notoriety — and rightly so. Scripture is clear in…
Judas Iscariot has long been one of the most fascinating characters in the New Testament. As Jesus’betrayer, he has an unequaled notoriety — and rightly so.
Scripture is clear in naming him as the turncoat, but his motivation has long been the subject of speculation. How could anyone knowingly, willingly commit such a horrible act against the innocent Lamb of God, the Savior of the world? Some explanations seem designed to mitigate Judas’ guilt by portraying him as one who was not so much sinister as weak, confused or simply trying to be helpful.
Let’s examine first the main theories, all derived from Scripture.
Theories About Motives
First is the theory that Judas betrayed Jesus because he was greedy for money. All four Gospels point to this as at least a contributing motive.
Matthew’s Gospel is unique in mentioning the 30 pieces of silver as the price Judas was paid for the betrayal (see 26:15). It also is the only account that tells of how Judas later regretted his actions, threw the money back at the chief priests and hanged himself (27:3-5).
Mark and Luke also tell about Judas selling out Christ to the high priests (see Mk 14:10-11; Lk 22:1-6). But Luke offers a new wrinkle: Satan first “entered into Judas” (22:3) before he met with the chief priests and scribes to plot Jesus’ arrest.
John’s Gospel is harshest in its treatment of Judas. It is the only Gospel that names Judas as the one who was outraged at the waste when a woman poured perfume on Jesus’ feet, estimating that it could have been sold for a year’s wages and the money be given to the poor (see Jn 12:1-8).
John also assigns Judas a motive for his objection: “He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions” (12:6). John, like Luke, also mentions Satan’s role in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus (13:27).
So, lust for money and the devil’s influence are the clearest reasons given for Judas’ sin in scriptural accounts. He knew the value of a buck, and he was a man who could be bought. His orientation toward greed made him a relatively easy target for Satan. Perhaps the high priests’ reward represented for him “an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Other Factors
The Gospels also hint at other contributing factors.
In Matthew, for example, Judas always addresses Jesus as “Rabbi,” but never as “Lord.” Some scholars see this as a sign of Judas’ failure to understand Jesus’ identity and saving role.
The designation “Judas [the] Iscariot” appears in more than one Gospel. “Iscariot” may be a conflation of the Hebrew ish Kerioth, or “man from Kerioth,” a town in the southern part of Judea. If so, it has been weakly speculated, Judas was the only non-Galilean among the Twelve and may have felt like the odd man out, an isolation that could conceivably have heightened the temptation to commit treason.
“Iscariot” also closely resembles a Greek word meaning “dagger-bearer.” This would suggest that Judas was a member of the Dagger-Bearers, the most radical arm of the Zealots.
The Zealots believed the Messiah would come as a military leader who would liberate the Jews from their Roman oppressors. The Dagger-Bearers among them were willing to free the Jewish people through what we would regard today as acts of terrorism. This theory holds that Judas was disillusioned by Jesus and believed that having Jesus arrested might force Him to start the revolution.
A Lesson for All
Which theory is correct? No doubt several of these factors, and perhaps others as well, played a role. In his weekly general audience of Oct. 18, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about Judas and mentioned some key theories. But, ultimately, he said, Judas’ motives remain a mystery.
The fundamental reality, the Pope noted, is that Judas “yielded to a temptation from the evil one.” He went on to point out a lesson for all believers by noting that as close as Judas was to Jesus, he was not invulnerable to sin.
“It is a mistake,” said Pope Benedict, “to think that the great privilege of living in company with Jesus is enough to make a person holy.
“Jesus does not force our will when He invites us to follow Him along the path of the beatitudes. The only way to avoid the pitfalls that surround us is to give ourselves entirely to Jesus, to enter into full communion with Him, so that we think and act as He did, in total obedience to the Father.”
Gerald Korson writes from Indiana.
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Toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish…
Toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Mt 5:17). When one understands that different sections of the Old Testament fall under the categories of “Law” and “Prophets,” this statement means more than just the Ten Commandments or the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. “The law and the prophets” can be interpreted as practically the entire Old Testament. In other words, all of it points to Jesus, and all of it finds its completion and most profound meaning in him. He is its culmination.
Throughout the Old Testament God is showing Himself to humankind in order to bring persons into a life of communion with him. Communion happens through worship and a life lived according to the commandments of God and the obedience of faith. One might ask, “why does God bother to reach out to us?” A simple answer might be that he thought we would like it. In his goodness, he knows that we will have the greatest happiness if we are in communion with him, and so he made it possible.
This approach toward human beings on the part of God begins with Adam and extends to Abraham and his children. It becomes clear, however, that physical bonds are not the most important factor of being a member of Abraham’s family. Instead, it is faith. Those who share in the faith of Abraham are his “seed.” St. Paul recognized that and preached adamantly about the Gentiles being grafted onto Israel through faith. It was clear to him that Israel had been chosen not in order to exclude the rest of humanity from God, but so that through them the greatest possible communion with God might be given. That happened with the Incarnation, the coming of the Son of God as a man, to live among us — namely, Jesus of Nazareth.
As at other times when God approached near to human beings in order to lead them to a greater communion with Himself, Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God. He himself was the Kingdom present among the people. Also as at other times, human beings for the most part rejected God’s gift, a relationship of friendship with himself. Jesus was rejected by the Jewish leaders and crucified for his claims of being God’s Son. He died, but God did not allow him to remain in death. Instead, God raised him on the third day, and Jesus now is alive forever. It is still possible for us to have a relationship with him, a true friendship with God.
Why, then, do not more people live in this friendship with Him? Take Christmas, for instance. It might seem like that feast of the Incarnation of the Son of God, from the natural point of view, is a failed project. After centuries of preparation, after all the revelation contained in the Law and the Prophets, God finally came to earth Himself, in the flesh. But humankind rejected him yet again. And, clearly, His coming to us as a man did not end war and violence, sin and destruction, by imposing divine order from the outside.
So, why did Jesus come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets? All throughout the age of the Old Testament, God is inviting His people to look at him, to fix their eyes on him, because he is the only way through the mire of sin, death and confusion that we experience day in and day out. Over and over again, Israel turns away. God’s ways are too difficult. His paths are too circuitous. He demands too much. Finally, in Jesus of Nazareth, the God of the Old Testament comes among his people and says: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart. Take my yoke upon you, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” In doing so, he showed his love for us in an astounding way. All our hopes for change and restoration, for renewal and “getting it right this time” depend on this love that God has for us and this communion that God makes possible for each and every person. Jesus came to save every person and bring each one to communion with God. It is only through each individual human heart that God desires to end war and violence, sin and destruction. He desires that his salvation occur within each man and woman, and so have its effects without. Only he can enter into our lives in such a way as to make them whole, to “fulfill them.” He has said it, and he will do it.
Sister Anna Marie McGuan, RSM, is director of Christian formation in the Diocese of Knoxville. Read more from the Bible 101 series here.
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In exploring today the Catholic Church in its essence, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council occupies a central place. What did it say about the Church? To answer this…
In exploring today the Catholic Church in its essence, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council occupies a central place. What did it say about the Church? To answer this question, we turn to the council’s longest-debated document (having undergone three major revisions over three years), but arguably also its most beautiful and rich — the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, more commonly called Lumen Gentium.
The first thing the Lumen Gentium says, quite profoundly in its opening lines, is that the “Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument” (LG 1). The Church, of course, is a visible reality, made so by its hierarchy and liturgy and so on. But is that all one can say about it? Is what’s physically visible about the Church all there is? Right off the bat, the Church says, “No.” Rather, the Church is, biblically speaking, a mystery. The title of the constitution’s first chapter is called De Ecclesiae Mysterio, which is to say, as we see, that the Church is “like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument.” But what does that mean?
Without getting deep into the etymology of either the Greek word mysterion or the Latin word sacramentum, we can simply say that a sacrament is a sign that has some hidden reality about it. That is, a sacrament isn’t just a sign, but always more. For me, thinking of it this way helps: a sacrament is a sign that participates in what signifies. For example, a stop sign is just a normal sign that tells you to stop, but it doesn’t participate in some sort of metaphysical thing called stopness. Because it’s just a sign. Or, consider a picture of some sort — of the Mona Lisa or of your best friend. Such pictures are signs that remind us of people or events, but they do not metaphysically participate in the objects they represent. A sacrament, however, is different. It’s a sign that participates in what it signifies. Consider the Eucharist. The consecrated bread and wine is a sign of the body and blood of Jesus, but it’s a sign also participating in what it signifies. It is the body and blood of Jesus, we believe.
So, the Church is a sacrament; that is, it’s a sign that participates in what it signifies. But a sign of what? It’s a sign both of a “very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race,” as the opening sentences of Lumen Gentium make clear. As the Dominican theologian, Edward Schillebeckx (whose theology in the 20th century did much to broaden our understanding of the sacramental), succinctly put it, “The earthly Church is the visible realization of this saving reality in history” (Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, 2.1.1). The Church is a sign of our union with the triune God in and through Christ; the Church, in a sense, images that communion. But it’s also a sign of human unity. Now, behind this claim is an awful lot of narrative and theology, the wisdom within our biblical stories of creation and redemption. But, basically, the claim is that we all share one human nature and that the Church signifies the redemption of our one shared human nature, that it’s a sign of the perfection of all human communion. The Church is simply the sign of this twofold union.
But the Church is also an instrument of this twofold union; that is, the Church not only images divine and human unity, it is also its beginning; the Church inaugurates this union, participates in its creation. Which reveals the Church’s purpose and mission: to “unfold more fully” to both the Church and the world “its own inner nature and universal mission,” which is this very twofold union of God and humanity (LG 1). The Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation,” Lumen Gentium teaches; that is, it’s the enduring and definitive sign and instrument of salvation for all time and all peoples (LG 48). No mere human institution, the Church enjoys some of the transcending characteristics of the divine. It is and always will be present and relevant; and hell will never overcome it (Mt 16:18).
This, undoubtedly, is a high claim to make for the Church — that it not only signifies but also shares in and brings about the redeeming communion of God and humanity. But the council makes it because of what we believe about the Church at its core. “Since it is in Christ,” the text says — in Christ. This, of course, is an idea fundamental to the New Testament, to Paul particularly. Believers in Christ, with faith and baptized, are en Christo or en Kyrio — that is, not only are they allied to Christ, they are grafted onto him, into his life, death and risen life. We’re speaking here at the level of being, of mystical union. Paul spoke in this manner in many places, as in Colossians where he said, “it is Christ in you” and that “Christ is your life” (Col 1:27; 3:4); and most famously to the Galatians, saying, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:19-20). This is how the Church can say that it’s no mere human institution or social construct, because as a communion of believers in Christ, they are truly in Christ. And so, what belongs to Christ himself belongs mystically to the Church. Again, we should recall all that time spent at the beginning, exploring John 17. Referencing Jesus’s glory, which he received from his Father and which he shared with the disciples (see Jn 17:22), is just another way to describe life in Christ. And it’s the theological reality underneath our strong claims about the Church — that it’s not just another organization but the vanguard of heaven.
Which is why, in the very next breath, Lumen Gentium locates its claim about the Church within the broader biblical story of God’s creation and redemption. The Church is part of the eternal Father’s “hidden plan” to raise his people up “to a participation of the divine life” (LG 1). Again, remember Jesus’s prayer — “I wish that where I am they also may be, that they may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:24). By rehearsing the history of God’s saving work, Lumen Gentium puts forward a very simple thesis: that the Father never left us to ourselves, but “ceaselessly offered helps to salvation” (LG 2). And, of course, it is Christ who, as “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” is the perfection of God’s saving help, given in the “fullness of time” (Col 1:15; Gal 4:4). This is what the Church is in Christ — the sign of this salvation, but more. Not just a sign, the Church is a sacrament — a mystical thing able truly to draw the faithful into the very reality it proclaims. That is, the Church not only preaches Christ, in that the Church believers also die and rise in Christ; they feed on Christ in the Church; they are saved in Christ in the Church.
Why does this matter? Because it suggests that if the Church is to be understood at all, it must be seen for what it fully is. Not just a political thing, a sociological thing, or an institutional thing, the Church is the continuation of God’s work of redemption and is mystically part of the realities it proclaims. That is, it’s a sign and instrument — a sacramental living thing bigger than all of us.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.
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