Homily - 9 December 2018 - The Second Sunday of Advent

The Second Sunday of Advent (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

This past week, the United States of America observed the obsequies for her forty-first President. Before laying him to rest in College Station, Texas, funeral ceremonies were celebrated for George Herbert Walker Bush in Washington, D.C. in the so-called National Cathedral, part of the Anglican Communion first begun by King Henry VIII of England.

Watching the ceremonies out of a patriotic virtue and with a desire to prayer for the repose of his soul, a number of people sent questions to me via Facebook asking something along these lines: “I’m watching the funeral for George Bush and they have recited the Apostles Creed both days, including ‘Holy Catholic Church’. What’s the relationship between the Episcopal and Catholic Church?” Given the number of these questions I received, I thought I might address it this morning, supposing some of you had the same question.

The first mention of the Apostles’ Creed comes to us from a letter of Saint Ambrose of Milan, the great preacher who taught and baptized Saint Augustine of Hippo. In his letter, Saint Ambrose said, “Let them give credit to the Creed of the Apostles, which the Roman Church has always kept and preserved undefiled.”[1] He wrote this letter around the year 390, indicating that the Apostles’ Creed was already then well known. Already by the third century, this “rule of faith” was considered to be part of apostolic tradition and those seeking the grace of Baptism were required to accept it, as remains the same today. The Apostles’ Creed is, at were, a summary of the Christian faith, that which must be believed in order to receive Baptism and thus become a Christian.

When we speak of the “holy catholic Church,” we use a term first used – so far as we know - by Saint Ignatius of Antioch. The word “Catholic” comes from two Greek words: Kata, meaning “according to,” and holos, meaning “the whole.” Catholic then means “according to the whole,” or, put more simply, “universal.” Around the year A.D. 110, Saint Ignatius said,

Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of the people also be; even as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.[2]

Jesus Christ is present in the Catholic Church both because it is he who established the Church and because it is in the Catholic Church that the Sacrament of his Body and Blood is found.

Now, if a group of Christians does not have the Eucharist, if they have – like the members of the Anglican Communion - taken authority upon themselves and not received it from the Bishop, they are not part of the Catholic Church, despite what they say. Saint Augustine put it this way:

The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his Resurrection, gave it in charge to feed his sheep, down to the present episcopate. And so, lastly, does the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that; though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.[3]

How, then, does one, in this age of so much confusion, determine where the holy catholic Church is to be found? The answer is found in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in which we profess “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” Where each of these four marks are found together, there is the Catholic Church.

First, the Church is one because Christ did not establish a series of Churches, but one, gathered around Saint Peter and his successors, with whom the members of the Catholic Church maintain a spiritual communion.

Second, the Church is holy because she was established by Christ and because she is his Mystical Body. While the Church herself is holy, her members are sinners called to holiness, every one of us. This is why J.R.R. Tolkien spoke of the Church as “the temple of the Holy Spirit dying but living, corrupt but holy, self-reforming and rearising.”[4]

To help her members become saints, the Church has been entrusted with everything necessary for salvation; within the Church, nothing is lacking. What are these means to salvation? The Scriptures; prayer; the Sacraments, especially the valid Eucharist; the apostolic succession; union with the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, who shepherds the Church in the name of Christ. Some of these are present outside of the Catholic Church, but they are not all found together outside of her.

Third, the Church is universal, present throughout the world and not confined to any particular people or geographic location.

Fourth, the Church is apostolic because Christ Jesus founded it on the Apostle Peter with the rest of the Twelve. This foundation upon the Apostles is essential to the nature of the Church for it is through the apostolic succession that the mandate of missionary activity is handed on through the ages in every place. It is the through the apostolic succession that the faith of the Church is handed on through the apostolic tradition in the Church.

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.[5]

Consequently, the Catholic Church – and no other - is the Church of Christ.

Here, it should be remembered that,

according to Catholic doctrine, [the Protestant] Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of [Holy] Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense.[6]

Because they do not possess the four marks of the Church, we refer to them not as Churches but as “ecclesial communities,” as Church-like communities, you might say.

Even so, it is possible to come to salvation within a Protestant denomination, if one has not rejected the truth of the Catholic Church:

It follows that these separated churches and Communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.[7]

Whatever graces are received within the ecclesial communities flows from the pierced side of Christ through the Catholic Church; they contain some, but not all, of the means of salvation.

Now, you might be asking, what does this have to do with Advent? With Saint John the Baptist, the Catholic Church continually cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Luke 3:4). By doing so, she calls all people to “see the salvation of God” (Luke 1:6). Because she is “confident … that the one who began a good work in [us] will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus,” Mother Church calls us to “go forth weeping” with the tears of sincere repentance into the confessional, so that, with our sins forgiven, we “shall come back rejoicing,” “blameless for the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:6; Psalm 126:6; Philippians 1:10). Let us not ignore her call in these Advent days, let us not give in to the secularizing tendencies of these days, but let us prepare our hearts to be received by the Lord and to look upon the radiant glory of his Face, when at last he comes. Amen.

---

[1] Saint Ambrose of Milan, Letter 42.5, to Pope Siricius, ca. 390.

[2] Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Smyrnaeans, 8.

[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Against the Letter of Mani Called “The Foundation,” 4.5. In Jimmy Akin, The Father’s Know Best: Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2010), 180.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 250, To Michael Tolkien, 1 November 1963. In Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 339.

[5] Lumen gentium, 8.

[6] “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church,” Response to Question Five.

[7] Unitatis redintegratio, 3.4.

The Catholic Church is not simply one church among many

My heart breaks whenever I hear of a Catholic who has walked away from the Church to join a Protestant denomination, regardless of their reason. Many people do not understand why, because they view the Catholic Church simply as one church among many, but this is not so.

Father Barron explains it thus:

More apologetics

Over at Unam Sanctam, Andrew's back at it with another apologietic post, this time on the Church herself.

Homily - 24 August 2008

Today, Peter confesses Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” and Jesus gives him “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” with the power to “bind” and to “loose” (Matthew 16:16, 19-20).

To recognize Jesus as the Messiah is to acknowledge the truth of the words announced to Mary:

He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:32-33).

Jesus’ kingdom, then, is the Kingdom of David, Israel.

In the first reading the Lord says to Shebna, then Master of the Palace, “I will throw you down from your office” because he has become a “disgrace to [his] master’s house” (Isaiah 22:19, 18).

The Master of the Palace was the highest official in the Kingdom of Israel. He served in the capacity of what might be called a Regent, a Prime Minister, or a Vizier, as Joseph was in the land of Egypt (cf. Genesis 41:40). There was no one above the Master of the Palace but the King himself.

The King entrusted his own authority to his Master of the Palace, which is why “when he opens, no one shall shut, when he shuts, no one shall open” (Isaiah 22:22). The Master of the Palace acted in the name of the King and possessed the King’s authority. To disobey him was to disobey the King.

The Lord God pulled Shebna down from his office as Master of the Palace (cf. Isaiah 22:19) because he looked to the Pharaoh of Egypt for deliverance from Sennacherib, King of Assyria. Shebna trusted in mere men and did not rely on the help of the Lord God; this is his disgrace.

Taking from Shebna his robe, his sash and his authority the Lord God entrusted them to Eliakim, making him the new Master of the Palace. The Lord further placed upon Eliakim “the key of the House of David” (Isaiah 22:22).

But what has this to do with Peter? Jesus himself told Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom does not belong to this world” (John 18:36). Yet, he sent the Apostles in his name, telling them to announce, “The kingdom of God is at hand for you” (Luke 10:9).

Yes, the kingdom of Jesus is not an earthly, temporal kingdom. It is an eternal kingdom, a kingdom without end, one not bound by time and place. His kingdom, his reign, extends beyond that of Israel.

The Lord first made his covenant with Israel to foreshadow the covenant he would make with all of humanity. In the fullness of time, the Son of God sealed “the new and everlasting covenant” with the new Israel in his own blood. Through his appointment of the Twelve Apostles, Jesus makes clear that “the definitive time has arrived in which to constitute the new People of God, the people of the twelve tribes, which now becomes a universal people, his Church.”[1] It is the Church, founded upon the rock of Peter, which is the new Israel.

We see, then, in this passage from Saint Matthew’s Gospel, that Jesus uses three symbols regarding his Church:

Peter will be the rocky foundation on which he will build the edifice of the Church; he will have the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to open or close it to people as he sees fit; lastly, he will be able to bind or to loose, in the sense of establishing or prohibiting whatever he deems necessary for the life of the Church. It is always Christ’s Church, not Peter’s.[2]

Peter did not make the Church; he received it from Christ Jesus. Peter did not create his faith; he received it from the Father. Peter is not free to do with the Church whatever he wishes, but only what is the will of the Lord. Peter is, as it were, not the King but the Master of the Palace; Peter speaks not in his own name, but in the name of Jesus Christ.

It was always thus with Peter and it has been thus with his successors, the Bishops of Rome, down to our present Holy Father, gloriously reigning, Pope Benedict XVI. As it is for the Popes, so it is for the Bishops and priests, as well. We speak not in our name, but in the name of Jesus Christ.

There is a valuable lesson for us in this: the Church is not ours to fashion as we wish, nor is the faith ours from which we can pick and choose. The Church is Christ’s and the task of the Pope, together with the Bishops and their priests, is to preserve the Church and to hand on the faith received from the Father. We see this symbolized in the vestments a priest wears for the celebration of the Holy Mass. Just as the Master of Palace was clothed in robes and girded with a sash, so are the priests of the New Covenant (cf. Isaiah 22:21).

A priest first puts on an amice, a rectangular cloth that covers the collar of his shirt or cassock. It hides his “street clothes” and symbolizes the helmet of salvation (cf. Ephesians 6:17). It reminds him that what he is about is not ordinary and is far from routine.

A priest then puts on an alb, a long, white robe that covers his body from his neck to his feet. It symbolizes the garment first received in Baptism when each of the baptized is made a new creation and is welcomed into the life of the Church. When putting on the alb, the priest recalls that he, with all of the baptized, has been clothed in Christ (cf. Galatians 3:27).

Next he wraps a cincture around his waist, a rope, the symbol of celibacy, freely accepted for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

He then places a stole around his neck, the symbol of his authority as a priest of Jesus Christ, as one who speaks in his name and acts in his person.

Over all these vestments he places the chasuble, the symbol of the love of Christ which is to cover all things (cf. Colossians 3:14).

All of these sacred vestments serve to depersonalize the priest; it is not the individual priest that matters, but Christ. By diminishing his personality we see not the individual priest but Christ, who is sacramentally present in him.

Through the sacred vestments we are reminded that it is not my Church or our Church, but Christ’s Church, which he entrusted to Peter and to his successors. Let each of us, then, humbly look to the Successor of Saint Peter and hear in his voice the voice of Christ. Amen.

[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Wednesday Audience, 15 March 2006.
[2] Ibid., 7 June 2006.

On church buildings

Phil Lawler has an excellent reflection on the importance and meaning of church buildings. He writes:

You might say that it's only a building, made of ordinary stone-- however artfully crafted. You'd be half right. It is a building, but not only a building. A church is never only a building. It is a sacred space.

Even in the humblest little parish church, the Eucharist is celebrated. People are baptized, confirmed, married, and mourned; perhaps they are buried in an adjoining graveyard. Catholics can trace their own spiritual histories through their parish churches, and some can boast that many generations of their ancestors were baptized and married in the same building.

Something precious is lost, therefore, whenever any church is closed. The Church is walking away from some precious heritage, sealing off access to memories that can never be replaced. A parish is a Christian community with its own spiritual life, uniting different families and even different generations. Those bonds are severed when the parish is closed. [more]

What is a church?

I have grown tired of hearing people of good will claim time and time again that a church building is nothing more than a place where the Church gathers.

I am certain that I am not the only person upset with these claims so I thought I might reflect on the nature of a church building.

There is some truth to these claims because “the church building houses the community of the baptized as it gathers to celebrate the sacred liturgy” (Built of Living Stones, 46).

However, quite contrary of the claims of those with too much of an emphasis on the earthly dimension of a church building, the Catechism of the Catholic Church succinctly teaches: “These visible churches are not simply gathering places but signify and make visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with men reconciled and united in Christ” (1180).

While it is true that the Church is the People of God journeying on their pilgrim way to the New and Heavenly Jerusalem, it is also true that “From early times the name ‘church’ has also been given to the building in which the Christian community gathers to hear the word of God, to pray together, to celebrate the sacraments, and to participate in the eucharist” (Ceremonial of Bishops, 864).

Furthermore, “it is in these churches that the Church celebrates public worship to the glory of the Holy Trinity, hears the word of God and signs his praise, lifts up her prayer, and offers the sacrifice of Christ sacramentally present in the midst of the assembly. These churches are also places of recollection and personal prayer” (CCC 1199).

We often enter a church building without much thought. We ought to be more careful and recognize that “to enter into the house of God, we must cross a threshold, which symbolizes passing from the world wounded by sin to the world of the new Life to which all men are called. The visible church is a symbol of the Father’s house toward which the People of God is journeying and where the Father ‘will wipe every tear from their eyes’” (CCC 1186).

If there should remain any doubt that the church building is much more than a simple roof over our heads, let us look at the Code of Canon Law: “By the term church is understood a sacred building designated for divine worship to which the faithful have the right of entry for the exercise, especially the public exercise, of divine worship” (Canon 1214). The church building, then, is the place to encounter God because “That building is both the house of God on earth (domus Dei) and a house fit for the prayers of the saints (domus ecclesiae)” (Built of Living Stones, 16).

Looking at many of the churches built under the “gathering space” or the “worship space” mentality, one would be very hard pressed to identity such a building as “the dwelling of God with men.” One might much more readily recognize either a theatre or a living room than the house of God or the house of the Church.

It must not be forgotten that, “besides its primary role of providing a suitable place for the celebration of the liturgical rites, the church building also offers a place to which individuals may to pray in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and in which groups of the faithful may gather for a rich variety of devotions expressive of the faith life of a given culture, region, or ethnic community” (Built of Living Stones, 47).

How then does a church show forth the reality of the God who dwells among his people? The law of the Church reminds us that “our visible churches, holy places, are images of the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, toward which we are making our way on pilgrimage” (CCC 1198). “As visible constructions, churches are signs of the pilgrim church on earth; they are images that proclaim the heavenly Jerusalem, places in which are actualized the mystery of the communion between God and man” (Built of Living Stones, 50). As such, “the church building is a sign and reminder of the immanence and transcendence of God – who chose to dwell among us and whose presence cannot be contained or limited to any single place” (Built of Living Stones, 50).

If the actual constructions themselves are to foster this awareness of the faithful, they must be truly and truly beautiful; that is, they must show forth the ontological reality of the building, namely, the Heavenly Jerusalem. If there is any doubt what this New City looks like, consult the book of Revelation.

A very simple question might well be posed to those who consider the church building as nothing more than a place for the Church to gather: “If what you say is true, why does the Church go through such great efforts to dedicate new church buildings, and why does the Church insist that such building be, at the very least, blessed if not dedicated?”

Should there be any doubt that a church building should dedicated, you might point them in the direction of the Ceremonial of Bishops: “When the building of a new church begins, it is desirable to celebrate a rite to ask God’s blessing for the success of the work and to remind the people that the structure built of stone will be a visible sign of the living Church, God’s building that is formed of the people themselves” (840).

Here they might well latch onto that last phrase. If they do, remind them that we are sacramental people (we are Catholic). It is fitting, then, that we erect buildings to the glory and worship of God.

What does it mean to "subsistit in"?

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council declared, in the dogmatic constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (8), that

Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, as an entity with visible delineation (9*) through which He communicated truth and grace to all. But, the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element.(10*) For this reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word. As the assumed nature inseparably united to Him, serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible social structure of the Church serve the Spirit of Christ, who vivifies it, in the building up of the body.(73) (11*)

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, (12*) which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd,(74) and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority,(75) which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth".(76) 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,(13*) 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.

The parenthetical numbers represent footnotes in the original text not here copied.

Since the promulgation of this text in 1964 no little debate has ensued as to the meaning of the phrase "subsists in the Catholic Church." Some have claimed the Catholic Church is the one Church of Christ and others have claimed that Christ did not intend to found a Church at all; other answers have of course also fallen in between the two.

Today, His Emminence William Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued five "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," seeking to clarify the debate.

Over these past four decades many have claimed that the Second Vatican Council changed the teachings of the Church and altered the faith. Correcting this view, Cardinal Levada quotes the eloquent words of the Holy Father Paul VI:

There is no better comment to make than to say that this promulgation really changes nothing of the traditional doctrine. What Christ willed, we also will. What was, still is. What the Church has taught down through the centuries, we also teach. In simple terms that which was assumed, is now explicit; that which was uncertain, is now clarified; that which was meditated upon, discussed and sometimes argued over, is now put together in one clear formulation.

Do have a read of the document. It will help to clarify much and, though it will likely receive little media attention, it is at least as important a document as Summorum Pontificum.

Mother Church

My father died when I was only seven years old, just a month and a half shy of my eighth birthday. In my agony, despair and confusion I cried out to God who heard my cry. He answered none of my questions but called me to himself, to trust him, to follow him, to love him.

As I continued questioning him I slowly came to know him and to know his love. And ever so slowly I began to love him in return. I came to know him in a most profound way as Father.

My mother died when I was only nine years old, just over a month shy of my tenth birthday. Again in my agony, despair and confusion I cried out to God who again heard my cry. He again answered none of my questions but called me to himself and led me to his Church.

In the Church, most profoundly at St. John the Baptist parish, I came to know the Church truly as Holy Mother Church. Mother Church gave to me all that she had to give and I in turn have given her all that I have to give.

After Mom and Dad’s deaths, most every evening I would go outside and stand in the driveway. Looking out toward the West, I saw what I thought was a star (it was actually the planet Venus but that, really, is irrelevant). Many an evening I said:

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight:
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have this wish I wish tonight.

Only this morning did it fully occur to me that my prayer to the Lord has been fulfilled. What I wished for every night – what I prayed for – was to have my parents returned to me; I wanted, more than anything in the world, to see them, to hear their voices and to feel their warm embrace.

It is the strangest thing, the most unexpected and most profound. The most intimate, too. My earthly parents are dead, still with me I am confident in the Communion of Saints, but this is of little comfort to a young boy.

The Lord did indeed give my parents to me; he gave me Himself as my Father and the Church as my Mother. The Lord still works marvels for us; we are glad indeed!