24th Sunday after Pentecost 15.11.09 The Church (Readings: 6th Sunday after Epiphany)
When Our Lord established the Church He never meant that the Church would just blend in with the surrounding society, becoming a part of it only, even less a part which people would be free to reject or ignore.
What He meant was that the Church would take over the whole world, and that everyone in the world would be in the Church.
In practice because people largely ignore or reject the truth of the Gospel, the Church is seen as an option and even a despised option. Even the people who choose the Church are deceived by what happens. They come to accept as normal the view that the church is just part of the world. One even hears prayers asking that the Church would take its place as part of the world community and work with all other people of good will to establish peace, justice and the like...Lord, hear us!
In this view we are just one little group that does things while a lot of other people do other things and we pitch in with them. We can indeed work with others sometimes, for example on relieving poverty. But it is unthinkable that we can let people see the Church as a sort of club which you might or might not join.
In fact the Church permeates the whole of reality, like the leaven in the bread, or like the tree that is so big its branches cover the whole world Or like Mount Zion the tallest mountain, to which the smaller mountains look and to which all people hasten.
As Christ is King of all, so His kingdom, embodied in the Church, stretches to all corners of the earth – not only geographically, but culturally, morally, in authority and practice.
In advertising the line is always: there is no other hotel you would stay, no other car you would drive, no other drink you would drink... besides this one.
We say this too: there is no other body you could dream of belonging to in preference to the Church. We are not just the best but the only. There is no real choice.
This is the Body of Christ; there is no other place you will find Him like here. You will find aspects of Him elsewhere but even those things will only lead you back here.
(We are not saying the people are better but the place is better, so we are not guilty of arrogance here.)
Think of the apostles and how they preached. They did not preach that they had come to listen, or dialogue, but to offer something they possessed – faith in Jesus Christ. Only in this name can you be healed and saved. There is no other Name.
At times we can cooperate with ‘people of goodwill’. But many times we are right against the public opinion on abortion, euthanasia, homosexual ‘marriage’, sexual morality, the reality of hell and judgment, the need to confess sins etc. It is up to them to agree with us. It takes a lot of courage for a minority to say to the majority, You are wrong. They will laugh at us and even kill us. They have already.
It is tempting to say instead, Isn’t it wonderful to live in a country that allows everyone to have different views?
We must be against the tide, unapologetic. Christ cannot be put under a bushel, cannot be diluted, and must not be.
We proclaim Him to the world but first to ourselves. Many Catholics do not believe more than a fraction of the content of our faith nor have any intention of spreading the faith to others. A huge amount of catechising and evangelising in our own Church is needed, let alone the whole world.
Despite the considerable limitations of Catholics as people, the Church has grown to great size and endured. That is the miraculous element at work. We must live up to the privilege of being in this special place and not disgrace Our Lord by selling Him short to the world.
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