Living in Communio and the Life to Come
This week has been one very rich in those whom we have commemorated.
Thus the church calendar had us celebrating both the twelfth century Benedictine Abbess and polymath Hildegard von Bingen one day and the Anglican High Church divine, Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey the next. Then, just today, we have commended to God the soul of our long standing parishioner, Richard Corrieri in a Solemn Mass of the Resurrection.
In very different ways, each of these commemorations have given further reason to dwell once more upon the sacred and highly theological mystery that is the Church of God. A point I touched upon when thanking Bishop Whitworth on the occasion of her recent Visitation to the parish when I referenced our Koinonia in ecclesia. In the background I had in mind the way recent decades have engaged with the Latin cognate of koinonia, namely communio.
All of this pertains to the essence of the Church, which is both a true theological mystery and a fundamental part of the transcendental reality of salvation —which is revealed for all and becomes a reality as the body of Christ –which is to say the company of all faithful believers.
The Second Vatican Council in one of its most celebrated documents entitled Lumen Gentium the Constitution on the Church, reflected extensively on this mystery from three standpoints in respect of communio where
- “Communio means participation in the divine life to which we are called by the eternal father. This participation is nothing other than the personal communion of humanity with God; it is in this relationship that the dignity and truth of humanity are rooted.
- The communio which is the aim of the entire history of salvation is uniquely personified in history through Jesus Christ. He is true God and true man in one person. Jesus Christ is thus the epitome of all communio between God and man.
- What happened once and for all in Jesus Christ is continued and spread throughout the world through the Holy Spirit, who lives within the Church and the hearts of the faithful. Through the Holy Spirit, the Church is therefore united in communio with God and the fellowship of all the different parts of the church with each other.”
In a later reflection on this document, His Eminence Walter, Cardinal Kasper, summarised what was being said in terms of understanding the mystery of the church to consist in the access we have to the Father in the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, so that we may share in God’s divine nature. This communio of the church is thus made possible and sustained through the trinitarian communio of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This means that in accord with the perspective to the early church father and bishop, Cyprian, the church can even be said to participate in the trinitarian communio itself. It us thus, an icon of the community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
All of this brings out the many layers and ecclesiological richness of what it means to be in communio, all of which are related – but subsidiary– to our understanding of the nature of God.
We know that the object and goal (telos) of faith is God alone and communion with him (in the triune reality) above all else. This entails, as Kasper observed, that since the church itself is not God, questioning about “the Church’s structure ceases to seem an end in itself” as was “reflected in the findings of the Anglican-Roman Catholic commissions. [where] For example, it is stated in the Final Report of 1982: “Union with God in Christ Jesus through the Spirit is “the heart of Christian Koinonia” (No. 5). Here the main concern is also not structure but sharing in the one and the same divine reality which is the basis for fellowship among men. “Koinonia with one another is entailed by our koinonia with God in Christ. This is the mystery of the Church” an understanding which can be of help when we encounter lower level differences and disagreement.
Cardinal Kasper was closely involved in ecumenical discussions between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion of which he observed that, “No other church family has such a deep sense of being communion as the Anglican community.” But he added that, “Realising a plural unity is, for Anglicanism, a task which is not only confined to doctrine. In its structure Anglicanism also constitutes a unity formed out of the diversity of independent church provinces, each with its own different character.”
Here there is an important perspective that is highly and characteristically Catholic both for those of us who are Anglo-Catholic as well as those who are Roman Catholic.
Kasper again has written in a most helpful way upon this when he observed that, “Alongside the collegial, conciliar and synodal responsibility for the Church, personal responsibility is an essential requirement. For, just as each individual local church could not exist if the bishop did not serve the unity of the Church, the unity of the universal Church also needs to be ministered to. Inherent in the office of bishop is a duty towards the unity of the Church, which is performed within the local church, but is also invested with an authority from beyond the local church. This dynamic “within yet beyond” in the relationship between office and church is now seen by most churches as being constitutive and ius divinum.”
On the Catholic side, it must of course be seen that the concrete form of the Petrine ministry has changed throughout the centuries and could change again in the future. While the Roman Catholic church has of course an especial and distinctive concern for its particular view of the Petrine ministry (which the Oriental, Orthodox Churches as well as the Anglican Communion not to mention all Reformed churches view differently) there is also a recognition which we can all share, when Kasper adds that, “If unity is to be furthered, legitimate freedom in the Church must also be furthered” and that. “Understanding the Church as communio more deeply, living it in a better way and fulfilling it anew is more than just a reforming programme within the Church. Church as communio is a message, a promise for the people and the world of today. The Church does not exist just for its own sake. Especially in present times, in which traditional social forms—not least the family-are threatening to disintegrate, in which a worrying trend of individualism is threatening to spread out and take root in the Western world, churches are challenged to make their communio established by God tangible and effective in a world which is threatening to fall apart. More than ever before, in the future Christians will only be heard when they raise their voices together. Only together can they contribute in forming a more just and more peaceful world and to fellowship among nations. Church as communio is more than a programme of the Church; it is an offer for the world—for a more peaceful world.
If all this sounds remote and abstract it really is not for each and every one of us who is committed to follow Christ is also committed seeking and living out the fullest possible communio ourselves. In words from my homily at the Mass of the Resurrection celebrated today for Richard Corrieri:
That journey begins for each of us in our entry to the Church in Holy baptism which is the sign, means and pledge of that new birth in us. We are baptized unto the death of Christ, that we might share his resurrection and thus is the seed of Christ’s risen life sown in us. But is only a beginning, for there must be striving and straining for’those things which are above.’
In the journey of sanctification and soul-making which this life must be, there must be a conforming of our minds and hearts to the infinite and everlasting charity of God — something shown to us in the example of the dying of our saviour himself that preceded his Resurrection. ‘
That is the message of Easter and the Resurrection – which is a message of transformation: a transformation far beyond imagining as it comes to eventual completion in the life to come. For our true citizenship is in heaven in the ultimate fullness of communio with our saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: ‘who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”
It is to that eternal life of the world to come in Christ, that we commend our brother Richard Corrieri.