November 21, 2004

Participation in the Church: belonging to the Risen Christ

 

Baptism and faith, the bases of our participating in the Church, are to lead us to sanctity. What makes a saint? Holiness. What is holiness? “The holiness of God is the inaccessible center of his eternal mystery.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2809). In other words, holiness is what makes God to be God; and to be a saint is to live God’s own life, to be one with God, to the extent possible for a creature of God, who remains always infinitely other than any of his creatures. Holiness is in and of God, because God is God.

God as a term in our language means many things to many different people. Some believe in a personal God; others believe in a God who is a spiritual “force” or, even less, just a name for everything that we value as human beings. How can we come to know the true “face” of God? We believe that God made human beings in his own image and likeness, destined to share in the life of God. When we see another human being, therefore, we catch a glimpse of God’s face.

Yet one who is “like us in all things but sin,” Jesus, is the true human face of God. God communicates himself definitively and completely in Christ and in the sending of the Holy Spirit in an outpouring of holiness. The God who in himself is immeasurably beyond, completely different, has become near in the son of Mary. Jesus shows us, through his self-sacrifice for our salvation, that God is love. “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” (1 Jn. 4: 16) Holiness is in Christ because he is, from all eternity, God’s only-begotten son.

The holiness of God in us, God’s life and love in us, is traditionally called “grace.” Because it is God’s life in us, grace sanctifies us; it makes us holy. The Blessed Virgin Mary is “full of Grace.” Grace is “amazing,” as the hymn has it, because it takes us from being a created image of God to being his sons and daughters, his friends. The Church encourages us to live grace-filled lives, free of sin and all impurity of body and spirit, lives governed only by love. Holiness is not our own achievement, attained only by spiritual discipline or moral effort. Holiness is a gift we receive, a grace. It is utterly of God, coming to us through the humanity of Christ. Each of us in union with Christ can call God “Father;” we receive the Holy Spirit, who breathes into us the love of God, bringing us together as the people of God, the body of Christ. Holiness is in us because we are in Christ.

Christ himself is described in the New Testament as “the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature.” (Hebrews 1:3) In baptism one is marked with the sign of Christ, shaped inwardly in his likeness, “stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit.” (Eph. 1:13) That Spirit-given baptismal “character” marks us with a permanent configuration to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, which requires of us the kind of life that is permeated by the holiness that has touched us. It is to our utter shame and ultimate damnation when we sin and, losing sanctifying grace, break with the transforming love of God.

Christ is head of his body, the Church. Christ’s holiness comes to us through the Church. Speaking of the Church, the Second Vatican Council taught: “Christ joined her to himself as his body and endowed her with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God.” (Lumen gentium, 39) How can the Church be holy when she is full of sinners? Speaking of “Holy Mother Church” is harder at a time when the failings and sins of her leaders and members are given such wide publicity. Yet the holiness the Church gives us as our mother is not her own; it is God’s gift. The faults of us who belong to the Church do not diminish the holiness of Christ’s gifts to his people. “The great glory of the Church is being holy with sinful members.” (Jacques Maritain) The Church is holy, despite the sinners in her midst, because she herself has no other life but the life of grace. Holiness is in the Church because she is the body of Christ.

If we give ourselves up to what Christ is doing to and for us, we begin to see with the eyes of Christ, to know others and ourselves at a different level. We begin to love each moment of our lives and to do entirely commonplace acts for God and with God, by his grace and power. There are, of course, social consequences to living holy lives. Holiness transforms the world, and the very mission of the Church is to make the world holy while we wait for Christ to return in glory.

Holiness is in the world because the Church is in the world.

The Church always ends the liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King. This feast tells us that Christ, risen from the dead, is sovereign ruler of all the universe, of heaven and earth. It tells us as well that his kingship will become fully visible at the end of time, when he returns to judge the living and the dead at the final resurrection. Through baptism and faith, we belong to Christ and to his body, the Church. In the end, everyone saved will be holy, for God will be “all in all.” In the meantime, we live with the knowledge that we are sinners and with the hope that we are on the way to becoming saints through participating in the life of the Church, which is Christ’s kingdom made present here and now.

Holiness is what God wants for us. Holiness is what Christ won for us. Holiness marks the lives of the saints, who love and pray for one another. Holiness is what I pray each Catholic who participates in this local Church, the Archdiocese of Chicago, will desire above all, even as I pray that my own deepest desire be for sanctity. God bless you.

 

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

CARDINAL'S COLUMN Archive

---