Week 9: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church (¶748-975)

“The Kingdom”
By R. S. Thomas

It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.

1. The Trinity and the Church

The Church is connected to each of the three Persons of the Trinity. According to the Catechism, the Church is “born in the Father’s heart,” is “instituted by Christ Jesus,” and is finally revealed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit (¶759, 763, 767). Later, the Catechism speaks of the Church as (1) the People of God, (2) the Body of Christ, and (3) the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Here again we see the Trinity reflected in the Church’s identity.

2. The Marks of the Church

2.1. Visible and Invisible (¶771): The Church is both visible and invisible, because while she is “in history,” she also transcends history. The combination of visibility and invisibility means that the Church is both a social institution and a spiritual community. As a social institution, the Church is hierarchically structured with physical buildings and social orders. In its visibility, then, the Church is made up of many individual congregations who all join in one liturgy and share in the basic physical tasks of evangelization, feeding the hungry, and carrying on the work of the Apostles, for example. As a spiritual community, the Church is bound together by the Spirit in the person of Jesus Christ. The invisible Church is united in both time and space. While we commune physically with those who are in our immediate community, we commune spiritually with those who are on the other side of the world as well as with those who have already died and those who have yet to be born. The Church, as the Catechism tells us, “is essentially both human and divine, visible but endowed with invisible realities.”

2.2. One (¶813-22): The Church is one because God is one. The oneness or unity of the Church is truly and primarily a mark of the visible Catholic Church, but it is also a spiritual reality which includes those who have been incorporated into Christ through Baptism. While the Church condemns past division, she also celebrates the common faith in Christ.

2.3. Holy (¶823-29): The Church is holy because God is holy. The Church is holy by being sanctified in Christ and by living in love. The holiness of the Church does not mean, however, that those in the Church are not still sinners, and in this sense we have to distinguish between the Church as pilgrim and the Church as the final eschatological Kingdom, represented by Mary.

2.4. Catholic (¶830-56): The Church is catholic because God is catholic. The word “catholic” means “universal,” but it has a particular nuance: whereas “universal” suggests spreading out, “catholic” suggests gathering together. Universal suggests the spread of something everywhere; catholic suggests the connection of all things to a particular center. Both words thus identify the nature of the Church: she is sent out to the whole of the human race, but she then gathers them together and binds them to a specific center, namely, Jesus Christ.

2.5. Apostolic (¶857-65): The Church is apostolic because God is apostolic and has founded the Church on Christ’s apostles. Jesus is Father’s Apostle (¶858), who then instituted human apostles to carry on his mission of reconciliation through the proclamation of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments.

2.6. Sacrament of Union and Unity (¶774-76): A “sacrament” is a visible sign and instrument of an invisible mystery. Christ himself is the primary sacrament, whose saving work is made present through the sacraments of the Church. But the Church herself is a sacrament, in that she is the sign and instruments of our union with god and our unity together as the human race. The Church binds us together and binds us to God, and thus she is the sacrament of God’s invisible grace.

3. The Relation Between Christ and the Church

3.1. Prophet, Priest, and King (¶783-86, 901-13)

3.2. Body and Bride of Christ (¶790-96)

3.3. The Missionary God and the Missionary Church (¶849-55)

4. The Relation Between Mary and the Church

4.1. Mary the Mother of the Church (¶964-70)

4.2. Mary the Icon of the Church (¶972)

5. The Relation Between the Church and the World

5.1. The Church and Other Religions (¶836-44)

5.2. The Call to Evangelism (¶846-48)

5.3. The Church and the World’s Future (¶845)

Week 8: The Holy Spirit—The Power of New Life (¶683-747)

1. “On the Holy Spirit”
By Scott Cairns

If, upon taking up this or any scripture,
or upon lifting your one good eye to inspect
the faintly green expanse of field already
putting forth its late winter gauze of grasses,

you come to suspect a hushed conversation
under way, you may also find sufficient grounds
to suspect that difficult disposition
we call the Ghost, river or thread drawn through us,

which, rippled as any taut rope might be, lifts
or drops us as if riding a wave, and which fends
off, for brief duration, our dense encumberment
—this flesh and its confusions—if not completely,

if only enough that the burdens be felt, just
shy of crushing us.


2. The Self-Effacing Spirit

While the Father and the Son are both very “public” persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is “self-effacing.” Whereas the Father and the Son call attention to themselves, so to speak, the Spirit calls our attention away from himself and toward the Son. Like John the Baptist, the Spirit points away from himself to the person of Jesus Christ. The Spirit does not speak about himself but about the Word made flesh. But the Spirit’s self-effacement is also the occasion for the Spirit’s ubiquity. The Spirit is ever-present as the one who directs us to Christ and, through Christ, to the Father. The Spirit is involved in every dimension and aspect of the gospel—from creation to Israel to the prophets to Christ to the Church to the new creation—and we see this ubiquity reflected in the Spirit’s presence throughout the Catechism. Like a stagehand who keeps a theater running, the Spirit is essential to the drama of salvation, though never as the main actor on the stage.

3. The Work of the Spirit

The Spirit’s work falls into the following broad categories:

(1) preparation,
(2) revelation,
(3) communication,
(4) participation,
(5) actualization, and
(6) consummation.

4. The Trinitarian Mission of God

St. Irenaeus writes: “For those who bear God’s Spirit are led to the Word, that is, to the Son, and the Son presents them to the Father, and the Father confers incorruptibility on them. And it is impossible to see God’s Son without the Spirit, and no one can approach the Father without the Son, for the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of God’s Son is obtained through the Holy Spirit.” (¶683)