We have been given various images of the Church which help us to understand what it means to be Christian and Catholic. One such image is that of the Church as the Barque of Peter, in which we are carried through the choppy waters of this world with the assurance that, as long as we hold tight and remain on board, then we shall never be shipwrecked, fiercely though the waves and storms might crash.
Another image is that of the Church as the Bride of Christ. This emphasises the indissolubility of the union between Our Lord and His Church, which was born mystically from the wound in His side on the Cross, just as Eve was formed from the side of Adam in Genesis.
But perhaps the most informative image of the Church, and the one that gives us the deepest understanding of how we are made members of the Church and how we live in the Church, is to be found in the Epistles of St Paul, who tells us that the Church is the Body of Christ. We are incorporated into that Body as living members in our Baptism.
This divinely inspired analogy furnishes us with rich material for reflection. The human body is made of a finely balanced concoction of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, with smaller amounts of potassium, sulphur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium. Break us down into our basic physical components and separate us into test tubes and we each end up resembling one of those chemistry sets that as children we all asked for at Christmas so that we could construct home-made explosives in our parents’ attics.
What binds all of those chemicals and minerals into a single functioning organism is that principle of life which we call the soul. And what makes us a human person is a rational, soul, which not only gives us physical life, but which is spiritual and immortal.
When Saint Paul says that we are members of the Body of Christ, he means that we are incorporated into Christ just as completely as our heart, our brain and our eyes are incorporated into us, by the principle of life which makes us not just a pile of chemicals but a unified living organism. The principle of life that binds the members of the Church into one Body is supernatural. It is Sanctifying Grace – the Life of Our Risen Saviour Himself, poured into our hearts in Baptism. Our Lord is the Head of this Mystical Body to which we belong. This Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church are one and the same thing.
If you want to read more about this, there is a magnificent encyclical called Mystici Corporis Christi which was published in 1943, during the Second World War, by His Holiness Pope Pius XII. It is written with great clarity and coherence, and is freely available online, including on the Vatican website (Vatican.va).
This teaching that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ has wonderful implications. In a human body, our cells are constantly dying and being replaced, so that by the end of a long life, most of our cells will have died and been replaced several times; yet we remain the same person because, although the physical material of our body might have changed, we retain a continuity of identity and memory.
Likewise in the Church, the Faithful come and they go, and all the while the Church retains Her own identity and Her own memory. There have been roughly fifty generations of the human race since the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Our Lord. And yet the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are as fresh in the Church's memory as if they happened within the last week. Indeed, at Holy Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present on the altar during the words of Consecration, and Our Lord feeds us with His Risen Living Body in Holy Communion. We are fed with His Body so that we might be made ever-stronger members of His Mystical Body, the Church. He transforms bread into His own Flesh so that when we consume that Flesh, we are in turn transformed more perfectly into His likeness. It is through this sanctification that the Church on earth is made strong and holy.
This is a supernatural reality of which we must never lose sight. When we look at the Church, we see that She has many problems and wounds. Witnessing this, and living through these problems – especially when so many of them seem to be self-inflicted – it is easy to become hypercritical. But the spirit of hypercriticism soon dissipates our energy, so that we end up becoming a part of the problem, rather than a solution to the malaise. This can only be a victory for the devil, who aims to neutralise our evangelical zeal by dragging us down into bitterness, apathy and despair. Let us not give him any satisfaction. There is actually something very practical and positive that we can all do for the Church, and this is to say yes, in the depth of our hearts, to the call to discipleship and to sanctification that we all received in our Baptism.
A body is only as strong and healthy as its individual organs, limbs and cells. If we really want to help the Church, then we should look to our own spiritual health. So yes, in many ways the Church on earth is in a frightful mess. But if we make sure that we are healthy, functioning cells in the Mystical Body of Christ, then we shall do all in our power, by God's grace, to contribute to the restoration and the healing of this body. And we shall then participate in the full glory of the Mystical Body of Christ forever in Heaven, where the Church Militant on earth and the Church Suffering in Purgatory will one day be subsumed into the Church Triumphant for eternity.
Father Julian Large