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Sunday 26 (B): Read - Num: 11,24-30;
Mk: 9,38-48
St. Ignatius of Antioch
writes: “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church” (Letter to the Smyrnians, 8, 2). This truth
is the result of the Incarnation whereby Jesus unites inseparably in Himself the Godhead and the whole of humanity. By the
acts of the Redemption, Jesus makes present in the Catholic Church the fullness of the means to salvation. That is the first sense of the name Catholic. She is Catholic in a second sense by the fact that She is sent on mission to the ends of the earth in order to “seek the
return of all humanity and all its goods under Christ the Head in the unity of His Spirit” (Lumen Gentium 13,2).
But who belongs to the Catholic Church? Vatican II teaches: “All men are called to this catholic unity of the
People of God … And to it, in different ways, they belong or are ordered” (Lumen Gentium, 13,1). Fully incorporated into the Catholic Church are those who accept the fullness of Her means of salvation and
organization. But non-Catholic Christians also belong to Her in a weaker and broader sense, in that they are “ordered to” the Catholic Church in differing ways and degrees. Vatican II also teaches that the Jews
and the Muslims are related to the People of God in various ways: these are the “religions of the Book” which
accept the same God as we do, although they do not accept the dogma of the Blessed Trinity or that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God.
More mysterious still is how other human beings who belong to none of the above
are related to the Catholic Church. Regarding religions other than those already mentioned, the Church recognizes in
them a “search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since He gives life and breath to all
things, and wants all men to be saved” (Catechism, 843). To those individuals who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ or his Church, yet who seek Him with a sincere heart and, moved
by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience, salvation is also
possible (Lumen Gentium 16). The Council teaches that it is God Himself who leads such people to that faith without which
it is impossible to please Him (Ad Gentes, 7), even although they may not articulate it consciously or profess it within
the institutional Church.
When, therefore, we say that there is “no salvation outside the Church”, and that faith is necessary to
be saved, we are not saying that God does not want to save all men. God’s
will is indeed for all to be saved in Christ, understood in the fullness of His reality. And what is that fullness?
It is Christ united, one flesh and one Spirit, in the eternal marriage covenant, with
His Church. Our difficulty in grasping how someone can be saved who does not know Christ in this way is probably due to
our idea of the Church. All too often we limit the Church within the confines
of Her visible, institutional reality. We circumscribe the Church in a self-contained unit within the society we perceive
around us and in the world. While this dimension of the Church is real, we would be mistaken if we limited Her
deepest reality only to that visible dimension. The Church needs to be understood as more: viz. in Her mystical and inner
life as the Spouse of Christ, united inseparably in Her very foundations to the humanity and divinity of the Savior and
animated by the Holy Spirit. Christ and His Spirit are not “constrained”
by the visible institutions of the Church, even although, by Their own preference, They work through them. Any work that
Jesus does in the Spirit in what appears to be outside
the Church, is in fact not outside the Church, because, to paraphrase Ignatius,
wherever Christ and His Spirit are, the Church is necessarily also present there, not the Church in the visible confines of Her institutions, but the Church in Her mystical oneness with Jesus in the Spirit.
Still, the work of Jesus and of the Church united to Him which takes place outside of the visible Church is nevertheless ordered
to that visible Church. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.845) puts it: “The Church is the place where humanity
must rediscover its unity and salvation.” Think of a living flame: the flame itself is contained within the limits of
its own shape, but its heat and light reach beyond those limits. The institutional Church is that flame yet the heat and light
of its charity and truth, of the Spirit and the Incarnate Word, reach and work beyond its confines.
When Jesus rebukes John for wanting to silence the man who was doing a miracle in His name simply because he did not
belong visibly to the group going around with Jesus, He says: “Do not stop him. No one who performs a miracle in my
name is likely to speak ill of me.” He is rebuking the cliquish and elitist mentality so easily adopted by us
sinful human beings, especially when we think we’re being religious. For in fact, Jesus is somehow at work in that man who seems not to belong to His group,
but in effect who does because he gives honor and glory and power to the name of Jesus. The criterion of judgment is not “who
is or is not seen to be with Jesus?”, but “who is effectively witnessing to Him either by word or deed?”
In the profoundest sense, that stranger is no stranger to Jesus, and although his
name may not appear in the register, Jesus is with him and he is with Jesus. And because of that, all who are with and belong to Jesus are with that apparent stranger and he is with Jesus and all who are with
or belong to Jesus. We can call this “baptism of desire” or “anonymous Christianity”, but somehow
that person has received a grace (like the heat and light of the flame) which, while not yet the full grace of sacramental
baptism, unites him in some way to Christ and therefore to the Church.
While Christ and His Church may have many enemies in the world, they also have many friends of goodwill who may not
even be Christians or believers, but who feel open in their hearts to Jesus and the Church. Of course, these people
are called to faith and to baptism and we are called to evangelize one and all, in season and out of season. Yet we cannot
pre-empt the ways of God, His sovereign will in terms of granting the grace of faith. We can sense, intuit that a person,
a family, a group in society is living a fine life of virtue, worthy of Christ and the Church, perhaps even worthier than
our own life. Yet unless God grants the gift of faith, a gift about which we must speak to them and witness to them,
they are not yet ready to enter into visible communion with the Catholic Church. There may indeed be others to whom the gift
of faith is offered, but if they refuse, and pay no heed to that grace or to our witness, then
God will judge them according to His supreme knowledge of their hearts. At any rate, wherever someone is “seeking
the Lord with a sincere heart”, as we say in the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer, the Lord Himself and the Church, which is
always present with Him, is also present in some way in the life of that person. In other words, the Catholic Church is as
present, as active and as free flowing as is the Spirit of Jesus, for the Spirit does not act without Jesus and Jesus does
not act without associating the Church with Himself. Ultimately, at least on the Last Day, all these individuals, religions,
separated brethren and we ourselves will be united explicitly and definitively with Christ and all will confess His Name on
bended knee to the Glory of God the Father. But for now, we must have this clear understanding of the Church as Vatican II
explains it to us, so that we do not fall into the elitist mentality of John in today’s Gospel and also so that we do
not fail to fulfill our mission to witness effectively to Christ in His Church. This is the way to attract others to enter
into full communion with the visible Church, the sign and sacrament of salvation of the entire human race.
A few words on the second part of today’s Gospel where Jesus warns,
perhaps especially those who consider themselves among the elite that belong to Him, against the real threat to the Church’s unity. Jesus spells it out as sin
which causes people to lose faith in Him. The “little ones” may indeed refer to children, but certainly are meant
all of those who are simple and trusting of heart and who look to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The sin he refers to is
any sin at all, because all sin weakens the commitment to Jesus both of the one who sins and of us all. There is no such thing
as a private sin; all sin is public in its effects because all sin strikes at the heart of the bond between all believers
and the Lord. That is why we must confess our sin to the Church and to Christ: for Christ and the Church form but one Body.
A sin against Christ is by that very fact a sin against the whole Church.
So serious is sin, so dangerous to the life of the Church,
that Jesus uses the extreme hyperbole of recommending self-maiming rather than putting ourselves at the risk of eternal, spiritual
maiming in “Gehenna” because of our sins. Such sin is all the more heinous and scandalous when it is committed
by those who claim to be closely associated with Jesus. Remember that scandal in the Bible is not so much about psychological
shock: it refers much more seriously to the act of causing others to lose hope in eternal life, of making such a mockery of
Jesus by our words or actions as to make Him appear absurd and unworthy of our faith. Our minds turn almost immediately to
the recent scandal of pedophile, committed and to some degree tolerated, albeit with good intentions, by those who ought most
in the Church to stir and inspire our hope in Jesus. Our hope for these people is that Jesus will lead them to understand
profoundly what they have done and, to the degree that they have sinned (for at least some of them may be more sick than sinful),
lead them by the power of His healing grace to true repentance and, according to His merciful justice, to appropriate expiation
for their sins.
It seems to me, however, that there is another class of people who may cause the little ones to sin and lead
them into scandal. These are people who imply, if not openly declare, that they are close to Christ and His Church, and who
make a public profession of what they say is their Catholic faith, but who then proceed to justify and defend as acceptable
forms of behavior which are contrary to the Truth of Christ and His Church. It would not surprise me if some of these people
were among the first to wring their hands in outrage at the pedophile misdemeanors of the clergy, but who would do little
if anything to defend the life of the unborn, the unjustly condemned, the institution of marriage according to Christ’s
own creative plan and a whole host of other issues of social morality ranging from the dignity of minorities to the true dignity
of the dying. In fact, in the name of a false pluralism and of a questionable interpretation of the separation of Church and
State, they might do quite the contrary and think it worthy of divine approval! Perhaps more should be done and said to ask
such people if they are even aware, if they are at all conscious of the contradiction, the apparent hypocrisy or the real
scandal of their public posturing, and to challenge them to take the radical measures of change which Jesus describes with
stinging hyperbole in the Gospel of today. Is moral truth continually to be sacrificed on the altar of politics? Is it reasonable
or responsible to let them just carry on, by simply saying “they are just playing politics”? That is a decision
which those entrusted with the responsibility for it must take, and we must try and be confident that whatever their decision,
it will be taken according to the mind of Christ and the Church. At the same time, we must pray the Lord to touch the hearts
of these people and convince them to stop and take stock of what they are really doing and of what He is really saying to
them, through the Church, in the depths of their hearts and consciences. For indeed, who needs enemies outside the Church
when, alas, amongst ourselves are those who, for worldly gain, deal Her many a crippling and debilitating blow by scandalizing
the little ones and making themselves arbiters of the teaching authority of the Church and of Christ Himself?
Be that as it may, we rejoice in the power and desire of Our Savior to save all men and women. We pray Him humbly:
to enable us to be firm and intrepid members of his Holy Catholic Church; to remain open and grateful for the manifold ways
in which She is present in Him and in His Spirit to the lives and hearts of so many who have not joined us – at least
not yet; and to enable all of us who call ourselves Catholics to be so in the courage and boldness of the truth and not only
in name.
Msgr.
Peter Magee
Sunday,
September 28th, 2003, St. Matthew’s Cathedral: 10.00 am
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