Names, Images, And Symbols Of The Church
By DON FIER
When Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven after His Passion, death, and Resurrection, He did not leave us orphans. Rather, He promised to send the Holy Spirit after His return to the Father. On Pentecost Sunday, He fulfilled that promise by sending the Spirit of truth and establishing the one true Church, which is “his body” (Eph. 1:23; 5:23; 1 Cor. 12:27; Col. 1:18). As a profound mystery of our faith, we firmly believe that Christ is the head and that in the Church, “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:5).
As we saw last week, then, the word Church “refers to the people whom God calls and gathers together from every part of the earth” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 147). Moreover, as proclaimed by St. Paul, the Church is the “dwelling place” of the Holy Spirit (cf. Eph. 2:22). The giver and source of all holiness, it is the Holy Spirit who endows the Church with holiness (cf. Roman Catechism, I, 10, 1). Thus, one can readily see why the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) is heedful to pronounce that the Creed’s article on the Church depends entirely on preceding articles concerning both Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
It is in article 9 of the Nicene Creed that we profess to believe that the Church founded by Christ possesses four distinguishing characteristics or “marks” that identify her, that she “is ‘holy’ and ‘catholic,’ and that she is ‘one’ and ‘apostolic’” (CCC, n. 750). Inseparable and intrinsically linked to each other, these four essential marks can be demonstrated by no church other than the one founded by Jesus Christ. Each is based on Sacred Scripture and each is important for understanding the purpose and mission of the Church.
Before giving individual explanation to each of these marks, the Catechism devotes several paragraphs to examining various images and symbols of the Church. “In Scripture,” says the Catechism, “we find a host of interrelated images and figures through which Revelation speaks of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church” (CCC, n. 753). In its authoritative teaching, Lumen Gentium (LG), a central Vatican II document which is cited nearly 300 times in the Catechism (more than any other document other than the Bible), dedicates a full chapter (nine paragraphs) to the theme “the People of God” as an image of the Church (see LG, nn. 9-17).
In his book entitled Vatican II: The Crisis and the Promise (VCP), Dr. Alan Schreck observes: “In different ages church leaders have chosen particular biblical images that epitomize how Catholics should look at the Church” (p. 87). He goes on to note that the image of choice following the Council of Trent was often the Church as a “perfect society” with clear order, structure, and teaching. In 1943, when Pope Pius XII wrote his encyclical letter entitled Mystici Corporis Christi (MCC), there was a shift “from the external structure and order to a new sense of the living body of people founded by Christ” (VCP, p. 87).
The encyclical, in fact, emphasizes this enduring and fundamental image in its opening sentence: “The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, was first taught us by the Redeemer Himself” (MCC, n. 1).
Lumen Gentium discusses the hierarchical structure of the Church in its third chapter and makes it abundantly clear that her members are a hierarchically ordered people. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church also reinforces the image of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ (see LG, n. 8). However, as alluded to above, “the chief image that the constitution presents for understanding the church today is that of ‘the people of God’” (VCP, p. 87).
The Catechism goes on to instruct us that the thematic imagery of the Church as the “People of God” is rooted in the Old Testament, where “the revelation of the Kingdom is often conveyed by means of metaphors” (LG, n. 6 § 1). Looking backward, one can see an image of the Church in the Chosen People of the Old Covenant who were called, formed, and nurtured as God’s people. A beautiful illustration of metaphorical language comes from the Book of Isaiah: “He [the Lord God] will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young” (Isaiah 40:11).
With the coming of the Messiah and Revelation of the New Testament, this image and many others “find a new center because Christ has become the head of this people, which henceforth is his Body” (CCC, n. 753). So it is that the Church is likened to a sheepfold where we are the “flock of which God Himself foretold He would be the shepherd” (LG, n. 6 § 1; cf. CCC, n. 754).
The Catechism continues its instruction by listing and explaining many other diverse images of the Church: “The Church is a cultivated field, the tillage of God” (CCC, n. 755) and “the Church is called the building of God” (CCC, n. 756), where Christ is the stone the builders rejected who became the cornerstone (cf. Matt. 21:42). We, the members of the Church, are incorporated into this building as living stones built into a spiritual house (cf. 1 Peter 2:5). “This edifice has many names to describe it: the house of God (1 Tim. 3:15) in which dwells His family; the household of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22); the dwelling place of God among men (Rev. 21:3); and, especially, the holy temple” (LG, n. 6 § 3; cf. CCC, n. 756).
The Church is also called “the ‘Jerusalem above’ and ‘our mother’” (Gal. 4:26), and is described “as the spotless spouse of the spotless lamb” (CCC, n. 757). Using rich nuptial imagery, Christ is often likened in Sacred Scripture to a Bridegroom, and the Church as His bride. The bond of marriage, the closest of all human bonds, is but a reflection of the perfect union of Christ and His Church. “For Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her,…that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).
Why did the Fathers of Vatican II choose “the People of God” as a primary image for the Church in our times? Certainly it is an image with profound biblical roots as one can see in the First Letter of St. Peter: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
Indeed, these verses are cited in Lumen Gentium in the first paragraph of its chapter entitled “On the People of God.”
A Deep Spiritual Union
We live in an age of individualism where popular cultural idioms include “Look out for number one” and “I want to do it my way.” In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis makes reference to this societal malady and its consequences: “Our world is being…wounded by a widespread individualism which divides human beings, setting them against one another as they pursue their own well-being” (n. 99).
The concept of a deep spiritual union between believers that is inherent to the Church’s image as the “Body of Christ” is alien even to many Christians “who focus on the salvation of individuals, with the church necessary primarily to help the individuals to find Christ” (Schreck, The Essential Catholic Catechism, p. 134).
Man was created in the image and likeness of God, who, in the Most Holy Trinity, is a loving communion of Persons. We were made for communion, for unity with God and neighbor as members of the “People of God.” In God’s plan, “each believer is . . . a link in the great chain of believers” (CCC, n. 165). Our Creator wills us to become holy and to be saved as a people, not as separate individuals. Lumen Gentium makes this truth unmistakably clear: “God . . . does not make men holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased Him to bring men together as one people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness” (LG, n. 9 § 1).
To close this installment on images of the one true Church, it would be good to note that she is a mystery. The complete reality of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church and all she entails far surpasses our finite abilities of comprehension. Yet each image we have considered is based on Scripture and all are complementary — not in conflict or mutually exclusive. In some way, each sheds more light on what we cannot fully grasp.
Vatican II’s teaching on the Church, like the teaching of all ecumenical councils, “builds upon Catholic traditions and teachings” (VCP, p.88) and does not change them.
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis- based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
