Sense of Church

THIS, I think, is a goal all Christian believers need to pursue. And if somehow we already have some traces of this sense of Church, I’m sure we can still improve it. It’s actually a never-ending affair. For all the defined doctrine about the Church, she remains largely a mystery.

The sense of Church is that abiding awareness and the corresponding behavior that a Christian faithful is not just an individual person trying to be good and holy. He by necessity belongs to the Church and is a living cell of the Church.

In a way, he is the Church. The Church’s concerns are his concerns too. Her mission is also his. In a mysterious way, the Church is each one of the believers and all of them together.

We have to understand that the Church is not just a society or an organization in which we can choose to enlist and join. Our being in the Church is not something external which we can just wear like a shirt.

The Church is and should be an integral and essential part of our Christian identity. It affects us not only externally, but also internally, in our soul. Our being in it is not only a social affair, but a spiritual one that expresses itself all the way to its juridical and social dimensions.

Having the sense of Church means each one of us believers is conformed to Christ, is another Christ. At the same time, it means that together we form one mystical Body of Christ, with Christ as the head.

We just cannot think and act only in terms of our individual selves. We always have to think and act in terms of being with Christ and with everybody else, starting with Mary and the saints in heaven, the Pope, hierarchy and everybody else on earth, and those in purgatory.

This is because our Christian belief tells us we are not creatures who just break into existence without any previous divine design and accompanying law to govern our whole life. It tells us we are children of God, we are his people who have to learn to be such to the fullest possible sense and degree.

It’s important that we grow in our understanding of the nature and mission of the Church. The objective dogmatic definitions given so far about the Church can already give us many ideas of how we ought to behave in the Church.

This is no easy task. In the first place, because many and endless elements need to be blended well for us to have a working sense of Church.

How to put together, for example, her visible and invisible aspects, her doctrine and mission, her hierarchical and charismatic dimensions, or how to delineate the relation between the clergy and laity, etc., can admit many valid nuances of interpretations.

In her history, no small effort has been made to continually clarify the nature and purpose of the Church. Her history has been filled with dramatic episodes that later on produced precious if painful lessons for all to learn.

And from what have already been defined, many new and fresh corollaries continue to be drawn. For example, everyone should be concerned about personal sanctity and apostolate, because in the end these are the core interests of the Church. And yet this idea is still foreign to many of us.

Having the sense of Church also means that we should try our best to be united, with due margin for a variety of valid interpretations, in doctrine, in the recourse to the sacraments and in hierarchy.

It can also mean that while we should actively participate in earthly and temporal affairs, we should realize that we are in a pilgrimage here on earth and that our aim is nothing less than eternity in heaven, that supernatural union and life with God.

In the end, what’s clear is that this sense of Church has to be continually renewed, refreshed and re-stimulated. It has to be constantly re-examined to see if it is vitally corresponding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit who is the Church’s soul and principle of life.

As evidenced by her history, we need to be watchful with certain tendencies to dilute, reduce if not contaminate the essence of the Church by subtle conditionings that can come from questionable social, philosophical and ideological factors.