What Is the Pilgrim Church?: A Deep Dive into Lumen Gentium (Part 5)
For when Christ shall appear and the glorious resurrection of the dead will take place, the glory of God will light up the heavenly City and the Lamb will be the lamp thereof (see Rev 21:23). Then the whole Church of the saints in the supreme happiness of charity will adore God and the Lamb who was slain (Rev 5:12), proclaiming with one voice: To him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb blessing, and honor, and glory, and dominion forever and ever (Rev 5:13-14; official Vatican English translation, sometimes slightly adjusted).
Chapter 7 of Lumen Gentium ends with this solemn invocation of the Apocalypse. So much for any attempt to domesticate the mystery of the Church! Or to ignore or deny it altogether! The seer of Revelation presents a panorama of the Church’s destiny in a vision of her eternal praise of the Lamb who was slain and the true dominion of him who sits upon the throne. This dominion is an everlasting dominion, and it at once transcends and gives the lie to any claim, by any state, ruler, or group, to “stop” history in their own rule, as though their rule were the end or goal of history. In fact, we are given a vision of dominion which is itself almost unthinkable and unimaginable, the dominion of the most unlikely of candidates, a lamb, and a lamb who was slain at that.
True dominion is, at present, hidden, clouded over by the bombastic claims, and the violence, of the kingdoms of this world, and yet—unbelievably, it is present, it is made present by the Church, formed as it is not by our claims to perfection, righteousness and rule, but by the charity of the Lamb who was slain. His charity, his point of view or perspective, that is to say his glory, will light up the heavenly City and will be the lamp thereof. That light or perspective, the charity of the Lamb who was slain, even now is what forms the communion of the Church, which lights it up precisely as mystery.
The Church, by her visible presence in this world, is the sacrament of this light. The Church is Apocalypse Now! By her very presence in this world, and even antecedent to any good works on her part, she makes present the perspective of the Lamb who was slain which will light up the heavenly City. The Church lights up this world by her very presence, because the communion of the Church is not from the world, but rather from the love of the Lamb who was slain, and therefore on behalf of the world. She is the presence, even as yet in imperfect form, of that dominion which bears witness against, resists and contests all other claims to “communion” which are thereby revealed as so many attempts to foreclose and determine the finality of history on terms less than God has planned. In this sense, as LG warned us early on, the Church “journeys in a foreign land away from the Lord and sees herself as an exile” (LG §6). The “foreign land” is the land of claims to define history by the claims of the powerful of this world.
Church life is a witness to the contrary, as again we have been warned far ahead of Chapter 7: “We, who have been made to conform with him, who have died with him and risen with him, are taken up into the mysteries of his life, until we will reign together with him (see Phil 3:21; 2 Tim 2:11; Eph 2:6; Col 2:12; etc.). On earth, still as pilgrims in a strange land, tracing in trial and in oppression the paths he trod, we are made one with his sufferings like the body is one with the Head, suffering with him, that with him we may be glorified (see Rom 8:17; LG §7).” “Pilgrims” because our very identity as members of Christ is formed by configuration to the mystery of his life, a participation in his sufferings which are the revelation, it turns out, of a life which could not be snuffed out, which—who—is risen, and which—who—is the underlying principle of dynamism that refuses all claims to foreclose history in any life less than his.
This is the love—now moving on to LG §8—by which he, though he was by nature God . . . emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave (Phil 2:6-7) and being rich, became poor (2 Cor 8:9) for our sakes. Thus, the Church, although it needs human resources to carry out its mission, is not set up to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim, even by its own example, humility and self-sacrifice, . . . encompass[ing] with love all who are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor and afflicted sees the image of its poor and suffering Founder.” And so the Church is “like a stranger in a foreign land,” because she is “at the same time holy”—with a holiness she did not give herself and cannot claim as from herself—“and always in need of being purified, always follow[ing] the way of penance and renewal”—because we sinners are always resisting the life that would actually see the “slaves” and “poor” of this world to which worldly power is blind, resisting that very self-emptying love that has formed us in communion. Church life is ultimately to “announce the cross and death of the Lord until he comes” (see 1 Cor 11:26) so that the Church, “by the power of the risen Lord . . . might reveal to the world, faithfully though darkly, the mystery of its Lord until, in the end, it will be manifested in full light” (LG §8). Note: the Church reveals to the world the mystery of the true Lord of the world, as opposed to all the claims that would reduce the world to something less than God’s beloved.
The “People of God,” now moving on to LG §9, far from being the name of a one-dimensional sociological grouping, is shot through and defined by the eschatological mystery which it makes present in the world. Because it was “purchased with Christ’s own blood” (see Acts 20:28), the “the source of unity and peace,” the Church is established “so that for each and all it may be the visible sacrament of this saving unity.” Thus, amidst all narrower claims to unity, it “wanders as an exile in the desert” of those claims. Like the People of Israel before her, “so likewise the new Israel . . . while living in this present age, goes in search of a future and abiding city,” refusing to claim in her own works even her own perfection, but “moved by the Holy Spirit may never cease to renew herself, until through the Cross she arrives at the light which knows no setting.” Thus she is the “light of the world” even now. “Moved by the Holy Spirit,” she never ceases “to renew herself, until through the Cross she arrives at the light which knows no setting,” when she will be “brought to perfection by God at the end of time, when Christ, our life (see Col 3:4), shall appear, and creation itself will be delivered from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God” (Rom 8:21, all quotations from LG §9).
Thus we come to Chapter 7 well prepared. It merely expands more fully on the mystery of the Church as a “pilgrim” relative to any claim to perfection, her own first and foremost, and then by implication, that of any human power or group who would make the world anything less than God’s plans, from all eternity (see LG §2), for his creation. It thus opens,
The Church, to which we are all called in Christ Jesus, and in which we acquire sanctity through the grace of God, will attain its full perfection only in the glory of heaven, when there will come the time of the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21). At that time the human race as well as the entire world, which is intimately related to man and attains to its end through him, will be perfectly reestablished in Christ (see Eph 1:10; Col 1:20; 2 Pet 3:10-13; LG §48).
Members of the Church are bound in communion as Christ’s “Body, the universal sacrament of salvation.” Because he is “seated at the right hand of the Father,” he has Messianic dominion, he reigns as King, and this means, not that he is distant, but that “he is continually active in the world that he might lead human beings to the Church and through her join them to himself . . . that he might make them partakers of his glorious life by nourishing them with his own Body and Blood” (ibid.). Thus in our Eucharistic life, in the life in communion with Christ and each other mediated to the Church in the Eucharist, “the promised restoration which we are awaiting has already begun in Christ, is carried forward in the mission of the Holy Spirit and through him continues in the Church in which we learn the meaning of our terrestrial life through our faith, while we perform with hope in the future the work committed to us in this world by the Father, and thus work out our salvation” (ibid.).
In other words, we have the promised restoration, the restoration of the whole cosmos, already present to us in our life in the Eucharistic communion of the Church! The eschaton is present to us not so much as isolated individuals, side by side, as it were, in desperate hope, but in the communion of the Church which we did not give ourselves but to which we, in faith, bear witness by the hope that defines our work in the world. Do we truly believe that “Already the final age of the world has come upon us” (see 1 Cor 10:11)?” And that “the renovation of the world is irrevocably decreed and is already anticipated in some kind of a real way; for the Church already on this earth is signed with a sanctity which is real although imperfect”? Do we really believe that Church life is even now a participation in the endtimes? And that, nevertheless, “until there shall be new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells (see 2 Pet 3:13), the pilgrim Church in her sacraments and institutions, which pertain to this present time, has the appearance of this world which is passing and she herself dwells among creatures who groan and travail in pain until now and await the revelation of the sons of God?” (see Rom 8:19-22; all quotations still from LG §48). Do we experience Church life as a “groaning” and a “travail in pain,” and in fact a participation in the sacrament of the “groaning” of all creation? Or are we complacent and self-righteous, believing we have a “separate peace” apart from the rest of creation? One can be self-righteous even in believing we are righteously “groaning!”
It is the charity or love which makes and thus marks the Church that of its nature creates its dynamism and brings to bear an eschatological perspective on her own work in the world and on the claims of any other power in the world to define the “meaning of our terrestrial life” ahead of time: “Having the first-fruits of the Spirit we groan within ourselves (see Rom 8:23) and we desire to be with Christ (see Phil 1:23). By that same charity however, we are urged to live more for him, who died for us and rose again (see 2 Cor 5:15) . . . that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil and resist in the evil day (see Eph 6:11-13)” (LG §48).
Section 49 takes up what we call the three “states of the Church,” those of the wayfaring pilgrims on earth, those having died and undergoing purification, and those who are “in glory.” Here we have the doctrine of the communion of saints. It is important to emphasize the word “communion,” because it is part of the mystery of Church life that it is communion first and foremost with and in Christ our Head, and thus with each other. And because Christ has triumphed over death itself, our communion in Christ participates in that triumph. Part of the mystery of the Church is that our communion in Christ is a participation in the relativizing of death itself, no longer a final claim on reality. In our ecclesial communion, death is relativized, because it is a share in the love or charity that overcame death:
All in various ways and degrees are in communion in the same charity of God and neighbor and all sing the same hymn of glory to our God. For all who are in Christ, having his Spirit, form one Church and cleave together in him (see Eph 4:16). Therefore the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who have gone to sleep in the peace of Christ is not in the least weakened or interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the perpetual faith of the Church, is strengthened by communication of spiritual goods (LG §49, emphasis added).
Just as Christ intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father, so the saints in Christ intercede for us. There is only one intercession, Christ’s, in which, because they are in Christ and, in Christ, in communion with the rest of the Church, they participate, though of course as themselves with their individual perfections: “For after they have been received into their heavenly home and are present to the Lord (see 2 Cor 5:8) through him and with him and in him they do not cease to intercede with the Father for us, showing forth the merits which they won on earth through the one Mediator between God and man (see 1 Tim 2:5) serving God in all things and filling up in their flesh those things which are lacking of the sufferings of Christ for his Body which is the Church (see Col 1:24).”
This does not mean that Christ’s sufferings on the Cross are lacking anything, but rather that his work in perfecting the saints is his bringing them, in his triumph over death through suffering, to make that triumph their own. Death, though relativized, does not disappear with the Resurrection because Christ wants to form his victory over death in each one of us, so that it is, by his grace, also truly ours, so it is, in our communion in him, our “merit” too. That is the work he is bringing to perfection in all of us, right now, through nourishing us with his body and blood in the Holy Spirit. So it is that in our awareness of ourselves as members of the Church, we are aware of the saints since our being members of the one Body is a communion with the saints in glory and in their communion in Christ’s intercession. We are strengthened in this awareness: “Thus by their brotherly interest our weakness is greatly strengthened” (LG §49).
LG §50 discusses the intercessory prayer that is possible because the communion of saints in Christ participates in the victory over death. It means we can pray for the dead, and also that we can pray for the intercession of the saints on our behalf. But notice that this prayer is offered or requested not separately from our awareness of ecclesial communion in Christ, but precisely as a function of that awareness. Our prayers are not a bunch of random one-off interventions on our part that operate outside of our awareness of communion, as if that awareness needed some kind of supplementation or transcending:
Fully conscious of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the pilgrim Church from the very first ages of the Christian religion has cultivated with great piety the memory of the dead, because it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins (2 Macc 12:46) also offers suffrages for them. The Church has always believed that the apostles and Christ’s martyrs who had given the supreme witness of faith and charity by the shedding of their blood, are closely joined with us in Christ, and she has always venerated them with special devotion, together with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the holy angels. The Church has piously implored the aid of their intercession. To these were soon added also those who had more closely imitated Christ’s virginity and poverty, and finally others whom the outstanding practice of the Christian virtues and the divine charisms recommended to the pious devotion and imitation of the faithful (LG §50).
It is sometimes objected that the Church’s practice of invoking the intercession of the saints is forbidden by the Bible because the Bible forbids necromancy, the summoning of the souls of the dead, through mediums or seances or in any other way. But this is to misunderstand the teaching, namely, that the saints are not dead but alive in the fullest sense, participating in Christ’s triumph over death, and our access to them is not through summoning their spirits but “in Christ,” that is, in his triumph over death and in the communion we have that is the fruit of, and participates in, the relativization of death by his charity. Invoking the intercession of the saints is invoking our communion in Christ. It is an expression of the experience of communion in his victorious love that makes the saints as close to us as we are to each other, bound as we are to each other as sisters and brothers in Christ’s triumphant love, which is to say, his life:
Nor is it by the title of example only that we cherish the memory of those in heaven, but still more in order that the union of the whole Church may be strengthened in the Spirit by the practice of fraternal charity. For just as Christian communion among wayfarers brings us closer to Christ, so our companionship with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its Fountain and Head issues every grace and the very life of the people of God. It is supremely fitting, therefore, that we love those friends and coheirs of Jesus Christ, who are also our brothers and extraordinary benefactors, that we render due thanks to God for them and “suppliantly invoke them and have recourse to their prayers, their power and help in obtaining benefits from God through his Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Redeemer and Savior” [citing the Council of Trent]. For every genuine testimony of love shown by us to those in heaven, by its very nature tends toward and terminates in Christ who is the “crown of all saints” [from the Liturgy of the Hours on All Saints] and through him, in God who is wonderful in his saints and is magnified in them (see e.g. 2 Thess 1:10) (LG §50).
Our union with the saints, of which our invocation of them is a participation, is made most perfect in the Eucharistic liturgy, in the celebration of the sacrament that makes the communion and perfects our awareness that it comes from the suffering and death and resurrection of Christ, from his love, and not from our works.
Section 51 closes by reminding us to avoid abuses in requesting the intercession of the saints, as though it is by our works, and not by a communion given to us rather than attained by us, that our requests are possible. In other words, as though we had to improve on communion in Christ, as though, in effect, we believed in necromancy instead of in communion:
Let them therefore teach the faithful that the authentic cult of the saints consists not so much in the multiplying of external acts, but rather in the greater intensity of our love, whereby, for our own greater good and that of the whole Church, we seek from the saints “example in their way of life, fellowship in their communion, and aid by their intercession” (Preface from the Mass of the Saints).
In this way, our relationship with the saints enhances, rather than diminishes, our adoration of the Father through Jesus Christ his Son. For it is in devoting ourselves as fully as we can to the charity that makes the communion of the Church, that we have the fullest awareness of our bond with the saints. In and from that awareness, we are able to praise God with the very same praise, if imperfect, with which we, and the renewed heavens and earth, will praise God for all eternity: “Then,” as the Chapter closes and as we cited above, “the whole Church of the saints in the supreme happiness of charity will adore God and the Lamb who was slain, proclaiming with one voice: To him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb blessing, and honor, and glory, and dominion forever and ever!” Amen and Amen!
