1314 Ube American Ecclesiastical IReview A MONTHLY PUBLICATION FOR THE CLERGY Cum Approbatione Superiorum VOL. CXV JULY—DECEMBER, 1946 *Ev tvl πνάιματι, μι$ ψυχί) σνναθλοΰντα rÿ πίστα τον àayyeKiw Phil. 1:27 Published by THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS : 'ÀiAci. «WM»»'·. ΜΛ- -Λ OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The central, the most important fact about the Catholic Church, that which primarily differentiates it from every other religious organization on the face of the earth, is the living presence of Jesus Christ Our Lord within it. This actual indwelling of Our Blessed Lord within the society which He founded is the great and essential glory of the Catholic Church. It is the basic reason why the Cath­ olic Church can be and should be accurately designated as the true Church of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom and the City and the House of God. Because the fellowship and the company of Christ are to be found within this, the society of His disciples, our present Sovereign Pontiff, in his masterly encyclical Mystici Corporis, could correctly insist that “nothing more glorious, nothing nobler, nothing surely more honorable can be imagined than to belong to the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.”1 s Certainly no man can begin to realize what the Catholic Church really is until he considers it in the light of the living presence of Christ within it Unless we become aware of the fact that Our Lord actually resides within the Church, any designation of this society as the Mystical Body of Christ or as the Spouse of Christ is bound, for all intents and purposes, to be practically meaningless to us. Furthermore, in order to love the Church as we should love it, we must also take cognizance of Our Lord’s abiding life and activity within it. Pope Pius XII reminds us of this in that section of the Mystici Corporis in which he exhorts us to love the Church, i “In order that such a solid and undivided love [of the Church] may ; abide and increase in our souls day by day, we must accustom ourselves to see Christ Himself in the Church. For it is Christ who lives in His Church, and through her teaches, governs and sane- i tides.”2 ? Catholics today, subject as they are bound to be to the influence ? of the propaganda and the attitudes of the world around them, are ; in some danger of failing to appreciate the complete reality of Our : Lord's presence within the visible Catholic Church. Amidst the turmoil of pressure in favor of “inter-faith” movements and the like, ' 1 Acta Apestoticae Sedis, XXXV (1943), 237. 2 238. 212193 OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 51 there is an almost inevitable tendency to imagine that Christ is in the Church only in a kind of imaginary or metaphorical way. That unfortunate tendency is sometimes aided and increased by books and instructions which, though otherwise creditable, con­ stantly persist in employing metaphors and other figurative ex­ pressions in dealing with the Church’s relations to Our Lord. For one reason or another, modem men and women are inclined to discount as imaginary or unreal, and therefore as basically unim­ portant, any subject which is presented to them in predominantly metaphorical terms. Failure to appreciate the full reality of Our Lord’s presence within the Catholic Church is responsible for one unfortunate and even dangerous phenomenon in modem religious writing. This is the habit of placing the true Church of Jesus Christ, if not on a level with other religious societies, at least in the same general class with these outside organizations. In some cases this tendency resolves itself into the essentially Protestant tactic of imagining the existence of an invisible church, an assembly of good-intentioned men and women of all religions, which is supposed to constitute the true Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Likewise forgetfulness of the fact that Christ really lives and acts within the Catholic Church leads to the mistaken but unfortunately all-too-prevalent belief that the essential difference between the Catholic Church and other religious societies is to be found in the fact that the Catholic Church teaches the entirety of religious truth while these other organizations present only a portion of it. Such a difference does in fact exist, but it is by no means the ulti­ mate and essential distinction. In the last analysis the real reason why the Catholic Church is something apart from and superior to all of the other religious societies in the world is to be found in the fact that Our Lord actually dwells within this Catholic Church and within it alone. Within this society, and in no other way, do we find the fellowship of Christ, our God and our Redeemer. CHRIST IN HIS CHURCH DURING HIS PUBLIC LIFE It is quite impossible to appreciate the reality of Our Lord’s presence within the: Church today.urlesS-,we consider carefully His position within the society ύί fits disciples prior to the time of His ascension into heaven.: :T3ie -faêt of'the matter is that, although É 52 ■ THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW ; 'F ί * Christ’s sacred body is now located in heaven, and hence in a place ί far remote from that in which His followers do His will in this j world, the basic and essential relation of the Church to Our Lord ί remains unaltered. He lives and acts in the Church, He speaks to the world from out of the Church, in essentially the same way ; today as He did during the period intervening between His bap< tism by John the Baptist in the Jordan and His ascension into heaven. The Catholic Church, the Kingdom of God in the New Testa; ment, started out as a band of disciples or learners, gathered around ; and ruled by Our Lord, acting in His capacity as the Teacher of J· the divinely revealed public revelation. Men and women were | admitted to this group only by personal invitation, issued by Our Lord Himself. The company had neither reason for nor bond of corporate existence apart from Christ. He was not merely present j within the group, but the company itself was seen and understood j preeminently in terms of its association with Him. Looking back } on the days of Our Lord’s public life, St. Peter could refer to the j original members of the band as those “who have companied .with ; us, all the time that the Lord Jesus came in and went out among j us, beginning from the baptism of John, until the day wherein he ? was taken from us.”s Knabenbauer notes that the Greek words άσήλθιν καί ΐξηλθα/ > which the Douai renders as “came in and went out” constitute an authentic Hebraism, found in many sections of the Old Testament.4 $ The expression signifies an intimate and continual association. The f Greek τ«ν σνν£λάόη·ωι> rendered as “who liave companied with j us,” involves another form of the word ίρχομαι and gives point to j the truth that not only the twelve, but the rest of the company of the j disciples as well, were continually in the presence of the Master. Thus the Church was originally, as it is now, the group of men | and women in the company of Christ. j Long before the ascension, however, Our Lord taught His di- j staples that He would be present among them even while they were j in a flare remote from that which He occupied. To the seventy-two = whom He sent on a preaching mission during the course of His j - ί OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH k 1 53 public life He said: “He that heareth you heareth me.’’56 * That notice, as it stands, contains far more than the mere declaration that these men were appointed as His representatives. It implied that these preachers who had received their mission from Him within His Church actually spoke to the people with His voice, in such a way that the persons who heard them listened to the voice of Christ. Not only did Our Lord speak in and through the disciples whom He commissioned to preach in His name, but He habitually spoke to the multitudes from the midst of the disciples, who formed a group apart. Both St. Matthew and St Luke make this clear in describing the setting of the Sermon on the Mount. St. Matthew tells'us that “seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain. And when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them.”® St Luke writes that “coming down with them [the twelve apostles], he stood in a plain place: and the company of his disciples and a very great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast, both of Tyre and Sidon”T were there to hear Him. Our Lord spoke to the multitudes in parables. He explained these parables to the di­ sciples. Furthermore, during the course of Our Lord’s public life, His enemies were so aware of the intimate union of the corps of the disciples with Him that they spoke in such a way as to hold Him responsible for the actions of His followers, the members of the Church, and conversely they considered the disciples responsible for Him. When the scribes and the pharisees saw Our Lord and His disciples partaking of the banquet which St. Matthew had given to celebrate his call to the company of Christ, they angrily questioned the disciples about Our Lord’s conduct and about their own.8 The question addressed to the disciples was answered by Our Lord Himself. Again, when the pharisees objected to the disciples’ practice of plucking and eating grains of wheat on the Sabbath, Christ answered for them and defended them.8 I e ί 5 Luke 10:16; cf. Matt. 10:40. 6 Matt. 5:1. t Luke 6:17. 8 Cf. Matt. 9:11; Mark 2:16 ; Luke 5:30. ; i, 8 Cf. Matt. 12:1 ff ; Mark 2:23 ff ; Luke 6:1 ff. 8 ■ 54 1 i 1 ? • ■ i i i OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW ■ During the time of Our Lord’s public life, then, He was not only i locally present among His disciples, the men and women who then f constituted the Catholic Church, the true Church of the New Testa­ ment, but He also worked within this group, teaching and ruling and sanctifying the society and its individual members. He taught them directly. He taught the multitudes, the people whom He was preparing for the call into the society of the disciples, in His ca­ pacity as the Head of the company of the disciples. Furthermore He taught the multitudes Himself in and through the preaching of i the disciples. Up until the time of the ascension Our Lord was the only visible i Ruler of the company of the disciples. It is perfectly true that, > as a part of the course of divine instruction which He gave to’His , followers, He promised and announced that Peter was to possess s a real primacy of jurisdiction over his fellow disciples, but even y then it was made perfectly dear to Peter and to the rest that the -■ authority was to be exercised over the Church which would always } belong to Christ10 Thus the governing authority which was prom- ; ised to Peter was that of Christ’s vicar on earth. Furthermore a definite social authority was promised to the entire membership of ? the apostolic college, but this, too, was something subject to the power of Peter within the Church of Christ.11 It was not, however, until just before the ascension that the jurisdiction which had been promised to the Prince of the Apostles t and to the apostolic college as a whole was actually given by Our Lord.11 Up until the moment of the ascension, the complete rule j and direction of the society came visibly from Christ, visibly dwell· i ing and working within that organization. Visibly and truly then, and invisibly though just as truly now, every order emanating from a superior within the Catholic Church was and is the command of Christ. Both the rule within the Catholic Church and the mon- | archical and hierarchical organization within which the followers of ? Christ are to be guided and sanctified until the end of time were ■; the personal work of Our Lord. Christ sanctified His society and its members, not merely by giving them the teaching of holiness, but by communicating the life of grace to the individual disciples within the Church and to the WCL Matt. 16:18-19. « CL Matt 18:18. 55 company itself as a whole. He, the Master and Lord, around whom the society itself was constructed, earned the remission of sins and the life of divine grace for men through His death on the cross. He brought that life of grace to His followers through the channels of that sacramental activity which He instituted within His Church. He gave His disciples the gift of newness of life, separating them from the world and sealing them to Himself through the Sacrament of Baptism which He inaugurated. He constituted that sign as the rite of initiation into His company in such a way that it was ready for use as a gateway into the Church and a departure from the gen­ eration ruled over by the prince of this world at the very moment of the Church’s first missionary activity after the ascension.13 Then and now it is Christ Himself who communicates the grace, and Christ Himself who is the principal agent of baptism. “The bodily ministry,” said St. Augustine, “was the contribution of the disci­ ples. His contribution was the aid of majesty.”14 He was present and He remains present to the Church in the work of baptism. As the perfective center of the sacramental system within the Catholic Church He instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In this rite, which is preeminently the act of the Church as His Mystical Body,15 He is truly, really, and substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine. Furthermore at every Mass He is present to His Church as the High Priest, offering this true and commemorative sacrifice through the instrumentality of His priest as the ultimate cohesive sign and force of the unity of His society. He was visibly and truly living in the Church when He instituted and first confected this Sacrament. He remains invisibly and no less truly living in the Church through this Eucharistic Sacrifice today. In His Sacerdotal Prayer, set forth in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, He petitioned the Father that the assembly of the disciples might remain one with Him. St. Paul tells us that, even in Heaven, His prayer of inter­ cession for us continues.1* «Cf. Acts 2:41. 11 In Ioan., XV, c. 3. 15 CL the article “The Act of the Mystical Body,” The American Eccle­ siastical Review, C, 5 (May, 1939), 397 ff, and the discussion occasioned by this article, AER, CH, 4 (April, 1940), pp. 306 ff. « CL Rom. 8:34. 12 CL John 2Ü -22223; 21:15 ff I Î I J 1 « i ■ I ■ I ■ 56 '■ ■■ . ■ ■■■'■ ■ ■ THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW \ !' < £·■ THE DEPARTURE AND THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF OUR LORD ' With Our Lord’s ascension into heaven a new status of the Church of Jesus Christ came into being. That society had been gathered together, organized, and conducted in the visible and < local presence of its divine Founder. Now, with the ascension, that visible and local presence was taken away, not to be restored to the disciples of Christ as a complete society until that day when the Church will finally see Him again and forever at His second ’ advent The place in which Christ dwells locally is heaven. Since His ascension, as the epistles of St. Paul especially show so well, the Church on earth labors and struggles against its spiritual and earthly adversaries in order to enjoy the visible presence of Christ once again. To sustain the society of His disciples during the period in which it suffers the loss of the visible presence of its divine Founder, He promised and gave to the Church the indwelling Spirit of Truth and Love.17 Tins indwelling of the Blessed Trinity within the Catholic Church, appropriated by Our Blessed Lord Himself to i the Holy Ghost, gives the Church the understanding and the forti- j tude requisite for its task of acting as the instrument of Christ in i calling and aiding men to salvation and in overthrowing the efforts of the world against God. By reason of His divine nature Our Lord thus continues, though invisible, to reside within the Church, to guide and to instruct it, to sustain it and to give it strength. Moreover, in His human nature also, Our Lord remains within the Church. He told His disciples that they would see Him no longer,18 Ϊ but He also promised them that He would be with them until the consummation of the world.19 The promise of His continued 5 though invisible presence and the accomplishment of that promise ξ were given to the disciples as Christ had formed them, organized * into a society which is His Mystical Body on earth. i THE INDWELLING OF CHRIST IN THE CHURCH ACCORDING Ϊ TO HIS DIVINE NATURE In His divine nature Christ is in all created things according ’ to the three ways which St. Thomas Aquinas designates as es- : « CL Wm 14:16. «CL John 16:10. 1BCf. Matt. 28:20. OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 57 sence, presence and power.20 God can be said to be in all things in so far as He keeps them in existence, in so far as they are visible to Him and subject to His power. In this way Our Lord remains within the Church, sustaining it and preserving it for what it is and what He made it, His true Church and the sole ark of salvation on earth. He sees it, and He is available to the prayers of mankind. Since true prayer is essentially the petition of fitting things from God21 and since a thing is truly fitting only if it is in line towards salvation and union with God in heaven, the divine work of hearing and answering prayers on earth is in itself a mode of indwelling within the Catholic Church. This does not mean, of course, that only the prayers of those who are truly disciples of Christ and thus truly members of the Catholic Church are heard and answered by God. It is perfectly true that the prayer of the Church is always answered because this is, in the last analysis, the prayer of Christ Himself. But all true prayer has its efficacy from this central petition to God, and all true prayer is answered in so far as the essential and central good sought in the petition is concerned. This dominant petition is always for God’s glory, to be attained through the granting of eternal life to men. Since, in the providence of God, eternal salvation or the attainment of eternal life is to be achieved only through association with Christ through membership in the Catholic Church or through the sincere desire for that association, the granting of the petition of prayer by God constitutes a divine indwelling in the true Church, drawing men to this society and strengthening them in its life and in its communion. According to this same divine presence, through the power of God the Church is kept safe from the attacks of its enemies and pre­ served against the dissolution which would naturally be the lot of any merely human society. The divine protection accorded to the Church is in itself easily visible to mankind. As the recipient of this protection against the forces which naturally tend to over­ throw and transform merely human organizations, the Church is visible in the world as a social miracle, and thus, according to the F I 20 Ci. Sum. theol., I, q. 8, a. 3. 21 Cf. St John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, III, c. 24, and the author’s The Theolotjy of Prayer (Milwaukee : The Bruce Publishing Co., 1939), pp. 1 ff. ÎISvï. >· nwyW 58 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW Vatican Council, it stands as a true and perpetual motive of cred­ ibility and as a real witness of its own status as the bearer of divine revelation.22 There is one, and according to St. Thomas Aquinas, only one, distinctively supernatural and invisible mode of the divine indwell; ing. It is the divine presence according to the activity of sancti­ fying grace,23 according to which God really dwells in those crea­ tures whom He strengthens and renders competent to live tire divine life of the Beatific Vision. In this way God is present to a man who is · in a position to see God as He is in Himself, rather than merely to , recognize the fact of His existence by a recognition of the truth that there must be a First Cause of created things. The man who lives the life of grace in this world possesses charity, and possesses the life to which the Beatific Vision itself belongs, even though, by reason of his status as a viator, he does not exercise the act of the Beatific Vision. Christ, as God, is present in every person who has this life of grace. It is the presence of which He was speaking when He told His apostles: “If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him: and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.”24 According to this intrinsically supernatural mode of divine pres­ ence, Our Lord lives within the Church, drawing men into it and strengthening them in its communion. Those who have the life of grace must be either members of the Church or sincerely, albeit perhaps only implicitly, intend to enter it. By dwelling in the souls of those who love Him and the Father, Christ thus lives really and actually within the visible society which He founded and E over which He presides. ' j Moreover there is still another way in which Our Lord can truly be said to dwell within the Catholic Church according to the di- t vine indwelling in line with the life of sanctifying grace. The life of grace and charity is more than a merely individual affair. It is something which has a corporate existence and a corporate ex­ pression. The corporate life of grace within the world is that di­ vine charity of which the only authorized and authentic expression is the Eucharistic sacrifice. Although that sacrifice can be per­ formed by a priest not in communion with the true Church, it re22 Cf. DB 1794. » Cf. S«m. thiol., I, internal or spiritual bond, is composed of those elements which go to make a man a living member of this society. Both of these bonds bring us into contact with Our Lord dwelling within the Catholic Church. The fault which vitiated many of the earlier twentieth cen­ tury writings of the Mystical Body was an absolute neglect of the external bond of unity with Christ. A man is joined to Our Lord within the Church by the external bond of unity when he has the profession of the true divine faith, the communication of the sacraments, and subjection to his legiti­ mate ecclesiastical superiors.27 The external profession of the true faith involves contact with Christ dwelling within the Catholic Church because it means the visible acceptance of that message which Christ teaches infallibly here and now within the Catholic Church and which men receive only from the Church. Communication of the divine sacraments is available only to one who has the baptismal character, and who, consequently, has been invited or called personally by Our Lord to enter into the company of His followers. Furthermore this communication is open only to those baptized persons who have not been cast out by the Church, and ί* Cap. 36, n. 1. 27 Ct StRobert ReUamnne, De controversiis Christianae fidei adversas huias temporis haereticos, Hem. I, Quartae controversiae generalis, Lib. Ill, De ecclesia militante, cap. 2 (Ingolstadt 1586). col. 1264. **· - < ï -, i t j ? V OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 61 who have not abandoned that society which is the fellowship of Christ. Subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical superiors carries with it the acceptance of that authority which speaks and com­ mands with the voice of Our Lord Himself. Through the internal bond of union within the Catholic Church we come into vital contact with Christ residing in the Church in the possession of faith, hope, and charity.28 By faith we have in our own minds that truth which Christ comprehends as God in the divine understanding, which, as Man, He sees in the Beatific Vision, and which He preaches in the Church. Through Christian hope we long for the intuitive vision of the divine essence and for the visible presence of Christ which belongs to, and on the last day will be granted to, the Catholic Church within which He resides. By charity we love Christ who lives in our soul, and who gives us our love for God and our fellow men within the society of His disciples. It is this life of Christ within the Catholic Church which makes this visible society a mystery of our faith. The mystery of the Church is, as it were, the center of the divine economy with man­ kind. The Church within which Our Lord lives and works is that visible organization within which bad members will be mingled with the good until the day of judgment. Yet it is the Church apart from which we shall not find Christ. Our Lord’s presence within this visible society is not imaginary but real and active. “Wherever Jesus Christ is,” said St. Ignatius of Antioch, “there is the Catholic Church.”29 Joseph Clifford Fenton The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. 28 Ibid. 23 Ad Smyrnaeos, cap. 8, n. 2. Mission Intention “An end to Christian Disunity as a Scandal to Unbelievers” is the Mission Intention for the month of July, 1946.