Lenten reflection for Pope, Curia focuses on St. Augustine
(Vatican Radio) The theology of the great Doctors of the Church are the focus of a
series of Lenten reflections prepared by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap for Pope
Francis and the Roman Curia in these weeks remaining ahead of Easter. In his second
sermon in the series, Fr. Cantalamessa, the preacher for the Papal Household, examines
St. Augustine in a reflection entitled “I Believe the Church Is One and Holy.”
Below,
please find the official English translation of his Sermon:
1. Moving from
the East to the West
In the introductory meditation last week, we reflected
on the meaning of Lent as a time of going into the desert with Jesus, fasting from
food and images presented by mass media, learning to overcome temptation, and above
all growing in intimacy with God.
In the four sermons that remain, continuing
with the reflection begun in Lent of 2012 on the Greek Fathers, we will now place
ourselves under the instruction of four great Doctors of the Latin Church—Augustine,
Ambrose, Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great—to see what each of them says to us
today about a truth of faith that each in particular asserted: respectively, the nature
of the Church, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the christological dogma
of Chalcedon, and the spiritual understanding of the Scripture.
Our aim is
to discover, behind these great Fathers, the richness, the beauty, and joy of believing
, passing, as Paul says, "from faith to faith" (Rom 1:17), from a faith of the mind
to a faith of mind and heart. It will be an increased volume of faith within the Church
that will then constitute her best resource in announcing it to the world.
The
title of the cycle – “On the shoulders of the giants – is derived from a thought dear
to medieval theologians: "We are – they said - like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders
of giants. We can see more things and further than they do, not for the sharpness
of our gaze, or the height of our body, but because we are carried higher and we sit
upon their gigantic stature ." This thought has found artistic expression in certain
statues and stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Characters
of imposing stature are represented there who hold up little men, almost dwarfs, sitting
on their shoulders. Those giants were for them, as they are for us , the ancient Fathers
of the Church.
After lessons from Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of
Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa concerning, respectively, the divinity of Christ,
the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, and knowing God, one could have the impression that
very little was left for the Latin Fathers to do in developing Christian dogma. A
brief glance at the history of theology will quickly convince us otherwise.
Prompted
by the culture they were part of, gifted with strong speculative abilities, and reacting
to the heresies they were forced to combat (Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism,
Monophytism), the Greek Fathers were primarily focused on the ontological aspects
of dogma: the divinity of Christ, his two natures and the manner of their union, and
the unity and triune nature of God. The themes most dear to Paul—justification, the
relationship between the law and the gospel, the Church as the body of Christ—remained
on the margins of their attention or were treated in passing. The Apostle John, with
his emphasis on the Incarnation, suited their purposes much better than Paul who places
the paschal mystery at the center of everything with his emphasis on the action of
Christ more than on his being.
The character of the Latin Fathers (with the
exception of Augustine) that inclines them to concern themselves with concrete, juridical,
and organizational problems rather than speculative ones, combined with the appearance
of new heresies like Donatism and Pelagianism, will stimulate a new and original reflection
on the Pauline themes of grace, the Church, the sacraments, and Scripture. These are
the themes I would like to reflect on for this year’s Lenten preaching.
2.
What Is the Church?
Let us being our review with the greatest of the Latin
Fathers, Augustine. The Doctor of Hippo has left his mark on almost all areas of theology
but especially on two of them: grace and the Church. The first is the result of his
battle against Pelagianism and the second is the result of his battle against Donatism.
Interest
in Augustine’s doctrine on grace predominated from the sixteenth century on, whether
in the Protestant sphere (Luther aligned himself with the doctrine of justification
and Calvin with the doctrine of predestination) or in the Catholic sphere because
of the controversies provoked by Cornelius Otto Janssen and Michael Baius. Interest
in Augustine’s ecclesiastical doctrine is instead prevalent in our day because the
Second Vatican Council made the Church its central theme and because of the ecumenical
movement in which the concept of “church” is the critical knot to untie. Seeking the
help and inspiration of the Fathers for the faith here and now, we will concern ourselves
with this second area of interest in Augustine, the Church.
The Church was
not a topic unknown to the Greek Fathers and the Latin authors before Augustine (Cyprian,
Hilary, Ambrose), but their statements were for the most part limited to repeating
and commenting on the assertions and images in Scripture. The Church is the new people
of God; the Church has been promised indefectibility; she is the “pillar and bulwark
of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15); the Holy Spirit is her supreme Teacher. The Church is
“catholic” because she is open to all people, she teaches all dogmas, and she possesses
all the charisms. In the wake of Paul, the Church is spoken of as the mystery of our
incorporation into Christ through baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit; the Church
is birthed from the pierced side of Christ on the cross, just as Eve was formed from
the side of a sleeping Adam.
However, these things were said only occasionally;
the Church had not yet become an issue in itself. The one who will be compelled to
make it a major theme is Augustine because he had to fight the schism of the Donatists
almost all his life. Perhaps no one today would remember that North African sect if
not for the fact that it was the occasion that birthed what we call ecclesiology today,
that is, a reflection on what the Church is in God’s plan, her nature and her operation.
Around
311 a man called Donatus, the bishop of Numidia, refused to accept in ecclesial communion
those who had handed over the Sacred Books to state authorities during the persecution
of Diocletian and had renounced their faith to save their lives. In 311 a man called
Caecilian, elected as bishop of Carthage, was accused (wrongly, according to the Catholics)
of having betrayed the faith during Diocletian’s persecution. A group of seventy North
African bishops led by Donatus opposed this appointment. They removed Caecilian from
office and chose Donatus for that post. Excommunicated by Pope Miltiades in 313, Donatus
remained in his post, triggering a schism that created a church parallel to the Catholic
Church in North Africa until the invasion of the Vandals that occurred in the following
century.
In the course of the controversy, the Donatists had tried to justify
their position with theological arguments, and it was in refuting them that Augustine
elaborated, little by little, his doctrine of the Church. This occurs in two different
contexts: in works written directly against the Donatists as well as in his commentaries
on Scripture and his sermons to the people. It is important to distinguish between
these two contexts because in the second case Augustine will put more emphasis on
some aspects of the Church rather than others, and it is only from the whole of his
writing that we can derive his complete doctrine. Let us look, just briefly, at what
the saint’s conclusions are in each of the two contexts, beginning with the one that
is directly anti-Donatist.
a. The Church, the Communion of Sacraments,
and the Society of Saints. The Donatist schism was based on the conviction that grace
cannot be transmitted by a minister who does not have it; therefore, sacraments administered
in this way have no effect whatsoever. This argument, initially applied to the ordination
of Bishop Caecilian, is soon extended to other sacraments and to baptism in particular.
Using this argument, the Donatists justify their separation from the Catholics and
their practice of re-baptizing whoever came from their ranks.
In response
Augustine elaborates a principle that will forever be an achievement in theology and
creates the basis for the future treatise De sacramentis: the distinction between
potestas and ministerium, namely, between the cause of grace and its minister. The
grace conferred through sacraments is exclusively the work of God and Christ; the
minister is only an instrument: “When Peter baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes; when
John baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes; when Jude baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes.”
The validity and efficacy of the sacraments is not impeded by an unworthy minister.
This is a truth, as we know, that the Christian people need to remember today as well.
Having
neutralized the principal weapon of his opponents this way, Augustine can elaborate
his great vision of the Church through some fundamental distinctions. The first is
between the present or earthly Church and the future or heavenly Church. This second
Church will be comprised only of saints. The Church in the present age, on the other
hand, will always be a field in which wheat and tares are mixed, the net that catches
good and bad fish, that is, saints and sinners.
Augustine makes another distinction
that concerns the Church in its earthly stage, the distinction between the communion
of sacraments (communio sacramentorum) and the society of saints (societas sanctorum).
The first visibly unites all those who take part in the same external signs: sacraments,
Scripture, Church authority; the second unites only those who, in addition to the
signs, share in common the reality hidden under the signs (res sacramentorum), i.
e., the Holy Spirit, grace, and charity.
Since in this world below it will
always be impossible to know with certainty who possesses the Holy Spirit and grace—and
even more impossible to know if they will persevere to the end in that state—Augustine
ends up identifying the true, definitive community of saints with the heavenly Church
of the predestined. “How many sheep who are inside today will be outside, and how
many wolves that are now outside will be in inside.”
The novelty, concerning
this point as compared to Cyprian, is that while Cyprian made the unity of the Church
consist in something exterior and visible—the harmony of all the bishops among themselves—Augustine
makes it consist in something interior: the Holy Spirit. The unity of the Church is
thus brought about by the same One who brings about unity in the Trinity. “The Father
and Son have wanted us to be united among ourselves and with them by means of the
same bond that unites them, namely, the love that is the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit
performs the same function in the Church that the soul performs in our physical body:
He is the animating and unifying principle. “What the soul is to the human body the
Holy Spirit is to the body of Christ, which is the Church.”
Complete membership
in the Church requires both the visible communion of sacramental signs and the invisible
communion of grace. However, there can be degrees of belonging to the Church, so it
is not necessary that a person be identified as either inside or outside; someone
can be partly inside and partly outside. There is an exterior membership, through
sacramental signs, which includes the schismatic Donatists and unfaithful Catholics
and there is a full and complete communion. The first kind of membership consists
in someone participating in the external sign of grace (sacramentum) but not receiving
the interior reality that it produces (res sacramenti) or receiving it to one’s condemnation
rather than to one’s salvation, as in the case of Baptism administered by schismatics
or in the case of the Eucharist being received unworthily by Catholics.
b.
The Church as the Body of Christ animated by the Holy Spirit. In Augustine’s exegetical
writings and sermons, we find these same basic principles of ecclesiology, but they
are derived less from polemics and are more like family conversations, so to speak.
Augustine can emphasize the interior and spiritual aspects of the Church that are
most on his heart. In these instances the Church is presented, often in an elevated
and moving tone, as the body of Christ (the adjective “mystical” will be added later)
that is animated by the Holy Spirit and in such a similar way to the Eucharistic body
that it matches its characteristics almost completely. Let us listen to what his faithful
once heard on the feast of Pentecost on this theme:
If you want to understand
the body of Christ, listen to the apostle telling the faithful: You, though, are the
body of Christ and its members (1 Cor 12:27). So if it’s you that are the body of
Christ and its members, it’s the mystery [that you are] that has been placed at the
Lord’s table; what you receive is the mystery that . . . [you are]. It is to what
you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent. What . .
. you see is The body of Christ, and you answer Amen. So be a member of the body of
Christ, in order to make your Amen truthful. . . . Be what you can see, and receive
what you are.
The nexus between the two bodies of Christ is based for Augustine
on the unique symbolic correspondence between the bread and wine becoming the body
of Christ and believers becoming the body of Christ. The Eucharistic bread is obtained
from the dough of many grains of wheat and the wine from a multitude of grapes; in
the same way, the Church is formed by many people, united and blended together by
the charity which is the Holy Spirit. Just as wheat spread over the hills is first
harvested, then milled, and then kneaded with water and cooked in the oven, so the
faithful spread throughout the world are brought together by the word of God, milled
by the penances and the exorcisms preceding baptism, immersed in the water of baptism,
and put through the fire of the Spirit. Also in relation to the Church one must say
that the sacrament significando causat, the sacrament “causes by signifying”. By signifying
the union of many persons in one the Eucharist brings it about and causes it. In this
sense, we can say that “The Eucharist makes the Church.”
3. The Relevance
of Augustine’s Ecclesiology for Today
Let us now try to see how Augustine’s
ideas about the Church can contribute to shedding light on the problems that the Church
has to confront in our time. I would like in particular to devote some time to the
importance of Augustine’s ecclesiology for ecumenical dialogue. One circumstance makes
this choice particularly relevant. The Christian world is preparing to celebrate the
fifth centenary of the Protestant Reformation. Joint declarations and documents are
already beginning to circulate in view of this event. It is vital for the whole Church
that this opportunity not be wasted by people remaining prisoners of the past, trying
to ascertain—even if with a more objective and irenic attitude than in the past—each
other’s motives and faults. Rather, let us take a qualitative leap forward, like what
happens when the sluice gate of a river or a canal allows ships to continue to navigate
at a higher water level.
The situation in the world, in the church, and in
theology has changed since then. It is a matter of starting over again with the person
of Jesus, of humbly helping our contemporaries to discover the person of Christ. We
need to place ourselves in the time of the Apostles: they faced a pre-Christian world,
and we face a world that is in large part post-Christian. When Paul wants to summarize
the essence of the Christian message in one sentence, he does not say, “I proclaim
this or that doctrine to you.” Instead he says, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor
1:23), and “We preach . . . Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5).
This does not
mean ignoring the great theological and spiritual enrichment that came from the Reformation
or desiring to return to the time before it. It means instead allowing all of Christianity
to benefit from its achievements, once they are freed of certain distortions due to
the heated atmosphere of the time and of later controversies. Justification by faith,
for example, ought to be preached by the whole Church—and with more vigor than ever—not
in opposition however to good works, which is an issue that has been settled, but
in opposition to the claim of people today that they can save themselves without a
need for God or Christ. I am convinced that if he were alive today this is the way
Luther himself would preach the justification through faith!
Let us see how
Augustine’s theology can help us in this effort of overcoming the long-standing barriers.
The path to take today is, in a certain sense, in an opposite direction to the one
Augustine took with the Donatists. At that time, he needed to move from the communion
through the sacraments toward the communion through the grace of the Holy Spirit and
charity; today we need to move from the spiritual communion of charity to full communion
in the sacraments as well, among which the Eucharist is first.
The distinction
between the two levels in which the true Church is present—the exterior one of signs
and the interior one of grace—allows Augustine to formulate a principle that would
have been unthinkable before him: “As, therefore, there is in the Catholic Church
something which is not Catholic, so there may be something which is Catholic outside
the Catholic Church.” These two aspects of the Church—the visible, institutional and
the invisible, spiritual—cannot be separated. This is true and has been reasserted
by Pope Pius XII in Mystici corporis and by the Second Vatican Council in Lumen gentium.
However, since these two aspects unfortunately do not coincide because of historical
separations and the sin of human beings, one cannot give more importance to institutional
communion than to spiritual communion.
This poses a serious question for me.
Can I, as a Catholic, feel in communion more with the multitude of those baptized
in my own church, who nevertheless completely neglect Christ and the church—or if
they express some interest, it is only to speak ill of it—than I do with the group
of those who, belonging to other confessions, believe in the same fundamental truths
I do, who love Jesus Christ to the point of giving their lives for him, who spread
the gospel, who are concerned with trying to alleviate the poverty in the world, and
who have the same gifts of the Holy Spirit that we have? Persecutions, so frequent
today in certain parts of the world, do not make distinctions: they do not burn churches
or kill people because they are Catholic or Protestant but because they are Christians.
In the eyes of the persecutors we are already “one”!
This is of course a question
that Christians in other churches should also ask themselves in regard to Catholics,
and, thanks be to God, this is precisely what is happening to a hidden degree and
is far more frequent than the news would lead us to believe. I am convinced that one
day, we will be amazed, and others will be amazed, at not having been aware earlier
of what the Holy Spirit has been doing among Christians in our day beyond official
channels. There are so many Christians outside the Catholic Church who are looking
at it in a new light and beginning to recognize their own roots in it.
Augustine’s
most novel and most fruitful insight about the Church, as we saw, is to have identified
the essential principle of her unity in the Spirit instead of in the horizontal communion
of bishops among themselves and with the pope of Rome. Just as the unity of a human
body is achieved by the soul that animates and moves all its members, the same is
true for the unity of the body of Christ. It is a mystical fact first before it is
a reality that is expressed socially and visibly in an external way. It is a reflection
of the perfect unity between the Father and Son through the work of the Spirit. Jesus
is the one who once and for all established this mystical foundation when he prayed
“that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22). A fundamental unity in doctrine
and discipline will be the fruit of this mystical and spiritual unity, but it can
never be its cause.
The most concrete steps toward unity, therefore, are not
those that are made around a table or in joint declarations (even though those are
all important). They are the ones made when believers of different confessions find
themselves proclaiming the Lord Jesus together in fraternal accord, sharing their
charisms, and recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. What the Church
has proclaimed in its different messages for the World Day of Peace, including the
message in 2013, is valid for the unity of Christians: peace begins in people’s hearts,
and fraternity is the foundation for peace.
4. A Member of the Body of
Christ Moved by the Spirit!
In his sermons to the people Augustine never
set forth his ideas about the Church without quickly drawing out their practical consequences
for the daily life of the faithful. And I would also like to do that before concluding
our meditation, as if we were joining the ranks of his listeners back then.
The
image of the Church as the body of Christ is not new with Augustine. What he brings
that is new concerns the practical implications that we can infer for the life of
believers. For one, we no longer have any reason to look at one another with envy
and jealousy. What I do not have that others have is also mine. You can listen to
the apostle list all the marvelous charisms—apostolate, prophecy, healings, etc—and
perhaps you are saddened at thinking you do not have any. But wait, Augustine advises,
“If you love, you do not have nothing; for if you love unity, whoever in it has anything
has it also for you! Take away envy, and what I have is yours; let me take away envy,
and what you have is mine.”
Only the eye has the capacity to see. But does
the eye see only for itself? Isn’t it the whole body that benefits from its ability
to see? The hands works, but does it work only on its own behalf? If a rock is about
to hit the eye, does the hand remain motionless because the blow is not being directly
aimed at itself? The same thing happens in the body of Christ: what every member is
and does, he or she is and does it for all!
This reveals the secret about why
charity is “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31). It makes me love the Church,
or the community in which I live, and because of unity, all of the charisms, and not
just some of them, are mine. And there is more. If you love unity more than I do,
the charism I have is more yours than mine. Let us suppose I have the charism to evangelize;
I can flatter myself or boast of it and then I become “a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1).
Through my charism, “I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3); however, it does not cease to be
useful for you who listen, despite my sin. Through charity you possess without risk
that which someone else possesses with risk. Charity truly multiplies the charisms
because it makes one person’s charism the charism of all.
“Are you part of
the one body of Christ? Do you love the unity of the church?” Augustine asked his
faithful. “Now if a pagan asks you why you do not speak all languages, since it is
written that those who received the Holy Spirit spoke all languages, respond without
hesitating, ‘Certainly I speak all languages. In fact I belong to a body, the Church,
that speaks all languages and proclaims in all languages the mighty works of God.’”
When
we are able to apply this truth not only to internal relationships within the community
in which we live and to our Church, but also to the relationships between one Christian
church and another, that is the day when the unity of Christians will for all practical
purposes be an accomplished fact.
Let us recall the exhortation with which
Augustine ended so many of his discourses on the Church: “If you wish to live in the
Holy Spirit, preserve charity, love the truth, and you will attain eternity. Amen.”