religion 10 "spiritual life and ecclesiology"
The Paschal Mystery:
“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Lk 24:26)
The Emmaus story in Luke 24 is the longest and most elegant appearance story in the Gospels. In the afternoon of the first Easter Sunday two discouraged disciples, ready to give up on Jesus and his movement and on their way out of Jerusalem, encounter a mysterious stranger who turns out to be the risen Jesus. When the stranger interprets the Scriptures for them and shares a meal with them, they move from a plaintive “We were hoping” to burning hearts and shouts of joy.
The passage takes up three major themes in Luke’s Gospel: Jesus as a prophet, his fulfillment of Israel’s Scriptures and his shared meals. Jesus exhibited the characteristics of a biblical prophet: he taught the people in words and deeds (miracles, symbolic actions), offered predictions about the future, called his people to repent and suffered hostility and opposition. In his conversation with the two disciples, the risen Jesus explains (probably in terms of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53) that the Messiah had to suffer. The encounter reaches its climax in a meal, at which they come to recognize that the mysterious stranger is the risen Jesus. In celebrating the Eucharist today, Christians repeat the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We come to know the risen Jesus in Scripture and “the breaking of the bread.”
Today’s excerpt from Peter’s speech in Acts 2 gives a sample of early Christian preaching, in which the interpretation of the Old Testament in light of the paschal mystery was an essential feature. As in the Emmaus story, the paschal mystery functions as the key that opens up all the mysteries hidden in Israel’s Scriptures.
The principal images in today’s selection from 1 Peter develop further the significance of the paschal mystery for us. As with the Emmaus pilgrims, our life in Christ has become a sojourn or journey in search of our heavenly home—that is, in search of right relationship with God, the fullness of God’s kingdom and eternal life with God. The image of ransom or redemption refers to the paschal mystery as that which has enabled us to be freed from the slavery of sin and death and freed for life in the Spirit. The reference to “the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb” connects Jesus’ death with the sacrificial system of ancient Israel and its belief that life is in the blood. Thus it suggests that his death was the perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice for sins, and that the blood that Jesus shed has given us new life.
The Church:
Names and Images of the Church
The word "Church" (Latin ecclesia, from the Greek ek-ka-lein, to "call out of") means a convocation or an assembly. It designates the assemblies of the people, usually for a religious purpose. Ekklesia is used frequently in the Greek Old Testament for the assembly of the Chosen People before God, above all for their assembly on Mount Sinai where Israel received the Law and was established by God as his holy people. By calling itself "Church," the first community of Christian believers recognized itself as heir to that assembly. In the Church, God is "calling together" his people from all the ends of the earth. The equivalent Greek term Kyriake, from which the English word Church and the German Kirche are derived, means "what belongs to the Lord."
In Christian usage, the word "church" designates the liturgical assembly, but also the local community or the whole universal community of believers. These three meanings are inseparable. "The Church" is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ's Body.
Symbols of the Church
In Scripture, we find a host of interrelated images and figures through which Revelation speaks of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church. The images taken from the Old Testament are variations on a profound theme: the People of God. In the New Testament, all these images find a new center because Christ has become the head of this people, which henceforth is his Body.] Around this center are grouped images taken "from the life of the shepherd or from cultivation of the land, from the art of building or from family life and marriage."
"The Church is, accordingly, a sheepfold, the sole and necessary gateway to which is Christ. It is also the flock of which God himself foretold that he would be the shepherd, and whose sheep, even though governed by human shepherds, are unfailingly nourished and led by Christ himself, the Good Shepherd and Prince of Shepherds, who gave his life for his sheep.
"The Church is a cultivated field, the tillage of God. On that land the ancient olive tree grows whose holy roots were the prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about again. That land, like a choice vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly cultivator. Yet the true vine is Christ who gives life and fruitfulness to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ, without whom we can do nothing.
"Often, too, the Church is called the building of God. The Lord compared himself to the stone which the builders rejected, but which was made into the comer-stone. On this foundation the Church is built by the apostles and from it the Church receives solidity and unity. This edifice has many names to describe it: the house of God in which his family dwells; the household of God in the Spirit; the dwelling-place of God among men; and, especially, the holy temple. This temple, symbolized in places of worship built out of stone, is praised by the Fathers and, not without reason, is compared in the liturgy to the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. As living stones we here on earth are built into it. It is this holy city that is seen by John as it comes down out of heaven from God when the world is made anew, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
"The Church, further, which is called 'that Jerusalem which is above' and 'our mother', is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless lamb. It is she whom Christ 'loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify her.' It is she whom he unites to himself by an unbreakable alliance, and whom he constantly 'nourishes and cherishes.'"
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