The sacrament of unity

BY MGR PAUL NADAL

One of the most important things to come out of the Second Vatican Council was the Church’s understanding of herself.  According to Lumen Gentium, the Church is the “sacrament of the unity of mankind”.

This is a far cry from the Church’s understanding of herself as the perfect society separated from the world with its dedication to spiritual values as distinct from earthly values, or as a supernatural society as distinct from a natural society.

Obviously the Church is a society, but as long as we saw it exclusively in this way, we had to link the action of Christ to the visible structure of the Church either in terms of the Catholic Church alone or to all the Christian communions which have some recognisable church structure.

The Church as “the perfect society” is very different from the Church as “the sacrament of the unity of mankind”. In the latter case the Church is not seen as something different from humankind. It is a leaven in the mass, something that influences the whole of humankind and spiritualises it.

We see only one community, the community of the human race, or the family of people, and now the Church is the sacrament of that people. Here the word “sacrament” is being used in its broadest sense as the saving action of God in the human situation.

The human situation is the visible sign, and the saving action of God is the invisible grace. God is working through the sacrament of the Church to unite humankind to himself.

The Church as a leaven in the mass also means that the action of the Church in the world cannot be limited to the visible structure of the Church, whether in terms of the Catholic Church or any other communion with a visible structure.

The Church is the leaven in the mass spiritualising and Christianising it. The Church is the human community as influenced by the unifying, consecrating action of Christ. In this sense the Church is co-extensive with the human community, and is not a society or community apart.

In its most complete expression the Church has its visible structure which is the outward sign of the sacrament of the Church, the sign of Christ’s influence on the human race.

The Church can and should persuade people to belong to its visible structure, but it cannot and should not try to control all things human.

It serves the human community by bringing them the light of the Gospel and a fuller measure of the grace of Christ. In this way it unites people to God and to one another.

In this sense to use the theme of the Southern African pastoral plan, the Church is the “Community Serving Humanity”.

This is the fourth instalment in Mgr Nadal’s six-part series on the priesthood.