In This World, But Not Of It: A Constant Challenge

In This World, But Not Of It: A Constant Challenge  

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more”. Revelation 21.1

 
Introduction: A Constant Challenge

The Church is called to be the herald and foretaste of the new earth and new heaven to come.  It realizes this calling only to the extent that its members mirror that holiness to which they are called, as sons and daughters of Christ.  Yet, while our hearts may be turned toward the Kingdom we are taught to yearn for; in our natural existence in this world, our feet are often buried deep in the mud of the earth.  This is indeed, the constant challenge to Holy Church and her children; how to be authentically Christian in a world that has become ever more hostile to the truth of Christ.  

The World Today: Hatred of the Truth

The truth of our human history is rooted in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church. Those who gather at his cross and his empty tomb, those who encounter the Risen Lord; realize all times belong to him. 

The world today is not only deaf to the truth, it is hateful towards it.  That hate is no longer just “over there”; where Islamic radicalism seeks to limit Christians in the Middle East and parts of Africa, or India where conversions to Christianity, although legal, can spark persecution and violence. The hatred of the faith is also here in the historically Christian west, in the lands of freedom and liberty.  This reality is vividly expressed in the prediction of the late Cardinal George of Chicago:  “I expected to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

 
Daily it seems we read and hear of the erosion of religious freedom for the sake of a politically correct secular society.  If Christians do not keep quiet about, or find room in their beliefs for abortion, same-sex marriage, and the myriad doctrines of the novus ordo seclorum (new order of the ages), then one is deemed to be ignorant, bigoted, out of step, or even criminal.   

The Truth of Christ: Always Radical

In the Gospel of Luke between when our Lord tells his disciples that to those who much is given much will be required and that because of his word there will be division so great that father will be against son and son against father, Jesus said: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49)  The Word of God is like fire, it is the fire of truth that will consume the old earth and the old heaven, so that the new earth and the new heaven may come in their fullness.  

 
The truth is always radical because it will never accept that which is false, that which is from below and not from above.  To be a Christian today is be radical, it means not always “fitting in”, it means to “love” while others hate, it means to “forgive” when others cannot, it means “poverty” in the sense of not being fulfilled in what the world has to offer us as fulfilling, and ultimately it means the Cross, as saint Paul reminds us, “For the message about the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1Corinthians 1:18)

The Church: Ascetical and Eucharistic

The pagan world into which the Church was born, which the Church challenged and overcame; that pagan society accused the early Christians of not being religious.  They were wrong and they were right.  How so?  They were wrong in the sense that they found it odd that a religion did not have “sacred stuff”.  Why did Christians not have sacred groves and forests, magic, sacred animals, secrets and all the “stuff” of paganism.  In the famous dialogue (Contra Celsum) between the Church Father, Origen and the pagan philosopher Celsius, he attacks Christians for being kidnappers of children, masquerading as a religion.  Therefore in the eyes of pagans they were not a religion for they were not like the religions the world was use to.  They were correct although they did not know it, in the sense that Christianity is not a religion, it is the end of religion.    

 
The Christian faith is not a religion in the sense of a remedy for the trials and tribulations of living in the natural world.  It does not make us rich in the eyes of the world, it makes us rich in grace, it does not keep us from natural death, it destroys eternal death, it will not alleviate all earthly suffering, it will unite us to the salvific sufferings of the Cross of Jesus.  The Church is by its nature ascetical, always poor, always simple, always striving to grow in faith, hope, and love, always in prayer to grow to full stature in Christ.  In the early Church, when one asked what is it Christians believed, the answer was lex orandi lex credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of belief), by experiencing Christians at prayer, there was the revealing of the truths of the  Christian faith.  

 
In the Church we existentially encounter the freedom of being the sons and daughters of God.  It is not the freedom that the world offers, the freedom of choice or movement, the freedom of exercising my individualism and my individual freedom.  No, the freedom given to us by Christ is the freedom of our being, freedom from the constrictions of the natural world of birth and death, it is the freedom of eternal communion with one another and with the Holy Trinity.  Jesus reveals to us in his Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection that true freedom is the communion/relationship; and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit by whose power Jesus rose from the dead, we too are brought into the eternal communion of love, a love that never ends.  This is why the Church is Eucharistic, it is the living vision of the new heaven and the new earth, the Eucharist is never about the individual, is never a private devotion, it is the Body of Christ gathered together, professing the same faith and receiving the same Lord’s unifying sacramental presence in his body and blood. 

Conclusion

The Church is a living organism, where sinners are called to be saints, to be holy and find new life in Christ.  Life in the Church is a challenge to let go, of the false notions of freedom, of the false understandings of individualism, of what the world judges as success, letting go of attempts to rule what we cant rule, which is the natural world and all its pitfalls.  In the Church, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist, we discover the other as brother and sister, not as threat or enemy.  In the celebration of the Eucharist we discover that the natural must give way to the divine, the created to the uncreated, death to eternal life.   

 
God calls each of us to be ecclesial beings, to find in our communion as the Body of Christ, communion with the Holy Trinity.  We are called not to be perfect, wise, rich, important, or successful as the world judges these, for they lead nowhere.  We are called to be holy, like the Divine Master, to lay down our lives for our friends, to be the last so that we will be first, to be of love, for only those who love shall see clearly what we now only see dimly, a new heaven and a new earth.  

- (Rev.) David A. Fisher