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PAGE 4 BOOK SECTION THURSDAY. SEPTEMBER 26, 1963 THEOLOGIANS VIEW Sunday Morning Crisis In Church CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Jesus offers a divine answer to this impotence and baffle ment and guilt. In spite of all our limitations he allows us to see God, and to see God in our likeness, making the human pilgrimage his own in the Word made flesh, so that all pilgr ims (Joined to him) may share the assurance of his resurre ction-victory. His divinity cuts across the barriers which de fine our lives, so that we who share the Food which Is his Body actually live in him and he In us. His personality re veals a living God who loves as, in our experience, person loves. His sharing of our hu man lot elevates our hope to confidence in the hghest com munion, communion in the life of God himself. Mother, condition and effect our acceptance of salvation in Jesus Christ is the Church, the worshiping community. The love-covenant, dominant theme of Old and New Testaments, im plies relationships and mutua lity. Since the Bible sees indi vidual salvation always as a part and an effect of the communi ty of salvation, it is neither difficult to see why Jesus wil led his Church nor easy to im agine another vehicle of human sharing in the resurrection- victory. Our part in the coven ant of divine love is to love God In and as and through the community, the people of God, the royal priesthood, the cons ecrated nation. So Jesus willed that entrance into the new family of man, in to the fellowship of those who are "in him" and who there fore share his life and victory, should be by an act of cor porate worship, baptism. If dark, Sunday afternoon, corner baptisms have robbed us of the relization that this sacrament is properly celebrated in con nection with Mass and particul arly in the Easter Vigil, this does not change the fact that it is clearly a liturgical act, a worship-act of the Christian people. And, askjwe enter the Church through the liturgy, as the lit— turgy is the means by which the Church bears its children, so we build, stregthen, nourish, feed the same Church through the liturgy, so Christ at Mass (the Lord's Supper, the Euch arist) enlivens his members and effect their solidarity. Bap tism is once for all. It is in the Eucharist that the Church weekly and even dally realizes Itself-above all at the Easter Vigil of which every Sunday is a festal commemoration. The Mass is the public wor ship of the Church, in the sense that all sacramental rites are related and subordinate to It and all other services of wor ship must also look to it as to their center and their norm. In the Mass the Mystery of Christ to which the Christian was introduced in baptism is regularly celebrated, exper ienced: the mystery of Christ, which Frank Norris, S. S. de fines in God's Own People as "the divine plan to make all men one in and through Christ. A Catholic, then, may live a life quite remote from parish and diocesan organizations, from Catholic social action gro ups, from (to descend a bit) bazaars and lawn parties. I do not recommend this; 1 merely state a fact. But when he lives a life remote from the public worship of the Church he cea ses to be a Catholic. Because the Church is the worshiping community. 1 do not mean at all to imply that it is possible to celebrate the liturgy without after effects, or that it is possi ble to divorce the liturgy from the human quest for a better life for all men. No one can participate in the Mass properly without bringing to it and car rying from it a sense of mis sion, a commitment to love and serve his brothers. But there is a variety of ways to serve and to love. There is no alternative to the Christian assembly and its sacramental common pra yer. "Assembly," according to Father Norris in the book mem- tioned above, is about as close as we can get in English to the meaning of the biblical word which we translate as "Ch urch." So the Church of Jesus Christ is the Redeemer's as sembly, the assembly of those who have found in Christ a new relation to the Father and to one another. It is a living un ion, as branches and vine are one, as the members of a body are united to its head. It is a personal union, as bride is Joined to groom in the ma- crocosmic love-covenant, mar riage. It is a worshiping union, for the liberation its members know, the new freshness and beauty "deep down things" (hi Hopkins* phrase)—all of it — is the gift and the aura of the transcendent Other who has spoken a word to us and to whom, if we would hew, we must orient ourselves. The typical assembly of the Church, the Eucharist or Mass, Is what ail Christians must do ‘Will he comes" (1 Cor 11:26) He used the form of a last will and testament when he told his apostles, "Do this for a com memoration of me” (Lk 22:19) If you will, "Church" is the name given to this eucharistic gathering, to the assembly of disciples fulfilling Jesus' will. It is a covenant act, and the bond which it establishes is a permanent bond, as the Church is a permanent reality existing even when the Eucharist is not being celebrated. In "doing this" that the Father recognizes us as sons and daughters and that we recognize one another as brothers and sisters. Bap tism is for the sake of ' Doing this." Because we ‘Mo this''we are Christians, in a permanent filial relationship to die Father. And without "this," we can move mountains and it avails nothing. "Remember that we have changed over from death to life, in loving the brethern as we do" (1 Jn 3:14). We have al ways accepted "loving the bret- hein” as a moral obligation, no matter how bad our perfor mance has been in any given period. But holy writ is saying more than that — much more. It is using the phrases "change over from death to life" and "loving the brethern" almost interchangeably. We change over from death to life when we enter the Mystery of Christ, identify ourselves with him in baptism and faith. And because Christ’s Body is the Church, this is equal to "loving the brethern." We find the Savior in the worshiping community, and we find the worshiping com munity in the Savior. So one is not named a Cat holic because of his virtue or because of meeting some pre conceived standard on a scale of morality or "spirituality" or intellectuality. Jesus* par ables make this clear. Wheat and tares together, bad fish and good ones, judgment and purification only when time blo ssoms into the heavenly king dom. One is named Catholic, as Ignatius assured us more than eighteen centuries ago, be cause one takes part in a Euc harist at which a bishop is the president. One is named Cathol ic because he is found in the worshiping community. How uncomplicated it isl A community of bread and book and bishop. All for die sake of that common worship in which we recognize the Father and be recognize us. All instru- instruments, means, tools of Jesus Christ who, despising nothing, took the form of a ser vant. All existing for him and communicating his life. And no one of these elements indepen dent of the others, but beauti fully interdependent, beau tifully related. All are earthy sacramental, fairly bursting with problems for the purist and die proud and the would-be angel. personalized (LhristmaS (Lards An Outstanding Selection For Imprinting Order Plow For Prompt Delivery NOTRi DAME BOOK SHOP, INC. Spirit used the community to forge his ageless witness. Only the bishop is ordinary. Apart from the perhaps unavo idable pun, this is profoundly true. God's great gifts have been confinded to weak men. And the bishop, as the Church's minister of book and bread, shares all our human infirmit ies. But he trembingly accepts from God a character and grace of office in the sacrament of holy orders. He is a bishop in the Church, within a living, wors hiping and infallible community. And for the sake of the com munity, the Spirit honors Jesus’ promise of guidance for the college of bishops, the apostolic college, in union with the bishop of Rome, the pope. In the bread and the book we have the food of fraternity, the common meal and the common word, ancient symbols of human communication and community now divinized and effective for divinization. In the bishop we have the necessary minister and preacher of the divine and sac ramental realities in the Ch urch and the necessary human bond and link for the Church's social organization. And what a prophetic reality, his holy Catholic Church, even in terms of man's political and economic evolution! In it we see God's answer to a desire which he himself has planted in the human heart, a desire that will not limit Itself to the religuous, to the sphere of the sacred. It is the desire we see in such basic facts as the impulse to union between male and female, and in such advanced products of social progress as the United Nations and the Common Mar ket. From one point of view we are indeed, in today's world, in a better position than any of our ancestors to appreciate the phenomenon we call the Church. For our world has at tained through hard experience 115 Peachtree St., N.E. JA 5-138® and devoted study a heightened consciousness of the folly of political and economic isolat ion, every demand for a mino rity's civil rights — each Is an expression of the deep, gna wing need of men and women to feel and act in cosmic unity. We might say that were there no such reality as die Catholic Church we would be forced to try to Invent it. God's love ant icipated and prevented our In- inevitable failure. For our pol itical and economic inventions —even should they, as we hope, result In ever-more-perfect forms we have thus far achie ved are themselves, to an ex tent no one can measure, die product of a subtle influence emanating from the Church, the Gospel's home and timely in carnation. The human social order re turns the compliment by it self prodding and encouraging the ecumenical movement am ong nineteenth and twentieth century Christians. If the comp liment is unconscious and it, on the conscious level, the bra ins, the lights, the prophets of the social order are imprison ed in the same world of the ap parent as most of us, and are therefore inclined to reject the Church (not knowing it) — then we can only hope that the act ion of the Second Vatican Cou ncil In giving priority to the liturgy will open the eyes of us all. Bread and book and bishop. The Catholic believers that there is no Christianity in any full sense, no liturgy in any full sense, no Church in any full sense, without these three. And all are seen and experie nced in their prpoer relation ships to one another and to the priestly community as a whole only in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, Holy Mass. For the community which Jesus cre ates and ever renews with such instruments is a community of worship. This is the Church. S TRANGE BUT TRU Little-Known Facts for Catholic* By M J. MURRAY ***** »- E cu&OUC OLD COHAN rasonW! shovsa Auasw# **tr ***’ THROUGH TUtr VZy IAHD OH CHMCLBACK, *£1* &*> ^eotrCer. The bread is no ordinary br ead. It is Christ's Body we share and Christ's Body we become. An early Christian prayer (in the Didache) asks: "As this bread that is broken was scattered upon the moun tains and was gathered toget her and became one, so let your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom." It is not only a bread of commemoration, not only a bread of union, but also a bread of promise. The book is no ordinary book. Incensed and kissed during the liturgical assembly in reverent homage to ’he unique character of Its message, the Bible sta nds alone (within the worship ing community in which it took shape) as source and norm. Modern biblical scholarship has helped us immeasurably to un derstand both its message and the extent to which the Holy Uae. wl -«.•* -j ’Sj- 5 ' STELIZABETH OF PORTUGAL K CUE Of THT SAINTS WvOtttD M TIC CAUSt Of AMCC. BJosgucM, to music /— The French broadcasting System has comirwsooed the renowned composer DARIUs MILHAUD tu Write A symphony illustrating FDPF JDHN S ’frk'FH IN 7TRRIS'encyclical f In the fm*d SACRE QdEUR Baulka m «wrr. unbnohen kftTCN NWS SEEN MAHTAMEO BEFONC THE BLESSED SACAAMENr ro* A*MUY So YEAXS 1NE BASILICA IS A WOHLD ClNTlA f&A TNt P&tPtTUAL ADOAATXNJ Of WE tUCNASNST, A MCNEHCNT rttTH KXOOO SANCTOAXH£ mi THE fhA CQNnNENTV.