Reflections on the Church - Victor Onegi - 11046

OGENMUNGU VICTOR ONEGI, OFM CAP, (11046T)

1. DISCIPLESHIP ROOTED IN LOVE. (Johns’ Ecclesiology Based on Class Notes)

I find it interesting to study John’s Ecclesiology. John’s ecclesiology depicts the church as a community of faithful guided by the Holy Spirit. Because the community is guided by the Holy Spirit, its members are united deeply in love. This is agape love-a love that goes beyond race or any other differences. In John’s ecclesiology, none of the church members is seen based on his race or color or religion. There is no Jew, Gentile or Samaritan. Instead the community is seen as the community of the faithful gathered together in one faith and worshiping the Lord in Spirit and Truth. They are people united in Jesus Christ.

In John’s Ecclesiology, true discipleship is grounded in absolute love of Jesus. It is the deep love for Jesus that makes a disciple to stand the test of the discipleship. This fact is evident in the life of John the beloved apostle who remained with Jesus not only during Jesus good life time but even when he was faced with situation of death. Because he loved his master much, John believed immediately without need for any proof that Jesus was alive after three days of his death, which is the resurrection day. What we see in St. John is rather the opposite of St. Peter. During the life time of Jesus, Peter does not show that he loves Jesus and this explains the reason for his three times denial of his master (Jn 18:17, 25-27). But Jesus calls peter as well to love him in order to take care of his sheep. So for John, for one to remain steadfast in discipleship, he has to love Jesus unconditionally.

Further reflection of John’s Ecclesiology that centers onto the love of God makes one ask a fundamental question: How do I know that I love God?  The answer to this fundamental question is found in John’s Christology itself; that is, the way one relates to God. One who keeps God’s commandments and walks in the ways of righteousness, works and directs others to do the same is indeed gripped by the love of God.  Such a person follows Jesus unconditionally. This is what it means to love and serve God and be gripped in the love of God.

As stated above, to be a disciple of Jesus is to love and serve him generously. In this case then, if the church is to bear witness to the world, her faithful have to be loving people and should always practice forgiveness like Jesus shown towards Peter and others such as the woman caught in adultery John 8, among others. In this way, the church will be standing on a strong foundation.

2. THE SURVIVAL OF THE CHURCH AFTER TWELVE THE APOSTLES- A reflection based on Raymond Brown “The Churches that the Apostles left Behind”.

Well, we all know that there were twelve apostles during the time of Jesus. The number twelve reduced to eleven when Judas hanged himself for having betrayed his master but this problem was immediately solved with the election of Matthias. Lk. 1:15-26. Even though the number was restored to 12, the apostles soon began to phase out most of who died due to persecution of the church. Their successors took up apostleship and missionary work.

As seen above, from among the apostles, there were those who were looked at as the chief apostles of Christ. These include Peter and of course Paul who was not among the twelve yet his apostleship was genuine and true. The third of the chief apostles is James who was known to be the bother of the Lord. The chief apostles also died by mid 60s. However, in spite of the death of the apostles by mid 60s, the church continued to survive.  So, the question that comes to mind is: how did the church survive? What made it to survive after the apostle’s death?

Raymond Brown in his book The Churches the Apostles Left Behind identifies seven different churches in the New Testament that the apostles left behind and all of them survived. Raymond brown calls them The Pauline heritage in Colossians/ Ephesians. In this Raymond looks at the church as Christ’s body that ought to be loved. The second perhaps is what he studies as  Pauline’s heritage in Like/Acts from where he studies the church from two fundamental point of view whereby in Luke, which indeed lean heavily on the Gospel of Mark, he looks at the church as that which is the fulfillment of the messianic hopes in Israel. (Luke 1.5-2:40). Consequently in Act he further looks at the church as the re-establishment of Israel. Indeed the book of Acts continues the gospel. In both, emphasis is laid on the aspect of the Spirit.

The second one is the Heritage in 1Peter in which the death of Christ is looked at as that which brought redemption to mankind. Another one is what Brown calls the Heritage of the beloved Disciples in the fourth Gospel in which St. John looks at discipleship as one that is built on love.  The remaining three churches according to Brown include The Paul’s pastoral letter to Titus and Timothy, the Gospel of Mark and then Gospel of Mathew.

In all these, one notices that the different communities want to emphasize on the church as a community by addressing a particular problem or encouraging the church members in a particular situation. So these seven churches according to Brown are not to be seen as if the churches are divided. Instead the seven churches remain united with one another and no body with proper sense can use this argument to support or suppose the division (multiplicity) of the churches in the modern era. The seven churches were one and the same thing and were governed by the Holy Spirit. In this case then in our time, we need to see communion among the different churches in the world. The universal church needs to enter into a serious dialogue with other mushrooming churches and bring them together.

3. THE CHURCH THAT IS UNITED IN THE SPIRIT: Reflection Featuring Raymond Brown as in “The Churches the Apostles left Behind”.

A lot is said about the universal church in the New Testament. New Testament provides us with the origin of the universal church. The church began with a small group of the twelve people known as the apostles who came to follow Jesus Christ.  But today the number of members of the Catholic Church about which we speak is estimated to reach 1.2 billion members. How did this come about?

In the New Testament and especially in the synoptic gospels we are told that when Jesus resurrected, he commissioned his apostles to go and proclaim his gospels to all nations (Mk16:15). Mathew puts it this way: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). Luke on the other hand asserts that the eleven are given mandate to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem (Lk 24: 47). The synoptic gospels therefore, give us the answer to how the Christ’s followers increased in number. We also have to keep in mind that even during Jesus’ ministry he sent his apostles to go out and preach the Kingdom of God. This also yielded positive result but not as much as it was after the resurrection. With this assertion we can see how the Kingdom of God that initially was a concern of the minority people centered around Jerusalem embraced the entire Universe. Today the church is understood as one holy and apostolic in nature. It is Christ’s church built on the foundation of the twelve apostles. This is not to mean that the gospel of Jesus has reached everybody or every part of the world.

Looking at the big number of the members of the church but who are united, the question that comes to mind is: How is it possible that the church that has many members has continually remained united? What really makes them live as one family? As people of God bound together in love and destined for salvation?

St Paul gives us beautiful answer to all these questions-the power of the Spirit. For Paul, the source of unity between Christians is the Spirit: Paul says: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rm 5:5). The unity that the Spirit brings in the church makes every church member to love one another. The church members then begin to look at one another as one people without any sort of discrimination based on color, race, gender and so forth. This is what St. Paul meant when he asserted that for the Christians “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free men male nor female” (Gal 3:28). The members therefore, come to know one another from the good morals that they lead. For life in the spirit involves a more stringent and interior moral attitude which is found in the Sermon on the Mount of which the ability to live that life in conformity to the Sermon on the Mount is attributed to the indwelling of the Spirit. (Peter Hebblethwaite “Theology of the Church” Pg 29)

Besides the aspects of the spirit that unites the church, Eucharist also does the same. The members of the church come together as one family to partake of the Eucharist. In this way the church becomes one body. Indeed the aspect of the body expresses the unity in diversity of the community. Even though the individual may have different functions, all their activities lead to one end. Having said all these we conclude this part by saying the church is indeed united as one and the church is the body of Christ.

4. CHURCH AS A FAMILY BASED ON HARMONY- reflection featuring Africae Munus

Africae Munus gives priority to families because it is from families that every member of the church comes into existence. So families have to be given priority. These individuals come together from different families and form a bigger family called the Church.  It is from here that they can now worship together and express their faith as a community of faith.

As above, the fundamental aspect of family needs to be emphasized if the church is to manifest itself as one, truly apostolic. The understanding of the church as one then brings to mind the notion of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation which are the three dominant themes in Africae Munus.

Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes in Africae Munus the aspect of peace, justice and love that should prevail among brothers and sisters, the role of authority expressed by parents, loving concern for the members of society who are weaker, sickness or old age, if necessary to forgive them. For this reason, “the family is the first and indispensible teacher of peace” AM 43. This therefore, means that if we begin charity right from home we will achieve our goal to be committed to our life of witnessing to the Kingdom of God.

The same thoughts of Pope Benedict XVI is developed by Fr. McCabe in his article “An evaluation of Africae Munus in the Light of Ecclesia in Africa” as reflected in the Tangaza Journal of the Theology and Mission, 2012/1 from where he asserts that in order to effect what the pope says in Africae Munus, brothers and sisters need to recognize one another positively and welcome each other warmly. McCabe advises that such welcoming attitude should be prized as a gift that God gives to each one through the other person…and so each one should make a room for the other brother or sister. (Tangaza Journal of Theology and Mission 2012/1, 13).

With the above assertion, we realize that in Africae Munus, Pope Benedict XVI is asking the church to be united and in their unity bring fourth credible witness of life of the Gospel in the world. This can be achieved easily through prayers. It is prayer that will bind the people of God making them to realize that they have been forgiven by God and as such must forgive others as well. They have been put at peace with God and so must do the same and finally they have been reconciled with God and so must do the same to their dear ones. It is the life of prayer that will bring the essential principle of the Christian vision of life AM 45.

5. VATICAN COUNCIL II- reflection featuring GADIUM ET SPES

The term Gadium et Spes is a Latin word which simply means ‘Pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world’.

Gaudium et Spes calls the church to focus on the whole human race in a rather new and stylistic manner. The understanding of the church in Gadium et Spes in regards to human life is holistic in nature. In this document of the Second Vatican Council, the church looks forward to evangelizing the world in a new way. The evangelization targets every human being in every walk of life regardless of social, economic, cultural and religious differences.

Before doing this, the church expresses prior knowledge of people’s life situation. The contradictions of realities in the world where by in the world there are those who are poor and there are those who are rich, there are those who are powerful while others are powerless, and finally there are those who are free while others are slaves. To put it in another way the world is faced with changes in social order where industrialization and computerization has manned the world, it is faced with changes in attitudes, morals and religion whereby the once accepted values are put into questions, there are a lot of imbalances in the world today whereby we see youths in particular going their own direction a few to say. (Gadium et Spes 6, 7, 8).  So we can say that the world is troubled and perplexed so much so that everyone in this generation asks the questions about the current trends in the world and their particular place and role in the world. (Gaudium Et Spes 3).

Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the church looks forward to evangelizing the world in a new way. The church gears towards transformation of every culture, society etc by bringing into people the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in a new way appropriate to the signs of the time. The first call the church makes is for everybody to be a brother and sister to one another. This is what it means to be the image of God in the world. Man is not created a solitary being for him to live as if he is the only one existing in the world. Living as one people answers the perplexing questions of man. His query will be clarified as they come to know that they are worth more than material things.

In doing this the church seeks to look and present Christ to the world as a new man. He is God made man out of love and for the salvation of the world. The church presents to the world Christ who suffered in order to set free humanity. This salvation therefore, must continue among men. Men must follow the footsteps of Jesus. Salvation can only be achieved through Christ.  The church in Gaudium et Spes assures the world that Christ gave life in abundance to everybody. He has made us sons in himself and this makes us cry out Abba, Father (Gadium et Spes 22)

As seen above, we can conclude by saying that, the fundamental point expressed in Gadium et Spes that makes people realize their worth and turn back to God is on communitarian aspect of life. Man should learn to live in harmony with one another without any sorts of distinction based on economic status, race, color etc. Man should aim at achieving common good rather than promote individualism. This will automatically lead to respect one another which will dictate a new era in human life.