Helping to Germinate the Kingdom of God: Young Adults and the Mystery of the Church

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

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“The Church is not a country club for saints, but a hospital for sinners!” I have pondered this statement many times. I have considered it as I think about what the Church is and is not. The Church is neither a club or a hospital. It is not a sacrament dispenser, a spiritual service provider or a Sunday show. The Church is the Body of Christ, “a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Eph 1:4-5). As the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (LG) of the Second Vatican Council stated, the mystery of the Church is manifested in its own foundation. The Lord Jesus set the Church to build the kingdom of God, which began with him, and continues to germinate and grow in all nations. The Church is not an end in itself. As our Pope Emeritus has often said, the mission of the Church is to carry on what Jesus started, to act as Jesus would act. As Lumen Gentium expresses, the Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ (LG 26).

I recently began to ask young adults about how well the Church is living out such a mission: what they perceive as the Church's strengths and limits; the ways they have experienced consolation and desolation through the Church, that is, an increase or decreased in faith, hope and love. This question came as a I prayed with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In the First Exercise of the First Week, or the first phase of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius invites us to contemplate: “What I have done for Christ, what I am doing for Christ, and what I ought to do for Christ?” This contemplation led me to ask the same of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council After Fifty Years: Unity of the Church in Lumen Gentium

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Lumen Gentium is the great Second Vatican Council document on the nature of the Church. It begins by describing the Church as a sacrament, that is, “a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race”. It then goes on to elaborate on the specific make-up of the Church―her hierarchy, her laity and her religious communities―as they serve and manifest this unity. In doing so, it emphasizes the “universal call to holiness” and also describes the Church’s supernatural destiny. The document closes with a meditation on the role of the Virgin Mary in salvation history and in the Church.

How ought we to read this rich, complex document, teeming as it is with doctrines, images, ideas and exhortations? I think one fruitful way is to keep in mind the theme which is introduced at its very beginning: unity. If the Church exists to unite the human race to God, then we ought to interpret her composition, in all its complexity, as it reflects and brings about this union. Consequently, any consideration of part of the document in isolation, or any overemphasis of one of its doctrines over another, will detract from this central theme. Instead, we need to keep in mind that the diversity envisioned by the document ultimately serves a unity.