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

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

Photo: http://catholicnews.com

“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.

Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body in a Nutshell

By Artur Suski, S.J.

Credit:www.genopro.com

It may be that some of you have previously come across Pope John Paul II’s (JPII) Wednesday general audiences on the topic of marriage and sexuality, known as the Theology of the Body (TOB). I was recently asked to give a talk to grade 12 students on this very topic, and the presentation itself went rather well. Upon hearing that the talk was about sex, students of both sexes were equally attentive.

JPII’s work is truly marvellous. He goes into such depth that often one has to re-read whole sections to perhaps grasp a part of what he means. Not many come in contact with the actual content of the TOB, especially given the fact that the book is two inches thick! As such, I would like to share with you some of the key ideas of the TOB.