Chapter Four - The Church Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
Chapter Four - The Church Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
Chapter Four - The Church Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
And after six days Jesus taketh unto him Peter and James,
and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high
mountain apart: And he was transfigured before them.
And his face did shine as the sun: and his garments
became white as snow. And behold there appeared to
them Moses and Elias talking with him.
Matthew 16:15-19
We Live in Between-time
“Our current age is the ‘between-time,’ a period between the ‘shadowy’
typology that prefigured Christ in the Old Testament and the time of
ultimate ‘reality’ [at the end of time] when ‘God is all in all’ and the
world is completely transformed and fully divinized. This between-time
is the time of the ‘image,’ an ‘already-but-not-yet’ period in which we
have real, genuine access to things of heaven but in the mode of
sacrament. The heavenly realities are ours motivated through material
things in the liturgy of the Church. The heavenly future becomes the
subject of our present day participation in images. In liturgical time,
we make present the events of the past and anticipate the realities of
the future. So the term ‘image’ used in this context really means
sacrament, a participation in invisible spiritual realities, through the
medium of earthly matter. Today, our contact with God comes through
the sacramental veil in the time of the image, the time between
Pentecost and the Second Coming.”
Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy
Dr. Denis R. McNamara
Seen and Unseen
The interplay of visible and invisible realities occurs throughout our
faith. This seeming paradox is rooted in the Incarnation, the Word
made flesh.
The Church is one because of her founder. There is only one God,
one Savior, one Truth, one Baptism, and there is only Church. Our
Lord died that we might be incorporated into His Body. Just as there
was only one Savior, Jesus, so too there is but one Mystical Body.
So too, the Church is one because of her soul, the Holy Spirit. Just as
a human being is one with body and soul, so too the Church is body
(Christ) and soul (Holy Spirit).
First, we profess the same faith. There is one faith handed down by
the apostles!
Despite the grave seriousness of disunity, we do not indict with the sin
of separation those who are at present born into Protestant
communities.
We are Called to Work for Unity
But as Catholics, we are called to make disciples and work to restore
unity. Authentic ecumenism does not entail watering down what you
believe or compromising a difficult truth!
The first sense is that of totality. The fullness of Christ’s Body subsists
in the Catholic Church. We have received and adhered to the
complete fullness of the faith. We have the totality of faith.
This teaching is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own,
do not know Christ or His Church. It is a further elaboration on the
totality and universality of the Church.
The Church is Apostolic
The Church is apostolic, because she is founded on the apostles in
three ways: