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 The Church Is the Goal of All Things | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn  Print-friendly
versionThis meditation was excerpted from Loving the Church: Spiritual Exercises Preached in the Presence of Pope John Paul II (Ignatius, 1997). Holy Father, my dear brothers, Finis omnium Ecclesia. The Church is as wide as God's plan of creation. She is its "inner ground", as Karl Barth said in reference to the Covenant. [6] The first consequence of this is the fundamental importance of faith in creation for the right understanding of the Church. Creation is the first language God speaks. Without it the Word of God remains a foreign tongue. That is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church goes into detail about the importance of catechesis on creation. In the years of radical change after the Council, there was sometimes an alarming neglect of the doctrine of creation. Since then we can see the beginnings of a new awareness of its importance. It is becoming more and more clear that without the first article of the Creed, belief "in the Creator of heaven and earth", the other articles lack any foundation (CCC 199; 281). The truth about creation and the Creator is the basis of all the other truths of the faith. Without it, talk about the Covenant, about the Torah, about the Incarnation of the Son of God, about salvation and grace, about the Church and her sacraments and the new creation, is truly "incredible". It must therefore be placed at the beginning of evangelization, of the proclamation of the faith–if not in chronological order, then in objective content. It was not for nothing that the early Church began her baptismal catechesis with the reading of the account of creation. The first step to conversion is faith in the one God, the Creator of heaven and earth. We have an illustration of this in a strange story in the Acts of the Apostles. During their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas come to the town of Lystra in Asia Minor. There Paul heals a man crippled from birth. The spontaneous reaction of the people was to cry out: "The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!" (Acts 14:11). They call Barnabas Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they call Hermes. The priest of Zeus brings oxen and garlands and, with a crowd of people, wants to offer sacrifice. What in the Areopagus Paul will call–half in rebuke, half in praise–the piety of the Athenians (cf. Acts 17:22), he meets here, not in academic disputation, but in the robust form of popular pagan religiosity. The two apostles tear their garments and implore the crowd to desist from such blasphemous actions: In this scene, in the situation it describes, we are dealing with questions that are supremely metaphysical and utterly existential. We are dealing with the fundamental question of the constitution of reality, of being, of the orientation of our existence as determining everything in our lives. "We also are [only] men, of like nature with you." These words represent a tremendous process of change, a revolution in thought and behavior. "We are only men", not demi-gods, nor the products of chance, but creatures. Faith in creation introduces a radical dividing line, a diastema, as Gregory of Nyssa puts it: the dividing line between uncreated and created being, between God who alone truly is, eternally and perfectly, and creation, which does not have its being and existence from itself This dividing line is of fundamental significance. We can scarcely overrate its importance. "We also are [only] men, of like nature with you." This insight is at once religious, metaphysical, and ethical. It is not purely theoretical. According to Paul, it demands "conversion", a complete turnaround: "Turn to the living God", who created heaven and earth. The acknowledgment of God as Creator and the acceptance of one's own creatureliness cannot take place without a turning away from the false gods that are mere "nothings" and turning toward the "living God". Conversion means being painfully cut loose from passionate dependencies, from the fascination of the gods, and being set free for truth and right relationship with God and the world. But Paul also points to two unmistakable signs in human hearts that show that this turning around, this conversion, is not an arbitrary command but something that meets the deepest yearning in the heart of man: gratitude and joy. Paul refers to the simple way God speaks to us in his creation: "He did not leave himself without witness." He gives rains and fruitful seasons. He does good "from heaven". And he bears witness to himself by speaking to man in his heart: he satisfies your hearts with food and joy. All these things are not proofs for the world's createdness, for our being creatures. But they are pointers, which address the mind as well as the heart. "He did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons." By the words "from heaven", Paul is referring to the gratuitousness of the simple gifts of creation, such as rain and fruitfulness. They are gifts of heaven, "from above". The pagan world knew this well enough; our world is in danger of forgetting it and must learn it anew! Only if we learn again simple gratitude to the Giver of all gifts will the ground be prepared for a fruitful reception of the gifts of grace. Gratitude and joy go hand in hand. Peter speaks of the "unutterable joy" (1 Pet 1:8) given to those who love Christ. The "nursery school" of such joy is the joy, mentioned by Paul, in the hearts of those who gratefully accept God's gifts in creation. This Joy, growing out of gratitude in the human heart, is God's most reliable ally in his dealings with man. In this Joy, Saint Ignatius Loyola would discover a reliable indicator for the discernment of God's will, and on this foundation he builds his Spiritual Exercises. Finis omnium Ecclesia. The Church is foreshadowed in creation. Creation, therefore, serves the Church, comes to assist her on her way, attains in her its fulfillment. In the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, we are told that the earth comes to the aid of the Woman in the wilderness by swallowing the river that the Dragon spewed out on the Woman in the wilderness in order to destroy her (Rev 12:15-16)–an image to show that the whole of creation is at the service of the beloved Bride, the Woman, the Church. This image also shows, of course, that creation's help is for an oppressed, persecuted, martyred Church. On the other hand, it also shows that only in the mystery of the Church does creation find the healing for which it impatiently longs: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now" (Rom 8:22). The Church is the object of all creation's yearning, "for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom 8:20-21). In the Church's liturgy, in her sacraments, in prayer, in the sanctification of life, in active love for the poor–in all these ways the healed creation is already present. The relationship of creation and the Church can be understood only in the light of the Easter mystery, the mystery of the Fall, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. Augustine calls the Church the "mundus reconciliatus", the reconciled world. In the meditations that follow, we shall return constantly to this way of reconciliation, which is the way and the goal of the Church. Let us conclude with some words from the Catechism: "The Church is the goal of all things, and God permitted such painful upheavals as the angels' fall and man's sin only as occasions and means for displaying all the power of his arm and the whole measure of the love he wanted to give the world." [7] PRAISED BE JESUS CHRIST! ENDNOTES: [1] Visio 2, 4, 1. [2] Paedagogus 1, 6, 27; CCC 760. [3] Fr. Marie-Eugène de l'Enfant Jésus, Je veux voir Jésus (Venasque, 1988), 657. [4] Allocution to the Lenten Preachers of Rome, February 28, 1927, cited in H. de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 65. [5] Cf Hugo Rahner, "Mysterium Lunae", in Symbole der Kirche (Salzburg: Muller, 1964). [6] Kirchliche Dogmatik 3, 1, 41, 3. [7] CCC 760; cf Fr. Marie-Eugène de l'Enfant Jésus, Je veux voir Jésus 657 Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is the Archbishop of Vienna, Austria. He was the general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, co-author (with Cardinal Ratzinger) of Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the author of God's Human Face and Living the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The Creed (Vol. 1), The Sacraments (Vol. 2), Life in Christ (Vol. 3), and Paths of Prayer (Vol. 4). Visit the Insight Scoop Blog and read the latest posts and comments by IgnatiusInsight.com staff and readers about current events, controversies, and news in the Church! |
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G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the finest Christian authors and apologists
of the past two hundred years. Raised as an agnostic, he embraced Christianity as a young man, ultimately entering the Catholic Church
in 1922. He wrote hundreds of essays, as well as novels, short stories, poetry, apologetics, literary
criticism, and nearly everything else imaginable. Dale Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American
Chesterton Society and author of 
