Remaining in Christ
What follows is a development of what I preached on last week, about the institution of the Church as offering us a way to verify our encounter with Christ and to adhere to Him. We said that the experience of Christ is first, and then (only then) does one see the usefulness of the Church.
To go a bit further, let’s consider, however, that the Church today tends to begin with the institution. This, in my opinion, is one of the ways in which the Church is in need of reform. For example, we lead our children through institutional programs and prepare them for Sacramental “milestones,” but unless they are helped to recognize their encounters with Christ, they will rightly say, “I have no use for the institution.” In other words, only the person sincerely seeking a verification of his or her intuition of Christ would be grateful for the presence of a Bishop sent to confirm it.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since last week, because we celebrated the Feast of Saint John the Apostle on December 27th. In John’s Gospel, Saint John represents the personal faith of the Christian, while Saint Peter represents the authority of the Church as an institution. It strikes me that John, for example, who was first to get to the empty tomb, nevertheless allows Peter to go inside to verify the event. That is, after experiencing something he perceives to be full of meaning, namely, the empty tomb, John asks Peter to confirm the experience.
And this goes deeper still. John, for example, wrote his Gospel much later than the other authors - it had been some 60 years since his first encounter with Christ - but during that time he grew to appreciate how the Church, instituted by Christ, enabled him continually to verify his faith. Perhaps John’s writings often refer to “the beginning,” not only in order to connect Christ to the eternal Father, but also to communicate the way he found of remaining in relationship with his own “beginning,” with his first encounter with Christ on the shores of Galilee. Without the charism given to Peter, the gift of the encounter given to John would have been lost. “Remain in Me,” Christ says, “as I remain in you.” John sees the institution of the Church as this way of remaining in Christ.
How does the institution of the Church actually verify a person’s perception of what appears to have been an encounter with Christ? “If you love one another,” Jesus said to us. “By this will people know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.” This is how the institution of the Church can verify the event of Christ in our own lives. Our gathering, our singing, praying, and eating together - all in the presence of the Word and Eucharist - can confirm our faith, and help us to trust our judgement and adhere to our conviction.
How necessary, then, is the institution of the Church in these times, plagued as we are by cultural indecisiveness. Paralyzed by the many choices we have, and confused by the multitude of voices we hear, uncertainty pervades everything about us these days, even our own experiences and judgments about reality.
Saint John’s way of discipleship - his way of remaining with Christ - is born, not of timidity, but of a courage that came from Our Lord Himself. John leaned on the breast of Our Lord, drawing from Christ’s own divine strength, but, on the other hand, John also drew strength from knowing that he was not alone in following the Lord, and that Peter and the other Apostles would help him. And in that sense, John drew personal strength from the fraternity of the Church as an institution.
It would seem, then, that John’s personal boldness was actually born of his confidence in what Christ had given, not just to him, but to Peter. It was from the institutional primacy given to Peter by Christ in Caesarea Philippi that John received the freedom to trust his own judgement of his faith in Christ. In other words, John was free to risk everything because of what had so surely and soundly been given to Peter. I imagine John following Christ on the way to Calvary would have been reminding himself of Our Lord’s words, not to him, but to Peter, “The gates of hell will not prevail; the gates of hell will not prevail...” Only a man with a confidence set solidly on such a rock would find the courage to rush the gates of hell. +