Christ and the Church

In his homily for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on 1 January, Pope Francis emphasised why we not only need personal faith in Christ, but also the Church. Starting from the point that we can’t understand Jesus’ incarnation without understanding Mary, he continues that Mary’s motherhood is the motherhood of the Church, since Mary and the Church are as inseparable as Mary and Jesus.

To separate Jesus from the Church would introduce an “absurd dichotomy”, as Blessed Paul VI wrote (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 16). It is not possible “to love Christ but without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church, to belong to Christ but outside the Church” (ibid.). For the Church is herself God’s great family, which brings Christ to us. Our faith is not an abstract doctrine or philosophy, but a vital and full relationship with a person: Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God who became man, was put to death, rose from the dead to save us, and is now living in our midst. Where can we encounter him? We encounter him in the Church, in our hierarchical, Holy Mother Church. It is the Church which says today: “Behold the Lamb of God”; it is the Church, which proclaims him; it is in the Church that Jesus continues to accomplish his acts of grace which are the sacraments.”

So many people today are willing to profess a belief in Christ, but want nothing to do with the Church. But there is a great risk in such an attitude, the Pope explains:

“Without the Church, our relationship with Christ would be at the mercy of our imagination, our interpretations, our moods.”

The Church’s entire being is inconceivable without Christ. She is not a human construct, but a divine one built up out of human followers of the Lord. Christ reaches out to us and wants to be known. He has tasked the Church with making this possible, to be known from one human being to the next. Answering to this invitation to enter into a relationship with Him, we look to the Church, the greater body of faithful, greater than just ourselves, and to the sacraments He has given her to allow people to come to Him. This is what Christ has done, an achievement far greater than any human work or person.

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This year’s saint – St. Dominic Savio

Like last year, I used Jennifer Fulwiler’s Saint’s Name Generator to select a patron saint for the blog for 2015. Last year St. Raymond of Peñafort,  the Dominican canonist from the 13th century, was randomly selected for me, and tis year I was given an entirely different saint: a 14-year-old boy from 19th century Italy.

On reading the life story of St. Dominic Savio one might be excused for thinking he is a Goody Two-Shoes, doing all the right things, respectful, pious, kind to the extreme and wise beyond his years. But when we are dealing with saints we are always invited to look beyond first impressions. And in this case we have the testimony of another saint, Saint John Bosco, who wrote a biography on his young pupil, to help us. And here we learn that St. Dominic Savio not only led an exemplary holy life – the reason for his canonisation in 1954 – but avoided becoming insufferable.

What does the life and example of St. Dominic Savio mean for a blogger? Perhaps that a life of prayer, the path to holiness that we are all called to, lies at the root of our Christian life. After all, in this way we feed our relationship with Christ, and although we may not advance along it as fast as St. Dominic Savio did, it can give is increasing certainty and faith in the Lord. And in that way we grow ever more towards our fulfillment as human beings, as God intended it when He created us.

That is why St. Dominic Savio has a place in the left side bar of this blog this year, as a reminder that we are nothing without Christ in our hearts.