The Stronger The Community, The Stronger The Faith
Since Mission Evansville and the Source Summit follow-up, I have thought a lot about the community of the Church. After these diocesan events, I developed more of an awareness that the wonderful people I met truly motivated me to improve myself, and the support we continue to offer each other is invaluable. I learn more and more each day that the stronger the community, the stronger the faith. Further reading of my favorite book recently, Pope Benedict XVI’s “Introduction to Christianity,” as well as a few instances in my life reinforced these growing sentiments. The Church offers beautiful and vital support as a community of faith, and the community is also a necessary and central element of the faith.
Among his many comments on the Church, then-Cardinal Ratzinger asked on page 342, “Is the Church not simply the continuation of God’s deliberate plunge into human wretchedness; is she not simply the continuation of Jesus’ habit of sitting at the table with sinners…?” We hold each other accountable, but we support and encourage one another. The Church invites everyone to join in her joy, no matter their “wretchedness.” We stand not to accuse but to welcome and love. The Church discriminates only between right and wrong with regard to the Truth, and it comforts me to know there is a constant source of truth. We need a firm guide, and we find it in the Church.
Catholicism has a sharp focus on community as more than a means to faith, as well. Community is in part the essence of faith. On page 94, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “God wishes to approach man only through man; he seeks out man in no other way but in his fellow humanity.” Indeed, God spoke through the prophets in the Old Testament, and he came to us most radically through the Incarnation. On page 93, Ratzinger wrote, “Faith…is, first of all, a call to community…our relationship to God and our fellowship with man cannot be separated from each other.”
This last statement struck me. Our relationships “cannot be separated,” and God comes to us “only through man.” I am part of the TEC #101 team, and in a description of some of the aspects of the team, a manual says team members should be “from [the participants’] world who touches life as they live it, and who speaks to them as a friend to friends.” That also speaks strongly to the nature of the Incarnation. In all these things, I find more evidence that the Incarnation is not a singular concept for God. He invites us to let him be incarnate in each of us every day, through our actions, words, and even the lack thereof. Our every action and inaction should speak volumes about who we live for and who we love. Our entire lives should point to the Trinity as we become the hands and feet of Christ.
It is our responsibility to make God’s presence evident to others because he chose humankind as his means of communication. As Ratzinger wrote on page 343, “Can, therefore, the holiness of the Church be anything else but the bearing with one another that comes, of course, from the fact that all of us are borne up by Christ?...existence, lacking support, can only sink into the void.” As with society, the Church is not a separate entity but the collection of individuals. And as we lift each other up, as we let God become incarnate again in us, we can reach ever farther for his goodness.
