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Easter Saturday
April 6
THE FRATERNAL CITY OF GOD
By Maertens & Frisque7
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Faith in the paschal mystery makes the world appear as an enormous
edifice under construction! All are called, in Jesus Christ, to take their part in
the building up of the fraternal city of God. This is a gigantic labour which
demands the co-operation of all peoples and all cultures. Christ planted once
and for all the seed of true salvation-history; this seed was his own life as
human, lived with perfect fidelity unto death on the cross, a life whose
significance is eternal because it was that of the Son. Beginning with this unique
seed, the process of growth must continue until the Body of Christ has attained
its perfect stature. This slow growth of the Kingdom here on earth – where the
Kingdom takes shape without manifesting itself as such – progressively
concerns humanity and the entire creation.
To the degree to which he takes part in the mission, the Christian will
necessarily experience those “tribulations” of which St. Paul often speaks. How
can they be avoided? The Kingdom is not constructed without a constant
passage from death to life, and this work of love inevitably provokes the fierce
resistance of the wisdom of this world. But, like St. Paul, the Christian “is
overjoyed amid all afflictions“, because he knows that through them the final
city is being built.
Christian hope is no longer the hope of Judaic person. For Israel, the
Kingdom was not a thing to be built; it would appear fully achieved, so to speak.
The Christian lives a hope in the dynamism of a task to be accomplished: the
mission. The accomplishment will not come until the gospel has been preached
to all the nations. But what does such a proclamation involve? It is a matter of
implanting the mystery of Christ in time and space so that the light of Easter
may effectively illumine the spiritual journey of all the peoples and cultures of
the earth. This is a very long enterprise, because no sector of human life
remains foreign to it. After twenty centuries, we are only beginning to measure
the very close connection that exists between the mission of the Church and the
history of humanity. St. Paul believed that the universal mission was a task he
could undertake himself – at least he thought so for a time! Today, we have not
finished discovering its whole amplitude.
7Guide for the Christian Assembly. T. Maertens & J. Frisque. Biblica, Belgium, 1965, pp. 119-120.15