Vigils: Easter Weekday
May 17
THE FRATERNAL
CITY OF GOD
By Thierry Maertens & Jean Frisque 7
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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.
7
Guide for the Christian Assembly. T. Maertens & J. Frisque. Biblica, Belgium, 1965, pp. 119-120.