Vigils: Weekday

THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
From “The Spirit of Catholicism” by Fr Karl Adam 6
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Wherever we encounter the God of revelation, we do not find a characterless God of some feeble pastoral play, but a God of holiness and justice, a God who requires vigorous action and moral decision, the athlete’s struggle for the crown and perseverance in the race until the prize be won. The new order of grace does not displace the old order of moral responsibility before God. And that is true not only of the members of the Church, but also of the Church as such.

The Church too is subject to the great law that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence. It is true that as the supra-personal unity of redeemed mankind, a unity based upon the God-man, the Church has her own essential nature, her own law and her own life. And the Holy Spirit will abide always with her, so that she may remain true to her God-given nature. But on the other hand it is equally true that the nature of the Church must be expressed through the faithful, and not without them. The Body of Christ must maintain and perfect itself in its members and through them. Therefore the Church is not only a gift to the faithful, but also a task for them. They have to prepare and foster that good earthly kingdom in which the seed of the Kingdom of Heaven may take root and flourish.

In other words, the life of the Church, the development of her faith and her love, the progress of doctrine, morals, worship and law, stand in an immediate relation to the faithful and loving personal life of the members of the Body of Christ. God rewards the merit or punishes the demerit of the faithful by the rise and fall of the earthly Church. We may truly say, therefore, with St Paul that the Church founded by Christ is at the same time co-built by the faithful. St Augustine says profoundly: “The temple of God is still being built” and “The house (the Church) is now being constructed.”

God willed a Church which in her ripening and perfecting should be the fruit of the true grace-inspired life of the faithful, of their prayer and love, of their fidelity, penitence and devotion, and therefore God did not found her from the beginning as a thing complete and perfect, but as an incomplete thing, which leaves room for and calls for a continual activity of construction, and in whose inward history God’s Holiness and Justice continually triumph.

6
The Spirit of Catholicism, New York 1948, 261-262.