INAUGURAL ISSUE - AUGUST 2003
ISSN 1448 - 6326
INAUGURAL ISSUE - AUGUST 2003
ISSN 1448 - 6326
THE MYSTICISM OF LUMEN GENTIUM
Kerrie Hide
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the document Lumen Gentium and shows how the theology of the Church mysterium that Luman Gentium describes calls for a mystical consciousness characterized by a maturing awareness that we dwell within a boundless love that unifies and draws all that is into personal, communal and cosmic wholeness or oneing. The paper expounds on how we as Church participate in the fullness of grounding union and communion in the mystical body of Christ and in the dynamic emptying of the body through the kenosis of Christ.
Listen my people
Mark each word
I begin with a story
I speak of mysteries
Welling up from the ancient depths
Heard and known from our elders. Ps 78:1-3
In the tradition of the psalmists of old, Lumen Gentium tells a story. It speaks of mysteries that well up from ancient depths and invite us to gaze, to contemplate, to enter, and to live. Forty years after the council the darkness of this new century threatens to destroy us. Thunder- clouds of insoluble problems, existential despair, radical breakdown of structures, terrorism and the irrevocable destruction of the earth loom. The choice between life or death lies before us in a way not envisaged before. There is an urgency to act, to choose life, to imagine in a new way that the darkness in which we dwell does not have to consume us, destroy us. Pregnant with potential, the darkness of our experience can become a womb of hope, a sacred space where radical choices for new life are illumed. In the face of such pending darkness, unsettling decisions must be made. We can stay locked in the un-freedom of our insecurities or we can risk embracing a total change in consciousness - a mystical consciousness, plunge into the depths of ancient mysteries, salvage the debris around us and creatively give birth to something new. Lumen Gentium offers us a way to risk change. It places before us wisdom born from the holiness of our elders, mysteries that can sustain us, help us discern what to salvage, and give radical direction to our search for new way of living as a people of God, as Church, in one world, one universe, one cosmos.
I was in transition from childhood to adolescence when the Holy Spirit whispered into the hearts of Church leaders inaugurating an enlightenment that would change the Church forever. At that time I had found a home in the Church, I loved the Church that immersed me in mystery and gave me a glimpse of transcendence. Yet, while I adored the transcendent one, I was unconsciously living out of my unworthiness, separate from the God I longed for and the Church I loved. When the fathers composed Lumen Gentium, they embraced the transcendence that I was so familiar with as a child, but they also plunged us back into ancient depths that speak of divine immanence. The council reaffirmed the mystery that God is love and he (the one) who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him (them) (V:42). [1] They confirmed the immanence of the transcendent one who has poured out his (this) love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (V:42). [2] The council pushed us to radically envision the mystery of reciprocal indwelling that God dwells within, makes a home within human beings, and human beings dwell within, have a home in God. Consequently, God dwells within the Church and the Church dwells within God. The gracious overflow of love, making us one, oneing, uniting, creating union and communion is at the heart of the Church.
In this paper I will show how the darkness in which we dwell creates an opportunity to reclaim the mystical consciousness described in Lumen Gentium and to live more fully our reciprocal indwelling. After describing the light mysticism presented in the document that calls for kataphatic and apophatic knowing, I will show how the theology of the Church as mystery calls for a mystical consciousness characterized by a maturing awareness that we dwell within a boundless love that unifies and draws all that is into personal, communal and cosmic wholeness or oneing. Then I will show how as Church we participate in the fullness of the dynamic union and communion in the mystical body of Christ and in the dynamic emptying of the body through the kenosis of Christ. Finally I will draw out the implications of placing the experience of transforming union at the heart of what it means to be human, and what it means to be Church.
Light Mysticism
The title Lumen Gentium and opening statement, Christ is the light of humanity (I.1), in chapter 28 of The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Documents of the Second Vatican Council immediately places the document within the framework of light mysticism. Christ is the light of the world from whom we go forth, through whom we live and to whom our life is directed (I:3), and this light … shines out visibly from the Church (1.1) enabling the Church to bring the light of Christ to all peoples (See I:1). Light mysticism permeates the document revealing how we live in union and communion with the divine. Throughout the text, the light of Christ becomes a unifying centre that attracts and draws us to enter its meaning. It becomes the lens to view all statements about the nature of Church and what it means to be human. When the members of the Council gazed at the light of Christ in the Church, shadows of undeveloped potential cried out for an ever-maturing understanding of the image, nature and mission of the Church. The Fathers envisaged the Church is not primarily as an institution, nor a hierarchy, nor a militant Church, as the first draft of the constitution had suggested, [3] but as a mystery, a mystery formed through its union in Christ in God. The Church identified itself first and foremost as Lumen Gentium, a people who enable light to shine in darkness revealing: the kingdom of Christ already present in mystery (I.2), a mystery continually in process, growing through the power of God in the world (I.2).
Kataphatic and Apophatic Knowing
Before we look more closely at the Church as grounded in the mysterious presence of God inviting all to union in Christ in God, I will make some preliminary remarks about the genre of Lumen Gentium. It is important to remember that like all council documents, the final product is the result of many drafts, of dialogue, struggle and commitment to finding a middle ground between the sometimes heated critiques of apposing factions. There is an unnamed tension in the text of contrasting theologies that range between the notion of communion and hierarchy. The tension creates a dialectic that holds opposites in creative unity. The language is extravagant, passionate, evolving from the heart felt desire of the sacred council (I.1). We hear how with all her strength and hope, the Church, desires to be united with Christ (I.5). Eight chapters: the mystery of the Church, the people of God, the hierarchical structure of the Church, the laity, the call of the whole church to holiness, religious, the eschatological nature of the pilgrim Church and the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary ponder this notion of unity. Throughout a plethora of scriptural allusions lie together like pearls on a string, so that the shades of colour of each are reflected in the other and are illuminated by the other. Each image invites one to gaze and ponder. The images are rich, evocative and fluid, reflecting a consciousness that the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in various images (1:6). At key moments images are identified as symbolic, [4] suggesting that these images mediate meaning in a way that touches into our conscious and unconscious truths inviting participation in a fullness that is beyond words and images. Kataphatic images that help us respond to the embodied presence of the divine in the Church abound, as when Christ is described as the true vine who gives life and fruitfulness to the branches and the Church is likened to a cultivated field, the tillage of God, an ancient olive tree, a choice vineyard. (I:6). The light of kataphatic knowing casts shadows of indistinct apophatic images that balance the kataphatic, reminding us of the love that surpasses all understanding, (I:6) the darkness in which we dwell, (I:8) the inadequacy of imagery, the limitations of human symbols, the incomplete nature of our being, the need for emptiness, for letting go. The Church sees herself in exile, seeking and concerned about those things which are above …in partial darkness, hidden with Christ in God until she appears in glory with her spouse (I:8). Language meets its limits until all images finally converge in the idea of mystery. The genre highlights that the mystery of the Church is at heart a paradox, a mystery that defies systematic reflection and invites instead the language of mysticism and imagery.
The Mystery of the Church
When we focus on the light of Christ that shines out visibly from the Church, its illuminating presence reveals the Church mysterium. [5] Critically, the Church is not a mystery in the sense of an enigma to be deciphered, or a mystery beyond the limits of human intelligence. The Church is mystery because of its foundational union in the inner life of the Trinity, that is ultimately nameless mystery, illimitable eternity. This sense of mystery resonates with Rahner’s appreciation of mystery when he writes:
In the midst of every day we are blessed or damned (have it how you will) in regard to that nameless mystery, illimitable eternity. The concepts and words which we use to talk of the everlastingness to and into which we are constantly referred, are not the original actual mode of being of that experience of nameless mystery that surrounds the islands of our every day awareness, but merely the tiny signs and idols that we erect and have to erect so that they constantly remind us of the original, unthematic, silently offered and proffered, and graciously silent experience of the strangeness of the mystery in which in spite of all the light offered by the everyday awareness of things, we reside as if in a dark night and pathless wilderness. (There we are in darkness and a desert place- but one that reminds us of the abyss in whose depths we are grounded but never plumb.) [6]
When Lumen Gentium defines the Church as mystery it reminds us of the abyss in whose depths we are grounded but can never plumb. It acknowledges the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of God, (1:2) and the sacred origins of the Church, already present in figure at the beginning of the world (1:2). Grounded in the experience of nameless mystery the Church reflects this mystery. It is mysterium, an ineffable spiritual reality that defies the containment of doctrine and definition or reduction to a visible structure or institution. [7] The people of God participate in this mystery as a communion of life, love and truth (2:9). Mysteriously, they are in union with Christ who is the instrument of the salvation of all – as light of the world and salt of the earth (2:9). [8] The document affirms that we can only understand the reality of Church in light of the cosmic eternal grounding union of the Church in God, her union in the body of Christ and continual sanctification through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Church as mystery is the Church participating in the divine presence and work for the salvation of all creation from origin to fulfilment.
Mystical Consciousness
Consequently there is an implicit implication that the only way we will understand and appreciate the nature of Church is through cultivating a mystical consciousness that is sensitive and open to mystery, a consciousness identified by Rahner some years after the Council as critical for Christian self –understanding when he prophesied: the Christian of the future will be a mystic or she or he will not exist at all. [9] What Rahner articulates is the fact that there is something synonymous about being a Christian and being a mystic, being responsive to mystery. '>Mystics are people who are aware of a sense of ultimate mystery that is inherent in, yet transcends creation. They live within a maturing awareness that boundless mystery grounds and emerges from the very heart of our existence. They have a perception that all of creation is part of a transcendent, unifying, meaningful whole whose fundamental destiny is towards personal, communal and cosmic wholeness or oneing. Within a Christian framework, they experience that we participate, both within and beyond space and time, in the life of the Trinity. Lumen Gentium describes this potential for all humanity to be one in the Trinity, through, with, and in Christ, portraying how all are called to union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live and towards whom our whole life is directed (I:3). In order to explore more fully this mystery in which we, as Church live, move and have our being, we will now examine two images of dynamic participation in the mystery of reciprocal indwelling: the mystical body of Christ and the kenosis or emptying of Christ.
The Mystical Body
Within the plethora of images that contribute to the exploration of the mystery of the Church eternally united to Christ is the timeless image of the Church as the mystical body of Christ. [10] The council affirms: Christ mystically constitutes as his body those brothers (and sisters) of his who are called together from very nation (I:7). This powerfully kataphatic, incarnational image, emphasizes divine immanence and presence. It presents an ontology of union and communion identifying the foundational union of the Church within the body of Christ, within the union and communion of the very being of the Trinity. The image holds together both the organic physical dimension of this union and communion as well as the eternal spiritual reality of the Church being continually created and re-created in Christ. The image gives expression to the sacramental nature of the mystery conveying how: the Church in Christ is in the nature of sacrament - a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity with all (I.1). Sacramental in essence the mystical body participates in the boundless mystery that grounds and emerges from the very heart of our existence.
The document names a variety of ways in which we participate in the mystical body. Christ is the life source of the body, the principle of life fulfilling the function the soul fulfills in the human body (I:7). He fills the Church which is his body …so that it may increase and obtain the fullness of God (I:7). [11] He is the head of the body (I:7), the unifying centre, who fills the whole body with the riches of his glory (I:7). From this unity in Christ: the whole body supplied and built up by the joints and ligaments, attains a growth that is of God (1:7). [12] He is the spouse of the body who joins the Church to himself as his body (V:39). The image expresses something of the dynamic formation and reformation within the body as all must be formed in Christ’s likeness, until Christ be formed in them. (I: 7) The image imparts a profound sense of the Church’s dynamic, continually deepening and maturing union within the body of Christ keeping before us how we are able to arrive at perfect union with Christ that is holiness (VII: 50).
The reciprocal indwelling of Christ in people in the Church and people in the Church in Christ creates communion, koninia: we are members of Christ’s body and severally members one of another (I:7). This union is so intimate that in the second chapter the Fathers identify the Church as: the people of God made holy and saved, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people (II:9) Critically, this union is not limited to those within the Church but extends to all people those who have not received the gospel are related to the people of God in various ways (II:16). Union, communion, relationship is at the heart of what it means to be Church.
The document specifically identifies the body of Christ that is the Church with the Eucharist and shows how participation in Eucharist nourishes and enriches the life of the body. Echoing Paul (1 Corinthians 10:16-17), the council affirms that: through the sacrament of the eucharistic bread, there is represented and produced the unity of the faithful, who make up one body in Christ (I:3). The document draws out how:
We really share in the body of the Lord in the breaking of the bread,The image of the Church as the mystical body of Christ gives a profound sense of ontological union and communion. It affirms the fullness of divine we are taken up into communion with him (Christ) and with one another (I:7) Eucharist reminds us that we are a broken people and that naming and enacting our brokenness does not fragment; it unites, enabling us to become more fully what we already are, the mystical body of Christ. In Eucharist, the community participates in its most profound reality, its truest identity as a people who indwell Christ as Christ indwells them. This is our origin, our life, our destiny. When we live out of this indwelling we live the fullness of the life of God.
The Empty Body presence and involvement in humanity. But ever maturing union within the mystical body makes deeper claims on the nature of this union, and just as the Church dynamically participates in the fullness of the mystical body of Christ and experiences the immanence of divine indwelling, she also experiences the hidden, yet to be revealed fulfilment and completion of this indwelling. She is at the same time the light of Christ for humanity and also hidden in Christ in God (1:6). Hidden union in Christ creates a longing for deeper, more authentic union and communion. It invites us to face the darkness of the seemingly silent, incomprehensible, secret and yet loving presence that indwells and unites through a mysterious experience of absence.
Lumen Gentium acknowledges the incomplete yet to be fully revealed experience of fullness of life in God. The Fathers reinforce that the Church must imitate Christ, who emptied himself… taking the nature of a slave and being rich became poor (I:8), She must have the same mind as Christ who emptied himself taking the form of a servant…and became obedient unto death (V:42). Critically, this way of being empty to the point of being nothing, taking on the nature of servant-hood, becoming totally poor, is an emptying that we only attain through prayer, silence, surrender, absolute abandonment of all to God. Such kenosis involves painful honesty and a recognition that we are at one and the same time holy and always in need of purification (1:8). This dynamic interplay between our fullness, holiness, our wholeness, our oneness in the mystical body of Christ, and our brokenness, our capacity to resist union, and our need for the purification, creates a deeper capacity for healing and reciprocal indwelling.
Today, the light of Christ is flickering, darkening, creating shadows of all that must be purified, stripped away, surrendered, until the complete union of the mystical body is fulfilled. When we enter the darkness of its illumination we see that the only alternative is to live kenosis, engage in ongoing surrender and detachment from all that is not of God, to acknowledge how we constantly need God’s mercy and to pray every day “And forgive us our debts” (V40). We are living through the exposure of all that distorts union and communion in the mystical body. We know the pain of failure, the despair of hopelessness, the betrayal of what seemed to be secure systems, the heartache caused by the abuse of power. In naming our sorrow, we as the mystical body, claim ever more deeply our brokenness, our need to live the crucifixion, united to (Christ) in the likeness of his death (I:7), following in trial and oppression the paths Jesus trod (I:7), becoming poor humble and cross bearing (V:41). Lumen Gentium calls us to a mystical consciousness that envisages all human suffering through the light of the crucified one. It calls for a humble Church in union with the crucified, one with the poor and broken, engaged in works of charity, bringing good news to the poor, healing the contrite of heart, seeking the lost, identifying with those weighed down by poverty, infirmity, sickness and other hardships. (I:8). Lumen Gentium challenges us as Church to choose kenosis through loving, forgiving, letting go of structures and systems that divide and separate in order to live the radical union in Christ in which we now dwell. Through radical kenosis we are truly becoming the body of Christ, filled with compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience [13] , living by the fruits of the Spirit (V: 40). [14] The invitation to kenosis challenges us to engage whole heartedly in the painful struggle to reveal in the world, faithfully, however darkly, the mystery of her Lord until, in the consummation it shall be manifest in full light (I:8).
Implications for Today
Forty years after the council the light of Christ is creating a transforming presence, beckoning us to experience more fully that Christ is the unifying centre from whom we go forth, through whom we live and to whom our life is directed. As our reciprocal indwelling in Christ matures and we become more fully the mystical body, the living flame of divine love is purifying and expanding our consciousness of what it means to be human and what it means to be a Church. The darkness of the times in which we dwell, calls for a mystical consciousness that can envision divine indwelling in the human and human indwelling in the divine. It calls for a consciousness that can embrace the immanence of divine presence through an appreciation of the nature of the Church one in the mystical body of Christ, as well as embrace the call to deeper more authentic union through kenosis by becoming empty and surrendering all. We know the experience of mutuality and connectedness, of being part of all creation in the mystical body, and we are now living in the darkness of emptiness. The challenge is to envisage how this darkness is fertile and life giving, creating a womb of hope, a sacred space where radical choices for new life are illumed. Through kenosis we are being called out of darkness into marvelous light (II:10).
Conclusion
In this paper I have shown how Lumen Gentium offers us a way to risk change in order to live a life of complete union and communion in Christ in God. It places before us mysteries that can sustain us, help us discern what to salvage, and give radical direction to our search for new ways of living as a people of God, as Church in one world, one universe, one cosmos. I have shown how the theology of the Church mysterium that Luman Gentium expounds calls for a mystical consciousness characterized by a maturing awareness that we dwell within a boundless love that unifies and draws all that is into personal, communal and cosmic wholeness or oneing. We as Church participate in the fullness of grounding union and communion in the mystical body of Christ and in the dynamic emptying of the body through the kenosis of Christ. When we place both ways of experiencing transforming union at the heart of what it means to be human, and what it means to be Church, we realize that we already participate in the mystery we seek knowing:
Already therefore the end of the age has reached us and the renewal of the world has been irrevocably constituted and is being anticipated in this world in a real sense: for already on earth the Church is adorned with true though imperfect holiness. However until the arrival of the new heavens and the new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church in its sacraments and institutions, which belong to this age, carries the figure of the world which is passing and it dwells among creatures who groan and till now are in the pains of childbirth and await the revelation of the children of God. (VII: 48)
As we await the fullness of our union in God to come to fulfilment, groaning in the pain of childbirth, we know that ultimately Christ is our light and the Church is Lumen Gentium.
Footnotes
[1] I John 4:16 All references are identified by chapter number followed by paragraph number.
[2] Romans 5:5
[3] See Richard P. McBrien. “The Church (Lumen Gentium)” in Modern Catholicism. Adrian Hastings ed. (London: SPCK, 1991), 84-88, for a summary of the drafts of what was to become Lumen Gentium.
[4] See I.3 where the origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of Christ.
[5] The proposal to stress the Church mysterium was strongly argued for by the German bishops. Cardinal Meisner suggested that “we need once again to let people see the Church as the mystical body of Christ, the Bride of Christ and mother of Believers, ie. in its mystical dimension with mankind. This will give it a personal human face…”Quoted in Guiseppe Alberigi and James Provost. “Synod 1985 – An Evaluation.” Concilium 188 (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1986), 100.
[6] Karl Rahner. The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality. (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 78.
[7] See Richard Gaillardety. Teaching With Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium of the Church. (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 4.
[8] This sense of mystery was central to the ecclesiology of many of the early Fathers. See Boniface Ramsey. Beginning to Read the Fathers (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), 95-121.
[9] The Practice of Faith, 22.
[10] The Church as the mystical body of Christ has a long and complex tradition in ecclesiology. See, Teaching With Authority, 17-20.
[11] Ephesians 1:22-23
[12] Colossians 2:19.
[13] Colossians 3:12.
[14] Galatians 5:22; Romans 6:22.
Kerrie Hide is the head of the School of Theology at Signadou Campus ACU, Canberra.
