I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints. These words and what they express are part of the Apostles Creed a gift to us from our earliest ancestors in the Faith. It comes down to the 21st Century from the Christian community of the 1st and 2nd Centuries. Among the things that are central to our faith and that we find in this creed is the testimony of our faith in the communion of saints. Creeds like the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed are more intellectual expressions of belief. They are descriptors of who we are and who we are to become.
What is this communion of saints and what does it mean for us today? The early Christians had a deep sense that their relationship with God and with Jesus was something that drew them into a community of faith. To be a disciple of Jesus was to live and work and pray with other disciples. In fact, so strong was the bond that drew these believers together that it did not end with death. Their sense of being a community of believers included those who had died and gone before them. In addition, it included those who had not yet been born but would be future disciples.
It is not unlike what we experience in our families. We fondly remember our grandparents, our uncles and aunts and all those of our family who have gone before us. We have an interest, a curiosity about our roots and the origins of our family. We tell many stories of these roots. At the same time, we are excited and rejoice when a new person enters our family, whether by a birth or a marriage. The basis of our family relationships is a bond of love that draws us together and allows us to identify with one another.
The communion of saints shares a similar bond. It is a community tied together by a shared experience of God who loves us into life, who sustains us in life and who ultimate draws us to an everlasting life of love with God’s own self. We do not know how this all takes place, but we trust in faith that the love of God never dies, never ends and never leaves us.
Mark’s Gospel describes Jesus in a debate with some of the authorities in the Temple (Mark 12:28-34). One of them, a scribe asks Jesus a fundamental question: “Which commandment is the first of all?” This is a basic question for all of us. How do we do what is right and good? How do we live in relationship with God who made and sustains us in life? In response, Jesus tells the scribe that at its heart, our relationship with God is one of love. Our response to God’s love is to love God in return and to do so in how we love one another. This is the bond and the meaning of the communion of saints.
This past October, we witnessed the second and final session of our Synod on Synodality. This was not the first such gathering of the whole church, nor will it be the last. Synods have their root in the early Christian community. They express the same effort to open the Church to the challenges of the present time that was the focus of the Second Vatican Council.
The Synod on Synodality, had a particular emphasis. It sought to bring together representatives of all parts and people of the Church. The Synod delegates included laity and clergy, women and men from around the world. The task before this gathering of the “communion of saints” was to discern the direction of our church living in the present world and speaking the Gospel in a global community of many cultures. A unique feature of this synod has been to explicitly focus on listening to the Spirit speaking through the many voices of our faith community. In this, the Synod set a pattern that is to be replicated in the local communities of our church, in parishes and dioceses around the world.
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