Corpus Christi Blog

Our Holy Catholic Faith

04-30-2017Weekly ReflectionFr. Chad King

Beginning with Holy Week, and through these first couple of weeks of Easter, I have been remindedof the joy of being Catholic. In particular, celebrating the Easter Vigil, which included baptizing twoyoung men and bringing 16 other people into full Communion with the Catholic Church, then when over60 of our children also became fully Catholic through the Sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Eucharistthis weekend have been jubilant occasions. What a blessing it is to be a part of the Church founded byChrist, the vehicle through which God has called us and every person to holiness and eternal life inHeaven!

April 24 was the Feast of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen who was a priest and martyr for the Catholic faith in 1622. These are the words he left as a testament:

O Catholic faith, how solid, how strong you are! How deeply rooted, how firmly founded on a solid rock! Heaven and earth will pass away, but you can never pass away. From the beginning the whole world opposed you, but you mightily triumphed over everything. This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. It has subjected powerful kings to the rule of Christ; it has bound nations to his service.

"What made the holy apostles and martyrs endure fierce agony and bitter torments, except faith, and especially faith in the resurrection?

"What is it that today makes true followers of Christ cast luxuries aside, leave pleasures behind, and endure difficulties and pain? It is living faith that expresses itself through love. It is this that makes us put aside the goods of the present in the hope of future goods. It is because of faith that we exchange the present for the future."

Do you and I have that same understanding, zeal, and love for our Catholic faith? Are we casting luxuries aside and leaving pleasures behind? Are we willing to endure difficulties and pain for our faith in full confidence in the Resurrection and in the life to come for us who believe and are called to holiness? It reminds me of the convicting and inspiring words from the Vatican II document on the Church, Lumen Gentium (48):

The Church, to which we are all called in Christ Jesus and in which we acquire holiness through the grace of God, will reach its perfection only in the glory of heaven, when the time comes for the renewal of all things, and the whole world, which is intimately bound up with man and reaches its perfection through him, will, along with the human race, be perfectly restored in Christ.

Lifted above the earth, Christ drew all things to himself. Rising from the dead, he sent his life-giving Spirit upon his disciples, and through the Spirit established his Body, which is the Church, as the universal sacrament of salvation. Seated at the right hand of the Father, he works unceasingly in the world, to draw men into the Church and through it to join them more closely to himself, nourishing them with his own body and blood, and so making them share in his life of glory.

The promised renewal that we look for has already begun in Christ. It is continued in the mission of the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit it goes on developing in the Church: there we are taught by faith about the meaning also of our life on earth as we bring to fulfillment—with hope in the blessings that are to come—the work that has been entrusted to us in the world by the Father, and so work out our salvation.

The end of the ages is already with us. The renewal of the world has been established, and cannot be revoked. In our era it is in a true sense anticipated: the Church on earth is already sealed by genuine, if imperfect, holiness. Yet, until a new heaven and a new earth are built as the dwelling place of justice, the pilgrim Church, in its sacraments and institutions belonging to this world of time, bears the likeness of this passing world. It lives in the midst of a creation still groaning and in travail as it waits for the sons of God to be revealed in glory.

May each one of us grow in our understanding of the Church in our lives, and be inspired to grow in holiness in and through the Catholic Church.

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