On the Communion of Saints

The Octave Day of Easter

ALMIGHTY Father, who hast given thine only a Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification: Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Easter

O GOD, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the resurrection from the dead of thy only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we who celebrate this Paschal feast may die daily unto sin, and live with him evermore in the glory of his endless life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In the season Eastertide, we further consider the implications of the resurrection. Given how for many Christians, Easter is a time for baptism through which we gain entrance into the family of God. For many, though, this raises a question of what this membership in the body of Christ entails.

The Apostle's Creed is the creed used as a baptismal symbol, in which the newly baptised profess belief in, among other things, the Communion of Saints, to which they have become a part.

The Communion of Saints is a term rooted in Holy Scripture, where  in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul says, “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Cor 1. 2) and “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ,” (1 Cor 12. 12).

The term Communion of Saints, in the context of the fuller doctrine to mean the faithful both on earth and in heaven, is first known to have been used in the early 5th century by St Nicetas of Remesiana in his Explanatio Symboli. Even in the time of the early church, the Communion of Saints was not something limited solely to an expression in the Apostle’s creed, but was a doctrine of a life of faith, and a doctrine of community.

There are different ways to define the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. In the Book of Common Prayer, the Catechism touches on the issue, discussing it in terms of the people of God who comprise Christ's holy Catholic Church. In the Roman Catholic Catechism, it is similarly defined when it states simply that, “The communion of saints is the Church.”

Both definitions discuss it as a body of people. As they have been developed and understood, they express a deep doctrine, one that at first glance is not obvious.

There are two components to the Communion of Saints: communion and saints. What do they refer to. To use the BCP definition, communion means a group of people, and saints is specified by people of God. Phrased another way, it is a group of people who are in some way related to God, and which is specified as that relationship being incurred through the sacrament of Holy Baptism. So now we are looking at the group of people who are baptised. Communion, however, is a word with a very powerful and sacramental meaning.

Communion implies more than just a simple group, it implies, ultimately, intimate community. A group of people who have been bound together; who have been set apart. It relates to the Eucharist in the Sacramental sense, which according to St Paul is a participation in Christ’s sacrifice, (1 Cor 10. 16). Surely, this implies not merely then a team but something greater, a family. In our Baptism, we are adopted as children of God, and marked as his own forever. The Communion of Saints, therefore, are not just a group, but a family.

Saints, as the BCP mentions, are those people of God. What does that then mean? Saints are those undergoing the process of sanctification. By his grace, baptised Christians are transformed and made holy.

This transformation, therefore, extends merely being able to describe the Communion of Saints as a community of believers to a community of disciples.

A believer is someone who accepts Jesus as Lord, but there can be more to faith than that. But there is more to following Christ than simply belief, for as Scripture says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works... So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” (St James 2. 14, 17).

St James does not argue here that salvation can be purchased through good works. Rather, good works are the fruit of true faith. Given that the Holy Spirit descended on the faithful like fire, it is often used as a metaphor for faith. True faith sometimes burns bright and large, and at other times can fall down to coals. The faith is still there, but it does not dictate the actions in our lives.

Someone whose faith has burned low can still be a believer, and still accept Christ as Lord. When faith burns bright, however, Christianity is more than just belief, it becomes discipleship. It is no longer about simply believing, but about living life in the model of Christ's life. It is about more than believing in community, but rather participation in community.

The Book of Common Prayer provides for a prayer for the Communion of Saints that sums up this mentality, both of community and of discipleship:

O ETERNAL Lord God, who holdest all souls in life: We beseech thee to shed forth upon thy whole Church in Paradise and on earth the bright beams of thy light and heavenly comfort; and grant that we, following the good example of those who have loved thee and served thee here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into the fulness of thine unending joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Ask God to fan the flames of faith in our lives that we cannot merely believe, but seek to be disciples of Christ who live out that faith, in a community of disciples. Be a full member of the Communion of Saints. In our baptismal vows we become part of a living history of those committed, by the grace of God, to following the Jesus lifestyle.

On the Theological Virtues

The First Sunday in Epiphanytide

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epiphany of our Lord

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

Epiphanytide is a season of growth, and if there is to be a summary of what we ought to grow in, it would probably be given by St Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” (1 Cor 13. 13). These virtues have been spoken of time and again by many Christian authors. As CS Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, “The "Cardinal" [virtues] are those which all civilised people recognise: the “Theological” are those which, as a rule, only Christians know about.” Taken along with the four cardinal virtues, of which temperance is one, they are known as the seven heavenly virtues and held in opposition to the seven deadly sins.

The three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, which in the previous citation was rendered as love, have particular meanings in this context. CS Lewis did not mean, for example, to imply that a non-Christian could not have faith of any type or that non-Christians are all bereft of hope, indeed it is possible for Christians to experience elements of these non-Christian virtues. They are, as Lewis notes, peculiar, to Christianity. Someone might easily expound the virtue of temperance, which was considered a virtue in antiquity by Greeks and other non-Christians, yet they would not speak of the virtue of, for instance, charity, at least not as it is understood and presented here in its Christian context.

Much like how Lewis decried the linguistic change of meaning for the word temperance, he decries its narrowed definition for charity. In modern English, if you ask anyone of the meaning of charity, its definition would be some variation on alms giving or giving to the poor and less fortunate. This is why, as in the example given above from the English Standard Version - Anglicized, the term charity is sometimes rendered as love. The definition of the theological virtue of charity is most simply given as Christian love or agape love.

Agape love is the self-sacrificing love of God towards man (Jn 3. 16) and our desire to reciprocate that love back towards God. It is a love that even in its human context stems from God, and runs through him. In his Four Loves, Lewis creates distinctions between love, dividing it into affection, friendship, eros and charity (agape). He describes the first three as natural loves, and makes the statement that, “the natural loves are not self-sufficient,” in that they can be exhausted; as Lewis goes on to put it, “Something else, at first vaguely described as “decency and common sense,” but later revealed as goodness, and finally as the whole Christian life in one particular relation, must come to the help of the mere feeling if the feeling is to be kept sweet.” Put another way, God's love must be lived and supported through relationship with God if it is to be sustained.

The second theological virtue is hope. It is not hope in a secular sense. Anyone can hope there will be good weather, but in this sense they are merely expressing a preference. Christian hope is a certainty that is given to us by God’s presence in our lives and the promise of redemption made through Jesus Christ that will lead to true life with God. It stands in opposition to certain forms of secular nihilism that see pointlessness and necessarily despair as inherent parts of the human condition. This dichotomy is truly realised when you ask if such a thing as Christian nihilism is possible, and by definition it is not. Christianity is a religion of hope; hope for a future in which the sin and destruction of the world will be no more.

Holding this hope in our hearts and minds is one of the great virtues of Christianity. Not simply because it can help lead to a more positive outlook on life, but also because of the inspiration such hope provides to lead a good life in the present while we aspire to the greatness of the future. It is the Christian hope that was inspiration for many great reforms throughout the centuries as CS Lewis notes:

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.

It is this desire to live the Godly life that is encapsulated in the virtue of Christian hope. Not mere hope, but a transforming demeanour that encourages Christians to do good and bring the King of Heaven nearer to perfection on Earth.

The final theological virtue is faith. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes it:

Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work[s] through charity.”

Lewis notes that there is something deeper to faith that purely belief in God, and the Catechism begins to note this as well. In speaking of believing in God and what he has said, the Catechism refers in one manner or another to a decision of faith based on reason. You weigh the evidence for and against faith in God and come to your conclusion. While it is possible new evidence may ultimately occur that challenges your faith, it is not reason that is the primary opponent of faith, but generally our emotions and personal desires. Consider for a moment someone for whom tragedy strikes. In a moment of anger over what has happened, they may convince themselves that their faith was misplaced. Or even if there is some situation in which their faith is inconvenient, they may be tempted to simply say it is so. Lewis describes this as the challenge of holding on to your faith, once decided by reason, in the face of changing moods. “That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.” In this, he speaks to a truth which can also be particularly difficult for Christians, for whom they can accept God, but ultimately only on their own terms in which their faith conforms God to what they find comfortable, easy or preferable. If your doctrines are not sound, if you allow them to waver based on mood and ease and preference, your faith is weak; it is only partially there in that you accept only in some form that God exists, but perhaps miss the second part noted in the Catechism, that you accept what he has said and revealed to us.

It is for this reason that true faith, as described in the Catechism and by Lewis, is so essential as a Christian virtue. In this treatment of the virtues, it has been approached in the reverse order from that provided by St Paul, even though he cites agape love as the greatest of the three. The virtues build upon one another. It is possible to have some form of faith without hope, but it is not possible to have hope without faith. In presenting them in reverse order, the hope is that it is easier to see the essential need for a foundation in firm faith, in order to allow hope and charity to flourish.