Shaping Our Church Identity

Dear Friends,

On Easter Sunday and the first few weeks following, the Sunday readings focused on the event of Jesus’ resurrection and the early Christians’ experience of Jesus. Beginning last week, though, and for these few weeks before the Ascension, the focus changes to the impact of Easter on the identity of the early Church.

To put it briefly, identity is not a static, once and for all thing. Psychologists tell us that, even though a person’s identity is somewhat shaped by heredity and inborn characteristics, to change and to grow is essential to life. We welcome some things and reject others. We sample, deepen, develop, refine our characteristics.

The identity and self-understanding of human groups is also a lifetime task. One such group is the Church.

Formed by the presence and promise of Jesus, the Christ, the church has existed for over 2000 years. From the days of Pentecost, through the missionary experiences described in today’s first reading until that time when the New Jerusalem of our second reading has overtaken our earth, our Church not only has existed, it has continually been becoming new and hopefully more faithful to its founding impulse.

The Church has unfinished business. The shape of our Church, how we embody and pass on the heart of our faith and practice will continue to change.

Recently, parish leaders in one local community have proposed changing the Mass schedule shared between two parishes. The shrinking number of clergy and the decline in weekend attendance by parish membership are practical reasons for this proposal. In our effort to be faithful to Christ in these difficult times, we will need to know and integrate our heritage and our history with our present circumstance without fear but with great love.

In today’s Gospel, we hear again Jesus’ tender words to his followers:
            Love one another. Such as my love been for you, so your love be for one another.
            So must your love for one another be. This is how all will know that you are my 

            disciples: by your love for one another.

We can quote those lines easily – they are as familiar to us as the air we breathe. But this love of which Christ speaks demands our attentiveness. It consists of sorting out what is necessary to maintain for the sake of life and growth and what is not. It chooses life for individuals and groups and discards what has become useless or has ceased to engender life. It values the way the Holy Spirit works for everyone.

With tongue in cheek, someone once paraphrased a line from the Gospel: Wherever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there is … dissention. Maybe.

But for sure, whenever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there is the potential to become more clearly who we say we are:
            The Body of Christ.
            The people of God.
            God’s love incarnate.

These weeks, as we hear how Christ’s Spirit guided the early followers of the Lord toward a new, unfolding identity, I hope we can find encouragement and determination to believe that we, too, will be guided by the Spirit in renewing our Church identity for our time.

~Sister Joan Sobala