Cathal BarryIn Scripture, we find a host of interrelated images and figures of the Church, writes Cathal Barry
The word ‘church’ (Latin ecclesia, from the Greek ek-ka-lein, to ‘call out of’) means a convocation or an assembly. It designates the assemblies of the people, usually for a religious purpose. Ekklesia is used frequently in the Greek Old Testament for the assembly of the Chosen People before God, above all for their assembly on Mount Sinai where Israel received the Law and was established by God as his holy people.
By calling itself ‘Church’, the first community of Christian believers recognised itself as heir to that assembly. In the Church, God is “calling together” his people from all the ends of the earth. The equivalent Greek term Kyriake, from which the English word Church and the German Kirche are derived, means “what belongs to the Lord”.
In Christian usage, the word “church” designates the liturgical assembly, but also the local community or the whole universal community of believers. These three meanings are inseparable. “The Church” is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ’s Body.
In Scripture, we find a host of interrelated images and figures through which Revelation speaks of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church.
The images taken from the Old Testament are variations on a profound theme: The People of God.
In the New Testament, according to the Catechism, all these images find a new centre because Christ has become the head of this people, which henceforth is his Body.
The dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, states that around this centre are grouped images taken “from the life of the shepherd or from cultivation of the land, from the art of building or from family life and marriage”.
The document references the Scriptures: “The Church is, accordingly, a sheepfold, the sole and necessary gateway to which is Christ. It is also the flock of which God himself foretold that he would be the shepherd, and whose sheep, even though governed by human shepherds, are unfailingly nourished and led by Christ himself, the Good Shepherd and Prince of Shepherds, who gave his life for his sheep.”
Lumen Gentium further states: “The Church is a cultivated field, the tillage of God… That land, like a choice vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly cultivator. Yet the true vine is Christ who gives life and fruitfulness to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ, without whom we can do nothing.”
“Often, too,” the document notes, “the Church is called the building of God”. “The Lord compared himself to the stone which the builders rejected, but which was made into the comer-stone. On this foundation the Church is built by the apostles and from it the Church receives solidity and unity.”
Finally, Lumen Gentium holds that it is the Church whom Christ unites to himself by an unbreakable alliance and whom he constantly nourishes and cherishes.