Welcome to Deep Theology! As we begin exploring the mystery of the Catholic faith together, we start with “communion ecclesiology,” a concept that will build a foundation for our future discussions. An appreciation of communion ecclesiology strongly informs my approach to other topics I will cover here, including mission, catholicity, authenticity, and vocation, making this topic an appropriate place to start.

“Ecclesiology” is the study of the Church’s self-understanding. “Communion ecclesiology” is a specific way to view this self-understanding and the Church’s mission that emphasizes participation, relationship, sacraments, and unity in diversity. These terms are mutually dependent when describing communion ecclesiology – any single term by itself does not capture the full meaning of communion.  Together, these terms enable us to explore the very deep topic of communion ecclesiology in a very introductory way.

My own reflection on communion ecclesiology began when I was an undergrad at the University of Tennessee, before I even had a name for this communal aspect of my faith. At UT, campus ministries from various Christian denominations have houses along one street fondly referred to as “Religious Row,” so I had many opportunities for ecumenical dialogue. At one particular event hosted by the Baptist campus ministry, a campus minister asked me: “Are you saved? Is Jesus Christ your Lord and personal savior?”  Although this question is not native to the Catholic lexicon, this question had lost much of its foreignness because I had already been living in the “Buckle of the Bible Belt” for some time. Yet when asked by this evangelical campus minister, the strangeness of the question flooded back. 

After some reflection, I realized that it was not the question itself that bothered me, but the assumption behind the question.  My questioner had assumed that relationship to Jesus was personal and individual: “Are YOU saved? Is Jesus Christ YOUR Lord and PERSONAL savior?” Our faith in Jesus Christ is indeed personal, but a personal faith is relational and necessarily communal. As a personal faith, the person of Jesus Christ is related to the human person, me, but this personal faith also relates me to others. This relationship with others is not a subsequent product of my relationship to Jesus, but rather the condition required for my relationship to Jesus Christ and his Spirit.  In other words, a personal faith presupposes my participation within an interwoven web of personal relationships – the Church - through which I am able to have a relationship to our common Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

A Contemporary Lens Rooted in Tradition and Scripture.

Communion Ecclesiology is based upon the deeply biblical concept of koinonia (transliterated from the Greek, κοινωνια) which means participation. Based on this biblical concept, the understanding of the Church as communion developed robustly during the patristic era (approximately 100 A.D. – 800 A.D.) and was the common ecclesiological framework for undivided first millennia Christianity.[1] Retrieved by the Second Vatican Council, communion ecclesiology emphasizes participation, relationship, sacrament, and unity in diversity and is the primary theological framework through which the Church is understood.[2] In fact, twenty years after Vatican II during the Extraordinary Synod of 1985, the bishops asserted that communion was “the central and fundamental idea of the Council’s documents.”[3] In a similar way, Joseph Ratzinger, a renowned theologian even before he became Pope Benedict XVI, described communion ecclesiology as the “one basic ecclesiology.”[4] Accordingly, communion ecclesiology is not only rooted in the Church’s tradition and deeply biblical, but is also the lens through which the contemporary Church understands itself.

The biblical roots of communion ecclesiology are grounded in the New Testament discussion of our relationship to the Son and the Spirit. In Acts 2 when the Spirit descends upon disciples in the upper room, this Pentecost event occurs within the context of an assembled community. The Spirit is primarily given to the whole community and only after this event are persons such as Peter able to preach with boldness and invite others persons into the community.  Again in Scripture, Paul’s use of “body of Christ” as a metaphor for the Church points to the communal – and not individual – relationship of Christians to the head of the body, Jesus Christ.[5]  Early in his discussion of the Body of Christ, Paul makes this communal relationship evident: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.”[6] In other words, because there is one Spirit of Christ, there is only one Body of Christ in which we must participate in order to relate to its head, Jesus Christ. While the Spirit enables persons to enter this one Body, the Spirit is given to the body – the Church community – and as a part of the communal body we received the Spirit’s gifts.[7]

The Scriptural emphasis of a personal and communal faith points us toward the subject of Scripture itself – the Trinitarian GOD. By drawing upon a classic theological image of lover and beloved, we can come to better understand who the Triune GOD is and how GOD’s very being relates to this idea of Church as a communion that enables relationship to GOD through participation in an interwoven web of ecclesial relationships centered around the Eucharist.   In this analogy for GOD’s inner Trinitarian life, both the persons of the Father and the Son exist as Lover and Beloved. In this analogy, the person of the Father completely gives all of his Love to the Son. Only the person of the Son can fully receive the Father’s Love; in return, the Son completely loves the Father who receives the Love of the Son in full.  This mutual love between the person of the Father and the person of the Son exists as a communion of Love within the Trinity. This continual exchange of Love between the Father and the Son is the person of the Holy Spirit.[8]  In this analogy, each person of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) participates (koinonia) in the person of the other two Trinitarian persons through a relationship of love – for this reason, we say “consubstantial with the Father” in the Nicene Creed. Through this analogy, we can glimpse that GOD in GOD’s inner nature is a communion (koinonia) of persons.

Church as an Ecclesial Communion of Persons

Keeping in mind this understanding of the one GOD who is three persons, we can return again to the discussion of the Church’s nature. As the community in which the Spirit dwells, the Church offers an experience – albeit in a small way – of GOD in GOD’s self.[9] The Spirit who dwells within the ecclesial community enables our participation in this foretaste of our heavenly communion with GOD by knitting the Church itself together as a communion of persons.  Such an understanding illuminates why missing Mass on Sundays is such a significant trespass for Catholics; in fact, we understand it as a mortal sin that breaks our relationship with GOD and requires repentance and reconciliation with the Church community and GOD.  Missing Mass on Sunday is not a mortal sin because we violate Church law developed by authoritative officials, but rather because by not participating in the life of the Church community, we sever our relationship to Father, whose Son is the head of the Church and whose Spirit dwells within the Church. Only when we are a part of the ecclesial communion of persons and we become interwoven into the relationships within the Church through baptism and Eucharist do we enter into relationship with the Trinitarian GOD who is by definition a communion of persons.

Because our relationship to the Church, which is an ecclesial communion of persons, enables our relationship to the Trinitarian GOD, personal relationship with GOD is always related to the community’s relationship with GOD.  Communion ecclesiology – the vision of Church as communion - reflects both of these dimensions of communion (GOD’s inner Trinitarian life and GOD’s relationship to the life of the Church community).  The Church is neither an accumulation of individual Christians nor an institution pyramidally organized. Rather, the Church is a communion of persons assumed into Trinitarian life of GOD.

The Church Community’s Sacraments as Means of Communion

As such, communion ecclesiology provides a helpful way to understand our lived experience of Church. Through the sacraments of the Church, especially baptism and the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit enables us to participate in the Trinitarian life of GOD who is a communion of persons. This participation (koinonia) is most evidently seen in the Eucharistic celebration (also known as communion) where all persons in the Church encounter Jesus Christ made present by the Spirit as they participate in the communal and sacramental life of the Church. We are reminded that this Eucharistic communion is a concrete expression of communion ecclesiology when the priest, referencing Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 13:14, greets us at the opening of Mass: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of GOD and the fellowship (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” 

So, today I can describe my relationship to Jesus in an explicitly communal way: “Jesus Christ is OUR Lord and PERSONAL Savior and because of his actions, we are drawn into an ecclesial communion of persons centered around participation in Eucharistic communion – a foretaste of GOD’s own inner life into which GOD is drawing us.”

Notes

[1] Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Visions and Versions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000), 13.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Extraordinary Synod of 1985, “The Final Report,” Origins 15 (19 December 1985), 448.

[4] L’Osservatore Romano [English Edition], 17 June 1992, 1. [author’s emphasis]

[5] 1 Corinthians 12 (New American Bible)

[6] 1 Corinthians 12: 13

[7] Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith, 3 Volume (New York: Crossroad Pub. Co., 1998), II: 15.

[8] Ormond Rush, The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2009), 33.

[9] Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith, 3 Volume (New York: Crossroad Pub. Co., 1998), III: 13-17.