Congar - Church as 'Jacob's ladder' between Christ and the world [The Wide World My Parish 4]

If then, this is the place of Jesus Christ, we have to determine what is the consequent place of the Church, in relation to him and in relation to the world. 

The Church is Church only because of Christ, but she is made up of human beings. She is a gathering of men among other gatherings of men, but bearing amongst them the mystery of Jesus Christ. She is the company of witnesses to him. In as much as it depends on men's faithfulness, she brings Christ to the world, offering it opportunities to recognize him as the key to its destiny. 

Provided we are careful not to turn a convenient and, surely, necessary distinction into a separation, it will be useful to look at the Church from each of two points of view: (1) as God's people, the community of Christians, she represents mankind towards Christ; (2) as institution, or sacrament of salvation, she represents Christ towards the world. Jacob 'dreamed that he saw a ladder standing on the earth, with its top reaching up into heaven; a stairway for the angels of God to go up and come down' (Gen. xxviii. 12; cf. John i. 51). Two mediations are joined in the Church, one going up, or representative, the other coming down, or sacramental; and through them she is the place where Christ gives himself to the world, and the world gives itself to Christ, the place where the two meet.

In this two-fold movement the Church actualizes the biblical idea of first-fruits. Coming from Christ and composed of men, she constantly bears the whole of one towards the whole of the other. When she takes root in some human grouping, there she makes Jesus Christ present and at work, that Son of God of whom St Paul writes that it is God's pleasure 'through him to win back all things, whether on earth or in heaven, into union with himself, making peace with them through his blood, shed on the cross' (Col. i. 20). No doubt this does not mean that all men, in the sense of each and every individual, will in fact be saved; it means that the act by which Christ makes the union effective is of itself really directed towards and includes all men, the totality of the world as such, offering all that is necessary for the achievement of the end that God has in view for them. 

Since the Church makes Jesus Christ present and active to the world, all worth is finally judged by her, and it is in regard to her that men are seen to be blessed or rejected. Clement of Alexandria had this in mind when he wrote, early in the third century, 'Just as God's will is a deed and it is called "the world", so his intention is man's salvation, and this is called "the Church".'* That is not plainly seen as physical things are: 'What do we see now? Not all things subject to him as yet' (Heb. ii, 8). What St Paul says of the Christian is not true of his personal life alone, but also of apostleship and of all that the Church does: 'Your life is hidden away now with Christ in God. Christ is your life, and when he is made manifest, you too will be made manifest in glory with him' (Col. iii. 3-4). 

It is true that to the eye of faith the Church never looks small in this great world. There she wears the best aspect she can, for the people she is able to reach. But, however modestly, she has always to seek to have and to show an appearance that betokens the Gospel, that betokens the Covenant, and a covenant that is in principle universal, for of that she is the sign and sacrament. 

Each one of us for his own little world, all of us for the world at large—we are Jacob's ladder. The representative going up of mankind to God and the representative coming down of Jesus Christ to the world pass through us. The whole Church is sacramental and missionary, and so is each Christian in his degree. Each of the members of any group (e.g. a parish) that seeks Christ through the Church stands for the whole group. To what extent do they effectively aid the group in its journey to God? It cannot he known. But they are its first-fruits, a sheaf offered up, and they are intercessors for it: had there been ten righteous men in the city, God would have spared it (Gen. xviii. 32). 

We can only look ahead, and so we cannot see anything, for there is nothing to see in the future, unless with the eyes of faith and hope. It has been rightly observed that mankind goes forward in its history backwards, because it only sees the road it has already travelled. When we reach the end, we shall see how the final results took shape in the beginnings, the first-fruits. And we shall give thanks. 

* Paedagogus, i, 6. It is very remarkable that this idea, of bearing the world's meaning like a living seed, was given expression at the very time when Christians were a small minority, looked on with contempt, persecuted and often killed off. See also the Letter to Diognetus (2-cent.): 'Christians are in the world what the soul is in the body. The soul is dispersed throughout the members of the body, so are Christians among the cities of the world. . . . Christians are as it were held in the prison of the world; yet it is they who sustain the world.' St Irenaeus (d. c. 200) speaks of the 'recapitulation' of all things in Christ, the Church's head (cf. Eph. i. 10). Origen (d. c. 254) calls the Church 'the universe of the universe'. And so on. 

Yves Congar, The Wide World My Parish: Salvation and its Problems (1962) p. 19-21

Congar - Christ as the meaning of the world [The Wide World My Parish 3]

There is a hallowed truth in 'personalism', the feeling for the unique value of every person; a person is a whole in himself, one cannot be substituted for another, he is the contrary of Koestler's definition of the individual in a communist society: 'A mass of one million people divided by a million.' But we must not lose sight of other truths. Every man and woman is a person, but they all have something else in common, their humanity. Mankind is made up of persons, but they are born one of another, they need one another in order to expand and develop, each one has his own destiny, but together they pursue a common cause: 'The whole succession of men should be seen as one and the same man, continuing always to exist and to learn.' The world too is a totality; science treats it more and more as a whole, made of the same stuff, and all held together by an aggregate of interactions, attractions and compenetrations. 

The world as a whole has movement and therefore a meaning. Materialism treats this movement and meaning as purely a result of forces within nature, though adding that it is man's business to interpret them by his intelligence and to apply his energies to them. But from the Christian point of view the world as a whole has a meaning which comes to it from God's plan. Plan and meaning are not simply those which the mind can recognize by carefully looking at things. Into the world taken as a whole, into the pattern of human history, God put the revelation and then the gift of something new; it was not contained within the energies of the world but, once given, it became its central point and constituted its meaning: the Covenant, fully actualized in Jesus Christ who is indeed the union of God and man. Jesus is for the world, and the world is for Jesus: totality in quest of a meaning, and fullness of meaning. We cannot be sure that in Jesus Christ the world recognizes its meaning, but it is certain that he is that meaning. 

Let me make a comparison. At one time I was living my life from day to day, and pretty happily, for my job was interesting. But, without having the sophisticated absurdity of Sartre's 'Everything that exists is born for no purpose, continues through weakness, dies by chance', that life of mine was not illumined by the shining light of some clear purpose. Then one day I met somebody who put an idea into my head, something worth-while, an undertaking, in which I recognized the meaning of my life; it not only determined my present and future, but threw light on the past, for everything had been pointing in this direction, although I had not realized it. Taken up with living and doing my work, I had overlooked it, but even so it was the meaning of my life; it made sense of everything and held the whole together. Boris Pasternak is right: 'You have said that facts don't mean anything by themselves—not until a meaning is put into them. Well—the meaning you have to put into the facts to make them relevant to human beings is just that: it's Christianity, it's the mystery of personality.' 

Yves Congar, The Wide World My Parish: Salvation and its Problems (1962) p. 17-19

Congar - Biblical idea of 'first-fruits' (part that represents the whole) [The Wide World My Parish 2]

THE BIBLE AND STATISTICS

[T]he Bible shows little interest in the quantitative aspects of things. . . . 

It is disconcerting to notice how often numbers given in the Bible do not mean just the same as numbers mean for us. It happens quite often that, in parallel accounts, the figures given in one do not agree with those given in the other. . . . Biblical exegetes have a ready answer: they tell us that there were several different sources and editors. But the difficulty remains; for the final editor or whoever gathered the sources, who was no more stupid than we are, must have noticed that the figures were different, and yet he left them. They cannot then have had the same importance or exactly the same meaning for him as for us. In many other passages numbers have a symbolical signification . . . Or again, sometimes numbers are arranged according to a certain idea, to convey some meaning, or even for the sake of symmetry and balance in the context: a good example is the genealogy of Jesus as set out by St Matthew, who groups the generations in three series of fourteen. There is another example in the figures of the members of Jacob's family who came into Egypt, the total of whom has been so arranged as to make seventy, a mystic number. 

THE FEW WHO REPRESENT THE WHOLE

The fundamental biblical category is not quantity but rather the idea of representative elements having a universal dynamic value; these features are found in the typically biblical notion of first-fruits. 'Biblical thought is all-embracing, it includes the particular in the whole, whether as seed, root or fruit of a tree' (W. Vischer). We must look at this more closely. First of all, the Bible is not concerned with numbers as such, but with the fact that a number of individuals actualize the characteristics of the real type that governs and precedes them: we have only to consider what the Old Testament says of Edom and Israel respectively. The New Testament is interested in the totalities which are deemed to be present in a representative part of each. . . . St Paul often speaks in this way. He refers to 'the gospel which has been preached to all creation under heaven' (Col. i. 23); the Jerusalem Bible suggests that this is only an hyperbole, but surely there is something else in it as well. Paul also writes 'the gospel which has reached you, which now bears fruit and thrives in you, as it does all the world over' (Col. i. 5-6) . . . These pointers might seem insignificant were it not for the fact that they form part of a whole context, well known to specialists, in which the idea of totality is very strongly marked. 

But this totality is considered as represented in a part of itself, which is the bearer, according to God's 'plan', of the destiny of the whole. Such biblical studies as those of Wilhelm Vischer show that this dynamic and continuous plan is characterized by the idea of Pars pro toto, a part for the whole. Mankind is chosen to represent the world, to give God the praise of all creation; Israel is chosen for mankind, to be God's witness and priest amongst men, and at bottom the Jewish people has maintained its consciousness of this vocation and ideal as the indelible mark of its chosenness, even when it has fallen short of its call : 'A minority in the service of a majority." But for us Israel is now the Church, and it is to Christians that we have to apply the idea of being the dynamic representative minority that is spiritually responsible for the final destiny of all. 

Even within Israel a part often stood for the whole. When the more fervent Jews were gathered at Jerusalem for the great feasts, it was all Israel that was, mystically, assembled there. When, from the eighth century B. C., the prophets began to foretell the destruction of the Holy City and its Temple, they spoke prophetically of 'the remnant', whose size was of little importance and was not made clear, but which would represent the whole of the new Israel. Finally, the new Israel is represented and has its points of departure, not in a collective remnant, but in one person, the Son of Man, who bears in himself all the Holy People of the Most High. Fundamentally, the Christian doctrine of the Redemption cannot be understood apart from the biblical idea of representative inclusion of which a few examples have just been given. It is indeed constantly 'a part for the whole': God looked at a great multitude and brought them into his design, seeing them in a little group or in a single person who providentially was bearer of the good that was meant for all. 

THE SEED OF LIFE

That is why we said above that the ideas of totality and of representative value are joined in the typically biblical notion of first-fruits. The apostolic writings are full of it. According to St James' epistle, Christians, to whom birth is given by the Father through his true word, are the first-fruits of all his creation (i. 18). For St Paul, Christ is the first-fruits of resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 20, 23) ; and Stephanas and his fellows are the first-fruits of Achaia (I Cor. xvi. 15), Epaenetus of Asia (Rom. xvi. 5). Clearly Paul saw in the first of a group or a country an example of the divine pattern according to which that first contains all that is to follow. The idea can be applied to the founder of some group, e.g. of a church or a religious order . . . We are now such rabid individualists that ideas of this sort no longer occur to us; and yet, even humanly speaking, we should not be what we are, or rather, we should not be at all, had there not been a First in whom the future was contained. In one of his sermons, Newman has a fine passage on the bond that unites us with our forerunners, of whom we often know nothing but to whom we nevertheless owe things that are very dear and precious to us.* Who built the house in which we were born and grew up? Who began the society in which we have found opportunity and happiness, human or specifically Christian? In biblical language all these things would be 'first-fruits'; but here we have to go beyond the purely human point of view. 

We all know that for Christians, there is a real history of salvation: that is, a chain of events and divine dealings in accordance with a design seen by God in its wholeness from all eternity, but which is unfolded bit by bit during the course of time. To the eyes of God, its continuation was in its beginning, he saw the whole in the first-fruits. For God, Abraham, alone in a world that was already populous, was already the people that would make up the company of believers; the promises and blessings given to the patriarch were given for this people. Thus Abraham in his solitude was as it were a seed that was able to fertilize the field of the world, a kind of sacrament of universal faith and salvation. 

And do we not see there a sort of general law, a 'constant' of all creation? With deep penetration did Gustave Thibon write that 'Any order that transcends another can insert itself into that other only under a form that is infinitely small'; he gives as examples the insertion of life into the inorganic world and of the power of thought into simply biological life; to which may be added, of the Church's supernatural life into the world of conscious life. And indeed, what is life, quantitatively considered, in face of the enormous mass of lifeless matter? It is so small in relation to the mass as to be hardly perceptible, and yet it is the promise and the riches and the future. 

The same can be said of conscious life in relation to life in general. Pascal's reed is a well-known symbol,† but it does not speak so persuasively as figures, and here are the figures: It has been calculated that if the whole population of the world were put into the Lake of Geneva, which is not all that large, the level of the water would rise by only 11¼ inches. That is a matter of bodies. But consciousness has neither density nor volume nor weight, and yet it is the greatest thing in the world. And then what shall we say of grace, of which the Church is as it were the shrine? Here we may recall that fine piece, No 792, of Pascal's Pensees, on the three orders: the bodily order, the order of mind, and the order of charity or holiness. 

The infinite distance between body and mind is a figure of the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity—for charity is supernatural. 

The glory of greatness shines in vain for people who are in search of understanding. 

Kings, the rich, public leaders, none of the great ones of the world see the glory of men of intellect. 

The greatness of wisdom, which is nothing if not of God, is invisible to worldlings and intellectuals. These are three orders that differ in kind. 

Great geniuses have their power, their glory, their greatness, their triumphs, their lustre, and have no need of worldly greatness, it is no concern of theirs. They are seen by the mind, not with the eyes; and that is enough. 

The saints have their power, their glory, their triumphs, their lustre, and have no need of wordly [sic] or intellectual greatness, with which they have no concern, for these neither add to nor take away anything from them. They are seen by God and the angels, not by the body or by inquisitive minds; God is enough for them. 

Archimedes would be equally revered whatever his place in the world. He fought no eye-filling battles, but he gave his discoveries to every man's mind. How glorious he was to the mind! 

Jesus Christ, without wordly [sic] goods and without any outward show of learning, belongs to his own order of holiness. He did not invent anything, he did not govern; but he was humble, patient, holy, holy to God, terrifying to evil spirits, without sin. With how much state, with what unutterable splendour, he comes to the eyes of the heart that perceives wisdom! 

It would have been useless for Archimedes to play the prince in his geometry books, though he was a prince. 

It would have been useless for our Lord Jesus Christ to come like a king to dazzle us in his kingdom of holiness; he came indeed with the glory of his own order !  

.. All bodies together, and all minds together, and all their works, cannot equal the least movement of charity—that is of an infinitely higher order. 

* Parochial Sermons, vol. iii (London, 1836), Sermon 17.

† 'Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed' (Penses, vi, 347).

Yves Congar, The Wide World My Parish: Salvation and its Problems (1962) p. 9-16

Congar - Solidarity leads to desire for salvation of all [The Wide World My Parish 1]

A man cannot content himself with the certain knowledge that the Catholic Church represents the fullness of Christianity (supposing that he has that certainty unimpaired); he needs to know what 'the others' represent in relation to that Church and the salvation of which she is as it were the sacrament. In many places, every Catholic knows people who are Protestant, perhaps a communist or two, maybe a Jew, and certainly some who 'don't care', either because of indifference or because they are positively opposed to religion. These people are his fellows, sharing a common destiny with him, and he, or she, cannot but ask how they stand with regard to his religion, his faith, and that salvation in which he believes. The Communism pervading some countries, which has imposed some of its problems on us, is in its own way underlining the question: on the one hand by the atmosphere of human solidarity and ever-growing 'worldwideness' ; on the other, by consciousness of a tremendous historical continuity which forbids us to ignore the solidarity of generation with generation and century with century. It may be that the religion of the classical epoch was characterized by a certain individualism: Peter Nicole (d. 1695), for example, declared that 'A man is created to live alone with God for ever.' A possible comment on this nowadays is one that would have astonished and even scandalized Nicole: 'Save my own soul alone? No, it shall be all or none,' Whilst not going so far as that, this feeling for human solidarity certainly haunts many Christian consciences today.*

* This feeling could be particularly illustrated from the writings of Simone Weil, but there are much older expressions of it, though inspired by different considerations. There is Dostoevsky's theme that we are responsible for all people and everything, we have to beg forgiveness for all people and everything; and St Simeon the New Theologian (d. 1022) wrote; 'I knew a man who so longed for his brethren's salvation that, with excess of a zeal worthy of Moses, he implored God with scalding tears that either those brethren should be saved with him or he be damned with them. For he was bound to them in the Holy Spirit by such a bond of love that he did not want even to enter the kingdom of Heaven if it meant having to be separated from them' (Discourse 22; P.G., 120, 424-5)

Yves Congar, The Wide World My Parish: Salvation and its Problems (1962) p. 6