Ready for Praxis!

I am headed to the Praxis conference this morning to participate in a continuing conversation that I believe is one of the most exciting dialogues taking place in the church in America.

The Praxis Conference is a collaboration of academics, artists, and reflective practitioners focused on reclaiming historical church’s liturgy, art, and sacred space for contemporary evangelical ministry contexts.

It was my honor and privilege to be a part of a delegation from the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches to spend a day with Pope Francis last October. Our conversation was focused primarily on how we might walk together.I believe that Pope Francis is fulfilling an important prophetic role for the “Church”today, particularly in encouraging all of us to recover our place within the great tradition and live within the liturgies of the church. I also think St. Augustine has an essential word to say to us today in our effort to restore the unity of the body of Christ. Allow me to share on this occasion some of the reflections I made during our visit to Rome.As I listened to Pope Francis I could not help but think of St. Augustine. St. Augustine left his mark on nearly every area of theology I want to point to just a few and suggest it as the basis for the future of our journey into the great tradition. The distinction between potestas and ministerium, namely, between the cause of grace and its minister.The grace conferred through sacraments is exclusively the work of God and Christ; the minister is only an instrument: “When Peter baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes; when John baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes; when Jude baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes.”(Augustine, Against the Letter of Parmenian, II, 15, 34; see all of Sermon 266.)The validity and efficacy of the sacraments is not impeded by an unworthy minister. This is a truth, that the Christian world need to remember today.Pope Francis continually pointed out that we were brothers by our “baptism.” He fact he was and is facing the world on the very basic foundation of our faith.The unity of the Church is thus brought about by the same One who brings about unity in the Trinity. “The Father and Son have wanted us to be united among ourselves and with them by means of the same bond that unites them, namely, the love that is the Holy Spirit.” ( Augustine, Discourses, 71, 12, 18 (PL 38, 454).) The Holy Spirit performs the same function in the Church that the soul performs in our physical body: He is the animating and unifying principle. “What the soul is to the human body the Holy Spirit is to the body of Christ, which is the Church.” - AugustineThe Church requires both the visible communion of sacramental signs and the invisible communion of grace. The Church as the Body of Christ animated by the Holy Spirit. In Augustine’s exegetical writings and sermons, we find these same basic principles of ecclesiology. Let us listen to what his faithful once heard on the feast of Pentecost on this theme:

If you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the apostle telling the faithful: You, though, are the body of Christ and its members (1 Cor 12:27). So if it’s you that are the body of Christ and its members, it’s the mystery [that you are] that has been placed at the Lord’s table; what you receive is the mystery that . . . [you are]. It is to what you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent. What . . . you see is The body of Christ, and you answer Amen. So be a member of the body of Christ, in order to make your Amen truthful. . . . Be what you can see, and receive what you are.( Augustine, “Sermon 272” (PL 38, 1247-1248), in Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, 297-298.)

The bread and wine becoming the body of Christ and believers becoming the body of Christ. The Eucharistic bread is obtained from the dough of many grains of wheat and the wine from a multitude of grapes; in the same way, the Church is formed by many people, united and blended together by the charity which is the Holy Spirit. Also in relation to the Church one must say that the sacrament significando causat, the sacrament “causes by signifying”. By signifying the union of many persons in one the Eucharist brings it about and causes it. In this sense, we can say that “The Eucharist makes the Church.”The situation in the world, in the church, and in theology has changed a bit in the 21st century. It is a matter of starting over again with the person of Jesus, of humbly helping our contemporaries to discover the person of Christ. Apostles faced a pre-Christian world, and we face a world that is in large part post-Christian.When Paul wants to summarize the essence of the Christian message in one sentence, he does not say, “I proclaim this or that doctrine to you.” Instead he says, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23), and “We preach . . . Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5).This does not mean ignoring the great theological and spiritual enrichment that came from the Reformation or desiring to return to the time before it. It means instead allowing all of Christianity to benefit from its achievements. Today we need to move from the spiritual communion of charity to full communion in the sacraments as well, among which the Eucharist is first.The distinction between the two levels in which the true Church is present—the exterior one of signs and the interior one of grace—allows Augustine to formulate a principle that would have been unthinkable before him: “As, therefore, there is in the Catholic Church something which is not Catholic, so there may be something which is Catholic outside the Catholic Church.”Can I, as a Christian, feel in communion more with the multitude of those baptized in my own church, who nevertheless completely neglect Christ and the church? Can I recognize the faith of those who serve the Christ in those baptized outside of my own church?Pope Francis reminded us several times; “Persecutions, so frequent today in certain parts of the world, do not make distinctions: they do not burn churches or kill people because they are Catholic or Protestant but because they are Christians. In the eyes of the persecutors we are already “one”!”Jesus is the one who once and for all established this mystical foundation when he prayed “that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22). A fundamental unity in doctrine and discipline will be the fruit of this mystical and spiritual unity, but it can never be its cause.The most concrete steps toward unity, therefore, are not those that are made around a table or in joint declarations (even though those are all important). They are the ones made when believers of different confessions find themselves proclaiming the Lord Jesus together in fraternal accord, sharing their charisms, and recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.As I ready myself in prayer to go to Houston I am filled with the same expectation and excitement that I felt when we went to Rome. I will meet with people who are on a pathway to both the recovery and the discovery of the culture of the Kingdom of God that is found in and through the liturgical expressions that truly re-form its worshippers into the image of the One Creator.Augustine advises, “If you love, you do not have nothing; for if you love unity, whoever in it has anything has it also for you! Take away envy, and what I have is yours; let me take away envy, and what you have is mine.”This reveals the secret about why charity is “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31). It makes me love the Church, or the community in which I live, and because of unity, all of the charisms, and not just some of them, are mine.“If you wish to live in the Holy Spirit, preserve charity, love the truth, and you will attain eternity. Amen.”Now I am ready for Praxis!!!!