The Communion of Saints and the Big Tent

Susan on her blog wonderfully expressed a view of Catholicism: “I saw an image of the apostolic line stretching forward from Peter through the Popes over the years through to the present day Pope.  I saw that it is that apostolic line that holds the structure of this tent we call Catholicism.” Others in the tent are moved by a different image (the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive), namely the communion of saints. Consider a part of the description of the communion of saints from Joan Chittister’s wonderful book on the Apostle’s Creed, In Search of Belief 178, 182 : “The Creed is talking . . . about the unity of strangers that forms about the image of Christ who calls us beyond our past into a demanding and sometimes lonely present. In communion with these people who have lived their faith to the end before us, we all trek on, alone but together, together but alone, depending on the hand and the sight of the other to take us further still . . . . The communion of saints is not about the sinlessness of those who went before us. It is about sinfulness transcended, made holy in the milling of everyday life, of everyday politics, of everyday ecclesiastical consternation. The communion of saints is every color, every level, every challenge of mankind. It is the cosmic vision of Christ made plain. It crosses time and culture and the quagmires of national politics and Church conflicts to leave us with the face of a Church that is human [and] is us at our best. It is the Christ-face drawn differently in every age by every people.”

 For Chittister, the Church is not the institution, but rather “the gathering of the seekers who celebrate the continuing presence of Christ among them, in them, and through them. The Church is the assembly of believers who are a sign of the Christian tradition, who make Jesus present now, who by serving, loving, proclaiming in the Jesus in whom they believe make the link between the human community and the touch of God in time.”