Communion is a very important concept for Christians. We speak of Holy Communion, The Communion of Saints, the Community of Believers. We speak of God’s communication with us through Divine Revelation because God wants to share his mind and plan and heart and life with us. We speak of the Evangelizing Mission of the Church to communicate the Gospel to others, so that they can share in communion with God that we share through the Church.
After the sign of the cross, mass begins with a greeting expressing and praying for Communion: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.” This greeting expresses the communion existing in God Himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and at the same time is a prayer asking God to establish that communion more deeply among us. It’s a prayer that your spirit, and my spirit, may reflect and be filled with the Communion of God.
The Catechism uses the word “Communion” over 1000 times. Right in the first chapter, Catechism paragraph 27 says “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for: The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God”
Our human dignity rests on our call to Communion. About three weeks ago Pope Francis’ Dicastry on the Doctrine of the Faith issued a teaching on Human Dignity. And he quotes that very paragraph from the Catechism—that we find the fullest expression of our dignity and freedom and joy when we are fullest communion with God.
Communion. St. Paul liked the word Communion a lot: he speaks about it in reference to the Holy Eucharist through which Jesus shares his life-giving Body and Blood with us. St. Paul writes, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”
St. Paul even speaks of his desire to know Jesus Christ so deeply that he desires to share communion in Christ’s sufferings. St. Ignatius of Antioch our patron writes about that as well—his desire to imitate Jesus’ sufferings through his own martyrdom was so great that he pleaded with the Christians in Rome to do nothing to keep him from martyrdom.
The life of the Church is at the service of Communion—proclaiming the call to Communion. And our readings this weekend all illustrate that truth. In the first reading, St. Peter, driven by the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost Sunday, takes to the streets of Jerusalem and preaches that salvation is found in Jesus Christ who was crucified, but is now risen. And that there is no salvation (no communion with God) through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved." Jesus came to deliver us from our great excommunication from God—the communion with God broken by sin.
And so Peter’s proclamation of Christ—is a call to restored Communion with God in the only way that God has definitely offered Communion—through Jesus Christ.
The second reading deepens our understanding of what it means to be in this new communion-- “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.” Christians are God’s children. We aren’t mere beneficiaries of a contract between God and man. We aren’t pieces of property that God might cast away if he loses interest in us. Christian Communion means membership in the family of God—an intimate, loving, life-giving communion. And just as human parents rightly provide for the needs of their children—God provides for the safety, guidance, and flourishing of His children.
Now in the Gospel, the Lord teaches about God’s work to establish communion by drawing upon this beautiful image of a Shepherd. The mission of Christ the Shepherd is to gather scattered humanity into One flock—one communion.
And yet, the Lord acknowledges that there are terrible forces which have sought to break our communion with God. Wolves that scatter God’s flock by leading us to turn our hearts away from God.
Beginning in the Book of Genesis, the Old Testament is one story after another of individuals breaking communion with God and their fellow man through sin: Adam and Eve hardening their hearts toward God in the Garden of Eden, Cain breaking the communion of family and God’s natural law by killing his brother Abel, the builders of the tower of Babel making a name for themselves without reference to God, the Israelites crafting the golden idol, even moses allows his trust in God to waver and so does not enter into the promised land. So many stories of men and women and communities—the kingdom of israel pretty much as a whole on several occasions—breaking communion and the consequences that follow—scattering, division, expulsion from paradise, the flourishing of violence and perversion and adultery and injustice and exile.
And it doesn’t take a biblical scholar to detect that those effects of sin and selfishness and broken communion continue to breed injustice and needless suffering in our own day.
Pope St. John Paul II at the turn of the millennia offered a special exhortation to Americans—in a document called Ecclesia in America, and the saintly Pope spoke about the need of American Christians to work for communion with God in a world suffering the terrible effects of division—the opposite of communion. He said, “Faced with a divided world…we must proclaim with joy and firm faith that God is communion, Father, Son and Holy Spirit…and that he calls all people to share in that same Trinitarian communion. We must proclaim that this communion is the magnificent plan of God the Father; that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Lord, is the heart of this communion, and that the Holy Spirit works ceaselessly to create communion and to restore it when it is broken. We must proclaim that the Church is the sign and instrument of the communion willed by God, begun in time and destined for completion in the fullness of the Kingdom. The Church is the sign of communion because her members, like branches, share the life of Christ, the true vine. Through communion with Christ, Head of the Mystical Body, we enter into living communion with all believers.”
To work for communion is our task—the communion of humanity with God through Christ. And when we step forward to receive Holy Communion, we are saying “Amen” to being instruments of the communion that God wishes to establish in this world. And we become ever more effective instruments of that communion when the life of God is evident in our speech, in our actions, in our way of life.
Does your life, does your speech attract people to God? Are you doing what you can to shepherd souls into communion with God. If not? Why not? Why has your spirit ceased to draw others into communion? What obstacles have you imposed or failed to remove which impede deep Communion with God?
There are three common culprits for that: Error, Selfishness, and Fear. Those are three big bad wolves of our modern day. Error, which professes ideas contrary to the Church’s Magisterium, Selfishness, which pursues self-indulgence in inordinate or disordered ways, and Fear, which runs away from duty, devotion, discipline, conversion and the cross.
But when you refuse to allow those wolves to dominate your life, you will experience the joy and peace and fullness of life that God desires for you, communion with Himself through Christ, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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