Who do we think we are?

In last week’s article, we talked about ‘who are we’ in terms of our being ‘human beings’ whose identity was tied up with our relationship to Christ.

However, who are we in relationship to other human beings?  Vatican II gave us another way of looking at this, which has ancient roots.

Vatican II presents us, the Church, as the sign and instrument of what God is doing silently among all human beings, as the symbol or icon of what God is up to in his world.  We could compare the Church to that part of an iceberg which appears above the waters while the greater part of the iceberg lies below the waters.  So, in the Church we are able to know something of what God is up to and we gain an image of what God is up to in all the world.  But we can only know that because of what we discover in the Church, that is in the part of the ‘iceberg’ which is visible. 

What God is leading everyone towards is made known to us, his Church, in Jesus and in him as the one who died and is risen.  But this gift of God is not just for us but for all.  We are those who have been called and privileged to know Christ Jesus and to hold this treasure for all humankind and to be present in order to knead it into our present time and into the history of our world. 

In the New Testament, we find a similar way of speaking about the Church.  The image that it uses is that of the ‘first fruits’.  This is an agricultural image.  The first fruits were the first gatherings of the harvest and the firstlings of the flock; these were formally offered to God in thanksgiving for the whole harvest and they represented the whole harvest before God.  The first fruits were essentially part of the whole harvest which would eventually be gathered in and they stood in for the whole harvest before God.  So, the Church was seen as the first fruits of the full harvest of all humankind which God would ultimately gather in. 

So, being called to belong to the Church is part of God’s way of doing things in his whole world; he calls a chosen people.  This was true of Israel in the Old Testament and it is true of the new People of God in the New Testament.  We are called not for our own sake but to be a sign – a very human one – of God’s working in his world to bring humankind to himself.

This may raise questions in our minds.  Don’t be wary of expressing them.  There will be aspects of this segment that will be developed as this series continues.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 19 July 2024