The Beauty of the Church

by Dermott J. Mullan

In the last few decades, a phrase that has gained popularity among certain groups of Catholics is “We are the Church” or “We are Church.” On a personal level, these phrases are, presumably, meant to make people feel at home when they come to Mass. The phrases have political overtones as well: If I can think of myself as an active (or even an important) member of the Church, then maybe I can have a say in how things are done in parish life.

However, the phrases can be misleading, for they may cause people to imagine that they are holier or more important than they actually are. In the Mass, we are brought face-to-face with this point.

Our Sins, Christ’s Church
During Mass, following the recitation of the Our Father, the priest says, “Lord Jesus Christ, look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church.” This juxtaposition of phrases is striking. On the one hand, our attention is drawn to the fact that I and the other members of the congregation are the perpetrators of certain deeds (or misdeeds) that by no means redound to our credit. So much so that we ask Our Lord to turn his eyes away from the sins we have committed. We admit that we are not, after all, so holy or important that we want Our Lord to examine us too closely.

In the next breath, we are reminded that there exists something else that is worthy of Our Lord’s attention: We ask Him to turn His eyes towards “the faith of your Church.” The contrast between “our” (in connection with sins) and “your” (in connection with Church) is remarkable. There is apparently a profound distinction between sin and the Church.

The sins can truly be said to belong to us: We own them to such an extent that the phrase “our sins” is an accurate description of one aspect of the real world. But there also exists another aspect of the real world: The Church that can truly be said to belong to the person we are addressing in this part of the Mass. When we say to Our Lord “your Church,” this phrase is also an accurate description of an aspect of the real world that apparently exists independently of “our sins.”

This suggests in an-too-subtle manner that there is more to the Church than simply ourselves. The phrase “We are the Church” may be okay up to a point, but it does not go very far in capturing the essence of the Church. What more might there be to the Church than the sum total of its members?

The Credo of the People of God
In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued the “Credo of the People of God,” which reiterates the major topics of earlier creeds, adding emphasis to certain topics for the benefit of contemporary Catholics. Reflecting on the four marks of the Church (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic), the Pope has this to say about the Church: “She is therefore holy, though she has sinners in her bosom, because she herself has no other life but that of grace. It is by living by her life that her members are sanctified; it is by removing themselves from her life that they fall into sins and disorders that prevent the radiation of her sanctity” (no. 19, emphasis added).

Here is a vivid and striking image of the Church: She is not merely an institution; she is an entity that is alive in a unique sense. Rather than being alive in a biological sense, the Church lives a special kind of life, namely “no other life but that of grace.”

The Life of Grace
The “life of grace” is a remarkable phrase. In the New Standard Dictionary, the theological meaning of the word “grace” is “the unmerited love and favor of God in Christ, . . . the divine influence acting within the heart to regenerate and sanctify it, . . . the power or disposition to live the Christian life.”

This definition, with its implication that grace gives us supernatural power, means that grace ultimately empowers us to live the life of glory in heaven. In Cardinal Newman’s telling words: “Grace is glory in exile, and glory is grace at home.” The Church lives a heavenly life, which has holiness as an inevitable property.

Where did this Church that “lives only by grace” come from? Scripture tells us that it came from the death of Christ: “He gave Himself up for her to make her holy, purifying her . . . to present to Himself a glorious Church, holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort” (Eph. 5:25–27). In an image that was beloved by the Fathers of the Church, the “holy and immaculate” Church came into existence on Good Friday, born of blood and water from the side of Christ as He slept in death.

The implications of the Church’s “life of grace” are far-reaching. It is true that the Church has human members, but no matter what individual members do, or how much they sin, the Church herself remains holy. Pope Paul had already stressed this point in Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism. An early draft of that decree included a phrase “During its pilgrimage on Earth, this People (the Church), though still liable to sin, is growing in Christ.” Pope Paul recognized that this phrase contained error, and he insisted on altering this phrase by inserting the key words “in its members” between the words “still” and “liable.” The final version of the sentence emerged as “the Church, though still in its members liable to sin . . .”

Since the Church lives a life of grace alone, that is, the life of heaven, it is as impossible for the “holy and immaculate” Church to sin as it is for the good angels to sin. This is why, when Pope John Paul II asked God to forgive certain historical sins in connection with the Jubilee Year 2000, there was no question of asking for forgiveness for the Church herself: The Church herself has no sins that need to be forgiven. Instead, the Pope was asking God for forgiveness for the sins of individual Catholics.

In a more speculative vein, the words of Pope Paul suggest that the Church could (at least in principle) exist as a holy, grace-filled entity even if the number of human members on earth were to decrease to zero. Of course, there have always been some human members, but to be sure, the membership has been at times reduced to a very low level. In fact, on that dark and terrible Saturday when Christ’s body lay dead in the tomb, there might have been only one person who held on to faith: Christ’s own Mother. (It is for this reason that, to this day, the Church offers to priests the option on Saturdays of celebrating a votive Mass in honor of Our Lady.)

Grace and Beauty
Up to this point, we have focused on the “life of grace” as referring to the aspect of holiness in the Church. But the word “grace” itself has another connotation: When someone is described as “graceful,” the implication is that there is beauty involved. In the New Standard Dictionary, the theological definition of grace which I gave above is only the fourth in a list of several possible meanings of the word. At the head of the list comes a very different definition of grace: “beauty or harmony of form.” And in another dictionary, at the head of the list comes the definition “seemingly effortless beauty.”

Because of this, I believe that the “life of grace” refers to more than merely goodness or holiness in the Church. I believe that it also refers to beauty.

There is nothing novel about this idea. The description of the Church which is found in the Book of Revelation (chapters 21 and 22) uses images of a “bride prepared for her husband” to express the intrinsic beauty of the Church.

The Beauty of Our Lady
Since the year 1829, the Church has approved eight series of such apparitions. Although the messages in the various apparitions are different, a common thread runs through each of them: All of the visionaries comment on an overwhelming sense of the beauty of Our Lady. For example, St. Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes said, “She is so beautiful that if I cannot see her again, I think I shall die.” The children at Fatima described here as “the most beautiful lady” they had ever seen.

What can we learn about the Church from the beauty of the Blessed Mother? Well, Our Lady is a member of the Church par excellence. This means that, from the perspective of Pope Paul’s writing in the Credo of the People of God, Mary has immersed herself more than any other purely human creature into the life of grace by which the Church lives. As a result, according to Pope Paul’s teaching, Our Lady shares in the holiness of the Church more than any other human being. By analogy, I suggest that she also shares in the beauty of the Church more than any other human being.

The beauty that the various visionaries saw in Our Lady can be thought of as beauty that she possesses because she belongs to the Church. If this is correct, then I submit that, if we could see the Church as she really is, the Church would possess all the beauty that Our Lady has, and more.

Dermott Mullan is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware. He has a Catechist Certificate from the Notre Dame Institute of Catechetics. He has ten children.

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