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Index > Interconfessional Dialogues > M-RC > Paris (Singapore) Rep. 1991 | CONT. > Part Two
 
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III. The Church, A Living Body

   62. The community of the faithful is brought into existence by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit relates the faithful to one another, distributing gifts among them. Thus the community receives a living structure. Some of the New Testament images - a body, a household, a people, a vineyard - point to dynamics of growth and to a reality with many aspects and dimensions. Others - the bride, the flock - imply also that it has its own definite identity and is the center of God's attention, called to share the divine love, and opened to the Holy Spirit in whom the faithful experience God's love. As it spreads abroad the good news, the community calls all people to conversion and new life. Led by the Spirit, it extends throughout the many and varied cultures of the world, and is sustained through time from year to year, generation after generation. Through the centuries it is rejuvenated as the Gospel strikes the imagination and the Spirit stirs up the love of new and younger members. Like the sap of the vine that brings greenness to all branches and twigs, the Church is an overflowing source of life. From the human environment it receives new riches that nurture it and which it in turn transforms, opening up the many cultures of the world to intimations of the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit directs the course of the Christian community by bringing to it the harvest of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-25). The community is a living organism, not a collection of individuals; it is a place of meeting where people exchange things old and new, not a museum where things are looked at. What is handed on by its Tradition in the form of memory acts as a leaven among those who receive it, who then enrich it as they cherish it and pass it on again to their successors. There are times, of course, when Christians do not respond as they ought to the Spirit's guidance. They lack fidelity to Christ, they are lukewarm in the worship of God, they do not show love toward one another, they fail in missionary outreach. So, like all living organisms, Christian communities go through periods of dormancy and decline. But even then hope is held out for vigorous and healthy life because the Church is sustained by the Spirit of God who never leaves himself without witnesses.



1. The Community of Faith and Baptism

   63. The Spirit calls people to this new life, as those who have heard the Word come to Christ, the
only Savior and Mediator. Baptism is given in the midst of the community to new Christians who, at their baptism, confess the faith they have received. Symbolically they are plunged in the cleansing waters where they receive the Holy Spirit and are given the garment of faith "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit". United to Christ in his dying and his rising, they bear witness that they are reborn in him. In the administration of baptism, the community testifies to its faith with the words of the traditional creed. For example, the Apostles' Creed had its origin in the candidates' confession of faith. Methodists and Catholics agree that Christians are baptized into the faith that has been received from the apostles and obediently preached by the community and its members. In both our traditions it has been the normal practice for the pastors of the community to preside over the entire process of Christian initiation. Both the Methodist and the Catholic Churches consider it right to baptize the infants born to believers. They encourage their members to take the opportunities presented to them to renew the vows that they made, or that were made for them, in baptism.

   64. Those who confess their faith, endorsed by the community, are brought through the baptismal waters into the life of God that is communicated through Christ in the Holy Spirit. This life, being the very life of the divine Persons, is itself a life of communion and involves participating in the bond of love established by the Spirit between God and creation. The baptized become sisters and brothers in Christ. They are constituted as the family of God, sharing in its privileges and responsibilities.

   65. By baptism, the community of the believers shares in the holiness of God, a holiness that is manifested in the Christian life of the faithful. The community feeds on the memory of the Lord, celebrates his abiding presence, and looks forward in hope to the continuing service of God and of neighbor until the end of time, thus affirming its trust in the ultimate victory of Christ over the power of evil. It is itself a sign and instrument of God's kingdom.

   66. Thus the baptized and believing community is a communion. Holding in common the faith in which they are baptized and all the things that are God's gifts, they grow into a communion of the people who are made holy by God's grace and power. While all the baptized thus make up "the communion of saints", they also recognize the conspicuous presence of divine grace in specific persons -the Saints - whose lives and example testify, even to the shedding of their blood for Jesus, to the transforming action of the Spirit of God in every generation. The "cloud of witnesses" transcends denominational barriers.



2. The Community of Worship

   67. The Christian community continues to flourish by virtue of the common baptism and faith of its members. But is also sustained and nurtured by the celebration of the memorial of the Lord, the service of thanksgiving in which it experiences, as the Spirit is invoked, the presence of the risen Christ. There the Word of God is heard in the Scriptures and the proclamation of the Gospel. Through the holy meal of the community, the faithful share "a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all mankind" (British Methodist Service Book 1975). As they receive the sacrament of his body and blood offered for them, they become the body through which the risen Lord is present on earth in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 10:16-17). As they share his body and blood that have brought to the sinful world salvation and reconciliation, they proclaim today the past events of the Lord's death and resurrection, and as they do so they present to the world their confidence and hope that Christ who "has died and is risen" will also "come again".

   68. This experience of the presence of the Lord in the setting of worship attunes the hearts and minds of the faithful to all other aspects of his presence. They return to him the love they have received from him, when they serve the poor and when they struggle for social justice. In the sick and suffering they see the sufferings of Christ. In their own pains and sorrows endured for the sake of the gospel they share in the passion of Christ. In all this the faithful experience the wonderful exchange by which, in Christ and the Holy Spirit, all is common to all. And they present to God all that they have and all that they are as their own sacrifice of praise.

   69. In the worshiping fellowship the community confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, shares the peace which Christ gives, and so anticipates the heavenly kingdom where the risen Christ fills all things to the glory of God the Father. The community of the faithful is thus the proclaiming, celebrating and serving community which gives glory to God in the name of all creatures. By its gatherings on the Lord's Day the community shapes the life of its members, helping them to make their weekly and daily tasks expressions of the royal priesthood of the believers gathered together under the high priesthood of the risen Lord. Thus the community provides for its members a pattern of life consecrated to God and directed towards fulfilment in the final manifestation of Christ.



3. The Ordained Minister in the Community

   70. Ever since the time of the apostles, ministers have led the community in the worship of God, in proclaiming Christ and receiving him, in organizing the community's life of service in the Spirit. Worship, witness and service join hands in word and sacrament: this has served as the central model for what Christian ministers must both be and do.

   71 . Chosen from among the people, the ordained ministers represent the people before God as they bring together the prayers of the community. Entrusted with the pastoral care of the community, they act in Christ's name and person as they lead the people in prayer, proclaim and explain the Word, and administer the sacraments of faith.

   72. In each place the pastor gathers the faithful into one, and as all the ministers relate to one another and transmit the same Gospel, they ensure a universality of conviction and communion among all the faithful. They transmit what they have received: the good news as taught from apostolic times, the sacraments as signs and instruments of the Lord's saving presence and action, the call to holiness that the Holy Spirit addresses to all.

   73. United around their minister in worship and in witness, and in the carrying out of their vocational tasks, the faithful know themselves to be gathered in Christ by the Holy Spirit. In the pastoral care that is extended to them the faithful perceive themselves to be led by the Good Shepherd who gave his life for the sheep.

   74. As the community is renewed from one Lord's Day to the next, it is nourished by the Tradition it has received, and responsibility for this is especially entrusted to those ministers who inherit the apostolic function of oversight in the community. The function of oversight entails on the part of the ministers solicitude for all the churches: they are charged to ensure that the community remain one, that it grow in holiness, that it preserve its catholicity, and that it be faithful to apostolic teaching and to the commission of evangelization given by Christ himself.

   75. These four "marks" of the Christian community should be exemplified at each moment of its existence. They should also be effectively transmitted from one generation to the next. The saints who have passed into the fulness of the mystery of God's grace are forever part of the community: the witness and examples of the past continue to be cherished; the saints in heaven are held as instances of Christ's "closest love" and as present tokens of the ultimate fulfilment of all God's promises.

   76. The transmission of the Gospel is the work of the whole assembly of the faithful under the guidance and with the encouragement of their pastors. The living presence of the Lord among his people is the source of the Christian life. The pastors of the community are his servants as he provides grace and spiritual strength to his people and leads them to the goal of their earthly pilgrimage.

   77. The transmission of the Gospel in word and sacraments is itself the work of the Spirit. As they urge the faithful to Christian perfection, the ordained ministers obey the call of Christ, and they help the community in its search for the forms of Christian holiness that are appropriate to different periods, ages and conditions of life. Catholics and Methodists are at one in seeing in a divinely empowered ministry the guidance of the Holy Spirit and are moving in the direction of greater shared understanding of the nature of ordination and of the structure of the ministry in regard to the responsibility to teach and to formulate the faith.

 
 

 
 
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