Lumen Gentium Presentation Notes: 1 of 3 Introduction What is Lumen Gentium? • 1 of 16 documents that were promulgated from the Second Vatican Council. • Dogmatic Constitution of the Church. Vatican II Background • Convened by Pope St. John XXIII in 1962 • Sacrosanctum Concilium: Vatican II document pertaining to worship and liturgy. “This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church” (SC #1). • Pastoral council - meant to renew the church, renew her understanding of herself, and renew her vigor for living and proclaiming the Faith. The ecclesiology of communion is the central and fundamental idea of the Council's documents. Koinonia/communion, founded on the Sacred Scripture, have been held in great honor in the early Church and in the oriental churches to this day. • Lumen Gentium is the central, unifying document of Vatican II. Sources of Lumen Gentium • Tradition and dogmatic formulations of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. • Resourcement Theology: utilizes sources both Biblical and patristic (Church fathers). • Was a re-articulation to make for a more effective, pastoral engagement with the world. Chapter 1: The Mystery of the Church The Visible and the Invisible • Lumen Gentium presents a shift from the primarily juridical and visibilist approach (grace trickling down through the structure of the Church) to an understanding of the Church as mysterium or sacramentum. “Because this is so, this Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires, by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, to bring the light of Christ to all men, a light brightly visible on the countenance of the Church. Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament…” (LG #1). • The things of God are beyond our reason and can only be known by revelation: because God reveals them to us, and makes them known to us. The Church as Family • The mystery of the Church is rooted in the mystery of God and his plan in creation. • The mystery of God is the mystery of the Trinity. • Out of the overflow of the mystery, who is God, comes creation. “The eternal Father, by a free and hidden plan of His own wisdom and goodness, created the whole world. His plan was to raise men to a participation of the divine life. Fallen in Adam, God the Father did not leave men to themselves, but ceaselessly offered helps to salvation, in view of Christ, the Redeemer ‘who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.’” (LG #2) • Family is a primary analogy for the Church. The Church as a Sacrament • The Church is the sign of our communion with God and the unity of all people. It is also the means by which we enter into that communion. “An efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (CCC #1131). • The Divine Plan is to raise men to participate in divine life and manifest the image of God in the unity of all people. • The Church is an outward sign of Christ and manifests Christ in her worship and in the “love of the brethren.” • The Holy Spirit makes present in every person, in every age, the once-and-for-all saving work of God in Christ. “The Church offers herself as the place of encounter between the divine initiative and human activity. The presence of the Trinity in time and in a certain sense, of time in the Trinity, irreducible to a purely human church and yet a church of people living fully in history.” (Bruno Forte) “The Church is in history, but at the same time she transcends it. It is only ‘with the eyes of faith’ that one can see her in her visible reality and at the same time in her spiritual reality as bearer of divine life. The Church is at the same time: a ‘society structured with hierarchical organs and the mystical body of Christ; the visible society and the spiritual community; the earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches.’ These dimensions together constitute ‘one complex reality which comes together from a human and a divine element’” (CCC #770-771). Chapter 2: The People of God The Communal Nature of God’s Call to Holiness • God chose to save and sanctify us not as individuals, but as a people and as a community. “God, however, does not make men holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased Him to bring men together as one people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness” (LG #9). • God’s plan of salvation begins with bringing together his chosen people (the Israelites), revealing himself and his will to them and establishing a ‘covenant’ with them. “For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn…through the word of the living God, not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit, are finally established as ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people…who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God’” (1 Pt 2:9-10) (LG #9). • By baptism we are all incorporated into Christ and share in His priestly, prophetic, kingly mission. • The role of Church structure, organization, and hierarchy is to serve the communion of God and the unity of all people. Christ is the source. A Universal Sacrament of Salvation • Lumen Gentium reaffirms that the Church is necessary for salvation. “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or remain in it, could be saved” (LG #14). • Elements of the church of Christ and the means of salvation, of which the fullness is within the Catholic Church, can also be found outside of the Catholic Church. • There is only one manifestation of the church of Christ in terms of its visible form and its mystical body: the Catholic Church. “Degrees” of Membership in the Body of Christ • Those fully incorporated. • Those who have been baptized “…who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter” (LG #15). • Those who only acknowledge and worship the one true God “…those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God” (LG #16). • Those who have not heard the Gospel of Christ “…those who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (LG #16). • The generosity and mercy of God to save all according to his mysterious design does not relieve disciples of the obligation of spreading the faith according to one’s state in life. “’Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel’” (LG #17). .