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The Church Triumphant: “Holy, holy, holy”

We’ve spent a few days examining the three states of the Church: militant, suffering, triumphant. The Church Triumphant is not our triumph, a victory of our own doing. No, the Church Triumphant is the triumph of Christ over sin and death. The Church Triumphant is the eternal glory of God. The Church Triumphant is the eternal fellowship of those whom Christ has saved and who have given over their lives to Him. These souls become, in essence, citizens of Heaven.

A citizen of Heaven is a saint. Some of them have been given the title “Saint” by the Church, but others go unrecognized by the Church Militant. Peter Kreeft:

Saints are not freaks or exceptions.  They are the standard operating model for human beings.  In fact, in the biblical sense of the word, all believers are saints.  “Sanctity” means holiness.  All men, women and children, born or unborn, beautiful or ugly, straight or gay, are holy, for they bear the image of God.

Saints are not the opposite of sinners.  There are no opposites of sinners in this world.  There are only saved sinners and unsaved sinners.  Thus holy does not mean “sinless” but “set-apart:” called out of the world to the destiny of eternal ecstasy with God.

You are called to be a saint, meant to be set apart and holy for God. You have a passport to Heaven, should you decide to use it. Yes: you. Your eternal soul, now embodied, is meant for a life before the throne of God, in His company and the company of all the angels and saints forever. That is the Church Triumphant.

Impossible, you may say. I am no saint. Saints are people like nuns who spend their whole lives praying the Rosary. (There are not any nuns who do this, by the way.) Okay then; a saint is a Jesus freak, talking about Him all the time to the point of annoying others. (Well, a saint may be annoying, but every saint was at some point a person who had to get up in the morning, make the coffee, go about his or her daily business, whether as a parent, a spouse, an accountant, a priest, a truck driver, a teacher. Nothing freakish about that.)

Yes. You are meant for sainthood. Your sainthood will lead you, should you put all your energy into sainthood, to the Church Triumphant. Your sainthood will not look like anyone else’s, because you are unlike anyone else. God created you in a unique manner, for a unique task. Yet ultimately, He created you to be a saint.

At Mass, just after the Eucharistic prayer, we pray the Sanctus:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

That is the hymn of Heaven. In Revelation 4, John gives an account of his vision of Heaven. Those before the throne of God sing this hymn. That means that, during the Mass, at that moment when we sing this hymn, we are joined with all the angels and saints. This is our destiny. This tiny little glimpse of Heaven that we have during the Mass is meant to be our home forever.

So many of us stumble about, searching for our heart’s deepest longing. Some look for it in sex or drugs or work. We search obsessively for it. We may not even know what we are looking for, but God made our hearts for Him and for Heaven. So, what is the “secret” of the Church Triumphant? Thankfully, it is no secret at all; again, Peter Kreeft:

The existence of heaven, the desire for heaven, the nature of heaven, and the relevance of heaven are all important questions. But there is only one question that’s absolutely essential, one question compared with which how we might save the world from a nuclear holocaust is trivial: “What must I do to be saved?” When I’m honest enough to look through the door of death, infinite joy or infinite joylessness loom up as my only two possible destinies. What decides for joy? What is heaven’s entrance ticket? What is the Way, the Truth and the Life?

I am horrified to report that I’ve asked this question of hundreds of Catholic college students, and far fewer than half have known the answer. This means that the Church’s religious education has been not a failure but an inexcusable disaster. Most reply either “God is good to everybody” or “I’m basically a good person.”

If anyone out there is unsure of the correct answer, then for the love of God get out your Bible and study for your finals! To save you time—since you may die while reaching for your Bible—I will quote God’s scandalously simple answer to the most important question in the world, how to get to heaven: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Lift your voice and sing, with all the angels and saints: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts. And then, set about today on the road to Heaven.

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The Church Militant: Fighting The Good Fight

The Church, the Mystical Body, exists on this earth, and is called the Church militant, because its members struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. – Fr. William G. Most

It is hard to argue with this vision of the Church. For any Catholic who has a modicum of sense, the struggle (as they say) is real. For some, persecution or the threat of persecution is a daily horror. Refugees from Syria, for instance, tell of losing their entire families. Egyptian men kneel before religious extremists and lose their lives as they proclaim their faith in Christ. In the U.S., we watch as the government appears to bully a group of Catholic sisters whose mission is to care for the dying poor, those who have no place else to go. And on a personal level, we all seem to have a family member or a loved one who has turned their back on the Faith, or someone who appears to hate the Church.

Yes, it certainly seems like a war to stay hopeful in the promises of Christ. The days are long, the battles hard. We carry our crosses, we pray. We rejoice in fellowship, and we console others in sorrow. At night, we lay down our burdens and examine our consciences, so that tomorrow, we may have the strength to do fight again.

Vietnamese Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan was imprisoned his government for 13 years. He spent 9 of those years in solitary confinement. Yet, reading his words, one hears and sees only hope.

After his release, Pope John Paul II asked the Cardinal if he would give a Lenten retreat at the Vatican. The Cardinal chose the theme of “hope.” Imagine, a man whose freedom was taken from him, who spoke only to his captors for 9 years, still chose “hope.” It was from this Lenten retreat that his book, Testimony of Hope, was born.

Even within the very limited existence Cardinal Van Thuan had in prison, he focused on his work as a spiritual leader and as a follower of Christ. At one point, he expressed his ideas on love. Love, he said, must consist of six things:

  1. Love first.
  2. Love everyone.
  3. Love enemies.
  4. Love by giving your life.
  5. Love by service.

How, one might ask, is a soldier of Christ, a member of the Church militant, to go about loving one’s enemies? Cardinal Van Thuan tells of a conversation with one of the guards assigned to him.

“Do you love us?”

“Yes, I love you.”

“But we have kept you in prison for so many years, without a trial, without a sentence, and you love us? That’s impossible! Perhaps it’s not true!”

“I’ve been with you for many years, you’ve seen that it’s true.”

“When you are free, won’t you send  your faithful to burn our homes, to kill our families?”

“No! Even if you want to kill me, I love you.”

“But why?”

“Because Jesus has taught me to love everyone, even my enemies. If I don’t, I am no longer worthy to be called a Christian.”

“It’s very beautiful, but very hard to understand.”

This is the essence of the Church Militant: to know what God wants of us, to set out to do that very thing and to love all we encounter with the love of Christ, even our enemies, our persecutors, our tormentors. This is a hard lesson, and (as Cardinal Van Thuan’s jailer said) very hard to understand. It is not a “mushy” or sentimental love. It is a love that stands its post, that follows the orders of the leader, that fights for what is right and true and good. However, it is a love whose weapon is the Cross, a weapon that is not wielded in anger and bitterness. No, it is a weapon that is planted before the enemy in love.

The Church Militant is an army of the followers of Christ, who teaches us sacrifice and love, even under the most bitter and harshest of circumstances. May we always have the grace to do battle with evil, with the Cross and the love of Christ Jesus as our weapons.