3/15/15

Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent, also known as Laetare Sunday, named for the first words of the beginning of the Latin Mass, "Laetare Jerusalem" (Rejoice Jerusalem). It marks the midpoint of Lent, and is generally considered a day of celebration. Today was also the second scrutiny for those of us in the RCIA program. Like last week, we were called up to the front, Barbara and Fr. Bill (who was presiding) offered prayers, we were blessed by the community, and then exorcised of evil spirits. I saw the latter as mostly symbolic, as an urging to turn away from sinful/unskillful thoughts and states of mind conditioned by greed, aversion, and delusion and towards what's wholesome and inspired out of love.

Afterwards, being the third Sunday of the month, we had our monthly French toast breakfast, as well as our RCIA class. James taught the class today, basing much of it from a book written by Cardinal Avery Dulles called Models of the Church. The basic idea was for us to think about what 'the Church' means to each of us and then explore that further. James went through some of the models and their characteristics — institution, mystical communion/community, sacrament, herald, and servant — and it was interesting to see how each of our ideas and definitions of 'the Church' varied, being dominated by one model or the other, while still containing elements of each. Out of all of them, I found that mystical communion/community was closest to my idea of the Church, with servant being the next.

I tend to view the Church as the living experience of a universal, mystical reality. By that I mean the Church to me is 'the people of God'—those who draw close to God/Dhamma, who have an intuitive sense of the absolute and strive to realize it. They're connected by this unifying bond of communion, with each other and the reality underlying the phenomenal world they're a part of. It's not something intellectual or dogmatic, but a lived experience of God/Dhamma. Things like the institutional churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, etc.), with all their doctrines, hierarchies, etc., are historical representations and expressions of this, i.e., forms and structures conforming to, and pointing towards, this universal reality in various degrees. And part of the mission of that Church is to reform the world and help transform it into the kingdom of heaven on earth, which, for me, is where things like social justice and my communistic politics come in.

This is, of course, an idealized model or picture, and I'm fully aware of the history of the Church as an institution, which is one of the reasons I shy away from the institutional model (politically as well as spiritually). It's not that I think the order and structure that institutions can provide are wholly bad, per se. But I do think that the rigid dogmatism that can arise within these kinds of institutions is a serious danger to true spiritual growth, and it can't be denied that these socio-religious institutions have served the interests of demons like greed and imperialism equally as well, if not more so.

The true Church to me, however, is one that asks us to empty ourselves of ourselves in order that we may be open to something transcendent. It's a Church that's pan-humanistic and characterized by things like love, forgiveness, and service. It's a Church that admonishes us not to judge others while exhorting us to do to others whatever we would have them do to us. It's a Church that asks us to deny our false selves, our egoism and self-centredness, in order to open our hearts and minds to one another, as well as to an awakening within to the new life we're called to attain. Writing it out, it all sounds kind of New-Agey and ridiculous, but I think deep down these ideas resonate within us all. The more we resist this call, the more we suffer; and paradoxically, the more we submit, the freer we become.