The kingdom of God: union with God and one another

Editor’s Note: In his column “Communion and Mission,” Father John Paul Erickson will explore the meaning, structure and rituals of the Mass and other liturgies and how they relate to living Christian discipleship, such as being better spouses, parents, employers and employees.

Communion is not just something we receive on Sundays.

In fact, our reception of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is a sign of something else. It signifies our union with the Church as a whole body — past, present and future. This union with God and with one another is also called the kingdom of God, that mysterious phrase that Jesus himself uses to describe his mission. And this is the reason for our lives — to live in communion with God and neighbor and, while on pilgrimage to our heavenly homeland, to carry on Christ’s own mission.

I’ll be exploring the meaning and implications of this saving claim within this column. I’m grateful to The Catholic Spirit for this opportunity and I sincerely hope that readers will derive some inspiration and insight from it in their own walk with the Lord. I also hope it helps to illuminate the profound meaning of our most important ritual act as believers — the Mass, which is both the source and summit of our Catholic faith.

Whether we like it or not, human beings are social animals. This has an even deeper significance than one might think at first. Who we are — that is, our personal identity and self-understanding — is constantly being affected and shaped by others. Constantly. We are not blank slates, able to become whatever we want. To be sure, we understand that personal freedom is real — moral choices matter because we have responsibility for them. At the same time, no man is an island, as the saying goes. We are all connected, and our experience of love or its absence, our encounter with great ideas presented by fellow beings in education of various kinds, and perhaps most obviously, our ability to perpetuate the species through procreation, all depend on relationships of various kinds with other humans. We are not simply the sum of our physical parts. An essential part of who we are is the sum of our relationships.

Sin is a violation of relationship, both with God and with neighbor. If one accepts the claim that we are social creatures, one can understand how this reality of disintegration is so disruptive to our wholeness and happiness. Far more than just a breaking of arbitrary rules, sin turns us in on ourselves and casts us out from communion. It closes us off from our ability to grow and to mature in communion with The Other and others. Sin is always a kind of hiding, a refusal to accept the call to walk with another. The original sin of Adam and Eve is original both in that it represents the first time our first parents said no to God but also in that it represents really the essential qualities of any sin. Every sin is anti-social, for it affects our ability to be with another.

Jesus Christ has come to reestablish that fundamental union between God and his people that was the divine plan from the beginning. This union binds us also to one another, just as children are bound together by their parents, that is, by their source. It is significant that when asked by his disciples how to pray, Jesus gives them the Our Father, a revelation not only of the great personal love of God, but also of the source of our personal union with one another.

Within the Mass the great mission of Jesus is fulfilled in mystery, only to be fully manifested at the end of the world when he returns in glory. In our common worship of Our Father  — through, with and in Jesus Christ — we are bound together as an offering of communion to him. In this is salvation — to be made one again. To be freed from being alone. To be liberated from both the dread and the pull of disintegration. And to rest. Forever.

And yet, while we walk as pilgrims to that place where we will see God face to face, with nothing between us, it is our mission as Christians to invite as many as we can to join us at the feast of Communion that is the Christian life and the Mass that is its source and summit. The Mass is not for us alone. It is for all people who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb from the slavery to sin through the waters of baptism and child-like faith. And so, our communion with God and one another propels us to go out and to make the Gospel known — to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is communion.

May our lives bear witness to a great amen to this mystery through compassion, mercy and service.

Father Erickson is parochial vicar of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul and interim chairman of the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission. Father Erickson also was director of the archdiocese’s Office of Worship from 2008 to 2018.