by Jeff Schinstock
God, completely out of love, has revealed himself to his people in many different ways through the centuries. We see it from the beginning, how he walked with Adam and Eve, or showing up to greet Moses in the burning bush. God desires to be present with us. Of course, God becoming man in the incarnation and living with us, both fully human and fully divine, was an unbelievable revelation to us about himself.
After his ascension, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to guide us. Right there on Pentecost, the Church was born and began to continue the mission of our founder Jesus Christ. But we should never pretend that carrying out, or even understanding the mission has been easy. From the earliest days there were disagreements.
In the 15th chapter of Acts of the Apostles, we find the Church in her first ecumenical Council. Paul was sent to Jerusalem, to Peter and the rest of the apostles, to discern what should be done with Gentile converts and whether they needed to practice all the Jewish customs, including circumcision.
Ecumenical Councils in the Church are a rare and important thing. They come about at times when there are important matters in dispute that need to be addressed by the Church. Often they help the Church understand how to best operate in the world at those moments in history, while maintaining the core things necessary to the life of following Christ.
Evangelization is always at the core of the Church’s movement. How do we introduce our neighbors to this life of freedom in submission to God’s desires for us? Freedom in submission seems paradoxical. How could that make people happy? How we proclaim the ancient message of salvation in this culture has been one of the Church’s great dilemmas.
This current age that we are blessed to live in isn’t as different from our past as we might think. It is true that we have new and different technologies competing for people’s attention. But if we look at the history of the ecumenical councils we will find that those times, like our own, were filled with confusion and suffering. Sadly, in our time, we do have to breathe hope into our culture. The air of indifference to God and religion is everywhere around us.
We too live in the shadow of an important ecumenical Council. The Second Vatican Council is the most significant Catholic event of the last 100 years. I have encountered so many people with deep opinions about the council, to my left and to my right. I have encountered many more who have no opinion at all. In fact, outside of knowing that there was a council and shortly afterward, the liturgy was in English, they don’t know much.
The Church is coming up on a Jubilee Year in 2025. In preparation for that, the Holy See has asked that the faithful begin to know and study the four constitutions of the Second Vatican Council. These four documents are the primary and most important documents to come from the Council. To aid in this study, I’m blessed to be helped by my friends at the Emmaus Institue for Biblical Studies and the Newman Institute for Thought and Culture.
We start this evening (Friday, Sept. 29) with a presentation from Bishop Emeritus Fabian Bruskewitz about the council. This is a rare and special opportunity to hear about an important historical event from someone who was there, and participated in it. We also desire to work on a presentation for each constitution. I wanted to give a little preview by simply mentioning them and giving a vey brief synopsis of each.
The first constitution
The first to be published was Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Published Dec. 4, 1963, the document begins:
“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. The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy.”
Many, I think, would be surprised when reading this document just what that means—and maybe more surprising—what it does not.
The second constitution
The second document, Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, was published Nov. 21, 1964. This document covers a lot of ground.
Lumen Gentium uncovers the Church as a mystery, as a people, and as a structure with a hierarchy. It goes thoroughly into the role of the laity and the universal call to holiness. The document also outlines instructions for the religious life. The document dives deep into the relationship of our pilgrim journey to heaven, while being present here in our moment in history, and it finishes with some wonderful sections on our Blessed Mother.
The third constitution
The third constitution is Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. In honesty, I think a study on the councils should start here.
I think that for a few reasons. The first is that it is short and practical. It deals with sacred scripture and how we, the faithful, should approach it and make it a consistent part of our lives.
The fourth constitution
Finally, the last document is Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Early in the document the Church says what took me so much time to introduce: “To carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.”
The Church has again scrutinized the signs of our times and asked us to return to these documents and discern together how to be the light of the gospel in these times. I look forward to taking the journey with you.
