"...the holy catholic Church..."

This wasn’t a trick question, the one she was asking me in the line of folks I am greeting after Sunday worship.  Sometimes the comments of folks are humbling, or funny, or needling (good-natured).But this question was sincere: “Pastor, why do we say we believe in the holy catholic Church? What does it mean, ‘catholic’?”  With one hundred people behind my friend a short, snappy answer was in order: “Well, when we say ‘catholic’ it means ‘universal’.”  “Oh, OK.” Meaning, I think, that she understood she was not professing her faith in the Roman Catholic Church, but in the world-wide Church of Jesus Christ, which, when spoken with its companion phrase, ‘…the communion of saints…’, means the church that spans time as well, the gathering of saints on this earth and in heaven awaiting our re-uniting.

One of the joys of leading the particular church I pastor is that people in worship are (or were) Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Methodists, Baptists, Christian Reformed, Reformed, Presbyterian, a few agnostics and one or two atheists.  I don’t know if these latter folks recite the Apostles Creed with us.  But the rest do. It is a statement of faith used by the Western Church since at least the late 300’s in many, many denominations, sung by ‘a thousand tongues’. It is as close as the Church can come to a universal statement of faith other than the Bible’s “Jesus is Lord”.

But, what does it mean, ‘catholic Church’? Henri Nouwen offers a beautiful summary:
“The Church is the people of God. The Latin word for ‘church’ is eccelesia (which means ‘to call out’). The Church is the people of God called out of slavery to freedom, sin to salvation, despair to hope, darkness to light, an existence centered on death to an existence focused on life. When we think of the Church we have to think of a body of people, travelling together…supporting one another on their long and often tiresome journeys to their final home.” (Bread for the Journey, October 16)

This is the work of the universal Church gathered in millions of outposts, mega and mini.  We are all called out to help each other finish our walk home together; the holy journey of a people everywhere following Jesus: ‘…the holy catholic Church’.