We had a Lent Course on Zoom. It turned into a series of sharings about the deep treasures of our faith. As it proceeded, it dawned on me that here was a microcosm of the Church. We were very different people with years of our own experiences behind us. Yet, as others talked, we each recognised our own experience in theirs with its hopes and graces and frustrations.

Was that just a straw poll of individual Church-going Catholics or was it the phenomenon of a master hand at work in all of us? It was the Holy Spirit working in different ways in each one of us, but producing a symphony of outcome which displays his unifying energy working in each of us.

What we call Church is a real coordinated master symphony which is in fact all around us. It is the flow of God’s Spirit in human hearts and persons which is really a gigantic river moving through human history, and gradually drawing all people into itself.

The second body of Christ

After the crucifixion, Jesus went in his glorified body physical into heaven only to return through the Holy Spirit who is forming this new Mystical Body for him just as he formed his physical body in the womb of Mary. We are the parts of his mystical body. Each of us has a unique function and it is the Holy Spirit who coordinates this gigantic living Christ.

St Paul looks forward to when this Mystical Body of Jesus will reach completion. In Ephesians 4:13, he says: “we are all to come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until

we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself”.

We need to revise all the notions we have of what the Church is, and start to appreciate the breadth of this God-guided phenomenon which is gradually drawing all mankind into itself. Only after that can we reassess what we have been taught about the Church. The true picture of the Church only comes into focus when we have gained a notion and sense of this vast current working through human history to renew mankind. God is gathering into the life of the Trinity the children of Adam and Eve. The meaning of the original Greek word for Church, “ekklesia”, is “the gathering”.

The functioning of this entity, this organism, the Church, is entirely personal. It really is Jesus’s new body forming through a process of gradually drawing all humanity into communion, nurtured and cherished by the Holy Spirit. And wherever the Spirit forms Christ, Mary is his partner.

It’s gradual

The process isn’t finished. We are deluded if we expect it to be. Look how God worked through centuries with Israel. He is working gradually in forming the new Israel, the Church. Our impatience can blind us to the reality. Is the Church shrinking in the West? No, we are being reorganised by God in preparation for the next stage which he has planned. Is this phenomenon of Church static? No it is developing. Have we got a handle on where the Church is now being taken by God? No, future generations will be given that when they write the history of our age.

This is about hope and firm belief that when the Father sent his Son, he absolutely well knew what he was doing. And if we aren’t told the whole plan, we have to live with that. We aren’t meant to see it all, but to walk by faith, which Adam and Eve failed to do.

Our eyes are blinkered when we see the Church as the human institution with its hierarchy. God is developing the visible organisation organically with its rules and customs and personalities under the guidance of the Spirit, but far more important is the Mystical Body functioning in millions of brothers and sisters all over the world, not the more visible projections of the phenomenon. The Pope, bishops, priests and nuns are important, but to focus mainly on them and Church organisation is wrong. Focus on Jesus and on all the evidence of God’s unerring determination. And focus on what we know of how he worked in the past, and you will get a sense of how he is active now.

Royal priesthood

St Peter says we are “living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2: 4-5) That means that every action and effort of yours is integrally significant in God’s plan. Nothing is outside of that process or neutral. All is contributing to the process of the gradual resurrection of humanity or hindering it.

Any prayer or action of yours now could help someone in a hundred years’ time or a hundred years ago. God is outside time and not limited by it. God allows each of his children to turn the tap to release grace into his process of salvation. Its operation does not follow any scientific rules we can define.

His ways are mysterious, but that does not mean that they are not perceivable. St Paul says “Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). It is our faith that assures us. In the soul of those who practice this way of life and prayer, he plants a sure sense that all things work together for the good for those who love him. He also sends the occasional miraculous evidence that we are doing things right when we pray or just place our lives at the service of his will and his determined drive for mankind’s home-coming.

Contemplation and Intercession

All of us are called into contemplation, which leads into prayer of intercession for our brothers and sisters. Do not underestimate the power of staying in the presence of God feeling nothing, or, worse, feeling distracted and even attacked. We say about difficult people “their heart is in the right place”. That is how our Father sees us. He knows we are trying to pray and that is immensely pleasing to him. What mum or dad is unmoved by a child that is doing their best?

Just start, and stay there awhile especially when it is difficult. Then it is most effective in releasing torrents of grace upon the human race. We are body, soul with minds and feelings, but at our deepest, we are spirits that have the capacity to be in love with God and all creation. If our minds are distracted or dull, and our feelings are disturbed, as long as our heart (our spirit) is set on our Father, we are in deep prayer - and effective prayer, taking up our part in this great engine which is transforming the hearts of human beings.

It does demand that we build a habit of prayer. It is the narrow gate which leads to life and admits us into the regeneration of humanity from within.

What of the times in our lives when we are out of our minds with cares and jobs that need doing? Is intercession impossible then? No, a simple prayer of offering it up is just as effective. A morning or evening offering covers everything. Then every effort of ours, every pain endured, every act of love, every frustration, every work for justice, every tear contributes to the great economy of saving and restoring our brothers and sisters from their hearts outward. But, for busy people, it is even more needed to make time for prayer, or they can get swamped and drown in the storms they go through.

The real economy

It is important to help people gain a vision of the real economy by which this world is being redeemed: not to see with the eyes of this world, but hear St Paul telling us: “your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution” (Ephesians 4:23). You are not an insignificant second class Christian. Each of us is a firstborn in the family of God; each of us has a unique, essential, and powerful part to play in the liberating of creation. We are each of us the children of God for whom creation has been longing (see Romans 8: 21-22). Each of us, in our own struggles, are part of the great redeeming current. All of the faithful are like an unending Mexican wave going around the world and the tide is rising. See the wonder of what you are a loving part of. It is so beautiful and generous.