What Does ‘The Church’ Personally Mean to Me

and What Are My Personal Experiences of It?

The Church can be associated with various things or people, finding her relationship

to them but not limited to it, as we recognize the mystery of the Church. Even you and I are

mysterious. Even our own selves do not fully understand ourselves, and yet as time passes,

many facts about the self are revealed. Similar to that, we can discuss the Church in regard to

God, Christ, the Work of the Spirit, the activity of the Trinity, and her ongoing development

toward perfection without going into exhaustion because we cannot do that to a mysterious

entity like everyone else. We will attempt to point out particularities about the Church in this

article and explore the significance of what we observe about her.

The Church as People-Elect of God

The Church is a people called by God to be set apart for a particular reason. She is a

people, which means, she can never be a single person but a group of people gathered in the

name of God. This call obtains the Word of God and a promise which all demands a response

of faith towards a mission. God’s call contains a promise. All are invited and yet no one is

forced to respond. In the Scriptures, the Word of God and his promise were firstly given to

Abraham (Genesis 12), and Abraham responded with faith which made him worthy to be

called the father of all nations. Since he received the promise through responding in faith to

God, all who will be responding in the same way through faith will in turn become a child of

Abraham, a child in faith to God.

God himself is faithful to his promise, that he can never be more faithful by his name,

and so naming himself after the patriarchs, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the

God of Jacob,” reveals his unbreakable faithfulness to his promise.

 It is by faith that one may be included in the promise. Even though I am not yet ready

to publicly confess my own faith in Jesus as an infant, I am grateful that my parents, my

godparents, and the parish had me baptized. They accepted responsibility for keeping all of

the baptismal promises, especially those relating to fostering my faith and ensuring that one

day I would be able to publicly confess my faith in God. I can tell from this experience that

the people who baptized me have a strong faith in God and that they hope I would someday

have the same faith. Yet, I already possess the ability to believe, so this is the optimism that

the community wishes to foster. Up until I received my holy confirmation at an age

appropriate for owning responsibility to oneself, the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and

Reconciliation provided me with ongoing accompaniment for my growth. This enables me to

profess my faith fully before God and the community, taking up the responsibility in loving

God and the responsibility of becoming a member of the Church. Not because I should be

responsible for my baptism and confirmation alone, but because God will keep his promises,

He will provide me with the right gifts to support the Church.

Thus, as people express their confidence in God, God elects them to himself. To

establish a relationship with God, one must have faith in Him. And because God keeps his

promises, those who will believe can cling to the hope that God will fulfill them. With all of

these, the Church is a community of people who have faith in God in response to God's call

and Word.

The Church as the Mystical Body of Christ

With Jesus Christ, God took on human form and resembled one of us. In order for us

to put our faith in Him, He entered our world and by his own free will made himself more

clearly manifest. And by nature, God calls all people to himself, revealing in the same way to

Jesus, that all may be One with him. Jesus set the foundations that the Church needs that she
may become one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. From these, nourished and guided by the Holy

Spirit, God let the Church grow. God allowed the Church to expand from these, supported

and led by the Holy Spirit. Jesus, who is God in human form, speaks directly to us about the

salvation that comes from trusting in God as revealed in Jesus. Also Jesus reveals the person

of God as a Father, and that all those given to Jesus by the Father will become a child of God

(John 6:37-40). The promise now is more than what is promised to Abraham of becoming his

children by faith, but God himself will be the Father for those who have faith in Jesus Christ.

Because those who have faith in Jesus Christ are being one with him, they form a one

body. Jesus being the head while the members are incorporated to Christ. Believers are meant

to act in one faith with Jesus in relationship with the Father while all are animated and in

participation to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Church has to work with Christ, in one body

and one Spirit, as we call it the Mystical Body of Christ.

The bad news, we can see that no one in the Church is completely configured in

Christ. I do understand that we are all still in the process of growth. The good news is that

God never abandons his people and he remains with us forever. Each and every member of

the Church has a role to play based on the gifts of the Spirit and one continues to grow. If all

members cannot be said perfectly whole and that all are growing, therefore the Church is

composed of growing people and may fall short in many ways. But at the end of the day,

while the Mystical Body of Christ grows and may sin, the Church remains holy because God

is with us and continuously sanctifying us towards perfection.

Saying all these, the Church is a body incorporated in Christ, mystically growing and

mysteriously formed with great hope for her perfection as a whole and of every member to

configuration in Christ. Somehow we can relate this Mystical Body of Christ to the Kingdom

of God of being now but not yet. The Parousia which is the event of Christ’s Body coming

again can be interpreted as the day when all peoples and all creation is perfected in Christ.
The Church Gifted and Sustained by the Spirit

We can say that everyone is gifted beginning from the life that we received, the

environment that we were born to, and the very person that we are who develops across time.

We are born gifted of different kinds. But these gifts are not meant to remain for our use

alone. Our gifts are given and designed for us to reach out to others who are in need. And we,

being in a Church, are enriched with gifts and meant to make these gifts available for other

members of the Church.

One may be gifted with material gifts that may be shared to the temporal needs of the

Church. Others may be gifted with spiritual roles, like priests and religious, that they may

serve in a particular way of the spiritual needs of the Church. Others may be gifted of

intellectual interpretations of God’s revelation in order that the Mystical Body may better

understand God’s ways. Others may be zealous in rendering service in any form wherever a

need arises. But together, we form as one community, holding the precepts of the Lord, and

signifying love for God and love to one another.

I have experienced this in our parish most especially when our small community at

View River would be devastated by typhoon and flood. Our parish would reach out to us with

all the gifts they have: an evacuation center, a food supply for a week, medicine for the sick,

conversation and accompaniment during and post-evacuation, and a continuous pledge for

help for anything that we need. A community mass, prayer for the sick and house blessings

are usually offered to us. Both the temporal and spiritual needs of our community are well-

provided for. In response to our gratitude to the community, we try to give ourselves in the

service to the parish by participating in parish programs and other ministerial organizations.

The Church is formed by exchanging one's capacity and giftedness, a form of showcasing

love to one another which shows a true mark of discipleship in Christ.

The Church as a Community Reflecting the Trinity

In love, creativity happens. Because of the love between the Father and the Son, born

was the Spirit. And out of love for the Son through the Holy Spirit, the Father created all

things. From God and for God that all things were made.

As St. Ignatius of Loyola had written in the Spiritual Exercises, the first principle and

foundation is “God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God, and by doing

this, to save their souls. God created all other things on the face of the earth to help fulfill this

purpose…”1 Humans ought to worship God. But as we have learned, God calls a people.

Therefore, we ought to praise, revere and serve God as one people seeing his loving

faithfulness on us.

Jesus said, “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for

one another (John 13:35).” All creation is born out of love of the Trinity, and anything born

from God has the imprint of God, and so must be good. Out of love, God has given humans

the freedom and will, that they may freely choose to love.

That the Mystical Body of Christ are gifted and helping one another, we can see that

the Church reflects the communion of the Trinity. Out of God’s goodness, all are gifted by

the Holy Spirit. It is the Church in communion to one another that does sanctify the members

through Christ, that all may become one in Christ.

The Holy Trinity continuously works and creates because of their love to one another

while the Church is trying to imitate the works of love of the Father through the Son in the

Holy Spirit. Out of love, the Church progressively grows towards perfection by living their

faith in Jesus through one’s neighbor, and that all may praise, reverence and serve God.

1 Ignatius of Loyola, “THE FIRST PRINCIPLE AND FOUNDATION,” trans. Elder Mullan, SJ and edited by
Rick Rossi, March 2015, https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/offices/ministry/pdf/First%20Principle%20and
%20Foundation%20-March%202015%20%282%29.pdf .