On this day of the Holy Father's burial, remember what the Church is not.

April 26, 2025

Traditionalists, the Church is not a culture, a return to glory, a style and dogma locked in a once-perfect past.

Christian Nationalists, the Church is not a tribe, a privileged supremacy of thought, race, and accomplishment.

Progressives and Conservatives, the Church is not an ideology, a set of teachings, moral certainties, and preferred doctrines.

The Church is only a person.

The Church is the person, the Divine person, the Second Person of the Trinity.

The Church is all God, becoming person in space and time. A person who lives, who suffers unjustly, who enters death and transforms it, returning to the Godhead.

The Church is the person we become, joined in Baptism to his body. The Church is the person we live to resemble, shaped by a lifetime of sacraments. The Church is the person who perfects us in our death like his and purification after.

The Church is the person we are raised to be.

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned.

-Mark 16:15-16 (NRSVue, CE)

That person calls us to bring him to “the whole creation.” Everything must become Him.

Embrace that person everywhere and in every thing, without exception, and be saved.

Reject that person in any one or any thing and be condemned.

The Church is the Person who loves Ultimate Reality.

Repent and believe this good news.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Catholic Edition of the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue