In this brief essay, we will reflect on the implications of the dogma of the communion of the saints for our life as Christians, Religious, and Augustinian Recollects.
By José Manuel Romero, Augustinian Recollect
The Church as Communion of Saints
We find this dogma in the Apostles’ Creed, intertwined among a series of faith truths that stem from the act of faith in the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, as the Gift of the Risen Christ, who constitutes the assembly of believers (the Church) in holiness and catholicity (unity in diversity), a dynamic reality that is manifested in the communion of its members, saints called to live in holiness.
Therefore, the communion of the saints is the dynamic expression of the mystery of the Holy Catholic Church and has its source in the sanctifying and building community action carried out by the Holy Spirit.
On one hand, it is the Holiness of the Spirit that makes the Church holy and sanctifies Christians. On the other hand, following the dichotomy highlighted by Saint Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Galatians between the Spirit and the flesh, we can say that it is the spiritual dimension that unites Christians in catholic unity, fostering unity within the harmonious and symphonic richness of the Church, overcoming selfish divisions as well as oppressive and depersonalizing uniformities.
This reality of the Church in the midst of the world as communion of saints is the gift that Jesus asked the Father for in his priestly prayer during the Last Supper with his disciples when he asked for them the gift of unity, to be kept from the evil one, and to be sanctified.
This gift that Jesus asks the Father for is the fruit of his own sanctification and glorification as a man; the holiness and glory that, as the head of the new redeemed humanity, he bestows upon his faithful with the gift of the Holy Spirit. To live this reality, Jesus left his disciples the commandment of love as the golden key, and as promise, the Love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Reflection of the Trinity on Earth: Love, Community, Holiness
In the same priestly prayer of Jesus to the Father, we see that this communion of saints, which is the Church, is a sacrament and reflection in the world of the mystery of God Himself, of the Communion of the Saints, of the most holy mystery of the Holy Trinity:
«That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me» (John 17:21).
The model of the Church is the Holy Trinity, the God who is Love in Himself because He is a loving communion of Divine Persons. Therefore, divine Love is the key to the profound and inseparable relationship of communion and holiness.
There can be no true holiness without communion, nor true communion without holiness, as both are necessary expressions of the Love that is God. Personal sanctification should lead us to live in communion within the community, and community life should lead us to personal and communal sanctification, so that it becomes a true life of communion.
The communion of the saints is not only an ontological reality given by the incorporation into Christ through grace of all its members, but also a reality that must be constantly built with the grace of God. Just as there is an ontological holiness as the foundation upon which moral holiness is built, there is also an ontological communion of the saints as the basis for the vital communion of the saints, which tends to build the community in holiness.
This reality of the Church, constituted as the communion of the saints, is a “sign and instrument of the communion of God with men and of men among themselves” (cf. LG 1), a “universal sacrament of salvation” through which the glorious Christ communicates redemption to men with the gift of his Spirit.
Thus, we contemplate the salvific missionary dimension of the mystery of the communion of the saints. Jesus sends the Church to the world as the communion of the saints, as a network of love through which to attract people so that, through this communion with His Church, they can be led to a stable communion with God.
Religious Life as a Sign of the Eschatological Communion of Saints
Religious life is marked by a special living of the Christian and ecclesial vocation, in which, through the special consecration to God carried out by the profession of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience lived in community, it becomes a sign for the Church and the world of the eschatological communion in Heaven. In Heaven, the saints freely, joyfully, and completely follow the Father’s will in perfect obedience, where the saints live in intimate communion of life and spousal love with Christ their Lord, and where the saints experience the absolute richness of possessing only the infinite Gift of the Holy Spirit.
Living the Augustinian-Recollect Charism from the Communion of Saints
As a special religious family within the Church, we can say that Augustinian Recollects have a special relationship with this truth of faith.
The Augustinian Recollect charism can be interpreted and understood in a special way from the dogma of the communion of saints. If the Augustinian spirit within religious life emphasizes the community and the spirit of communion that characterizes all dimensions of religious life, the Recollect spirit is defined by a marked pursuit of religious perfection and holiness in the lived experience of love, in recollection and in a spiritual path of communal holiness.
Therefore, Augustinian Recollects have as their special charism to intensely live the reality of the Church and religious life of being “communion of saints”.
Our own apostolic dimension should be lived from the perspective of the communion of saints, which opens up in an “economic salvific mission”, inviting people to enter and fully experience the communion of saints, which is the Church, and inviting people to participate in our distinct Augustinian Recollect way of living that communion.