A LIGHT TO ALL NATIONS 

On the Nature and Mission of the Church 

By Father Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP, STD

157 pages, $17.95

To order: EWTN Religious Catalogue

 

Dominican Father Brian Mullady takes readers on a comprehensive journey through the significance of the Church and its importance for mankind. 

Regardless of one’s faith, a slow read through this book confirms how the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, composed of the clergy and the laity. As the opening paragraph of Chapter 2 remarks, “The Church is a mystery” based on its “invisible realities.”

The first four chapters, under the heading “The Being of the Church,” include “The Church as a Mystery,” “The Church of People of God,” “The Church as Hierarchy” and “The Church as the Laity.” Each of these chapters, plus the final ones under the heading “The Act of the Church,” offer much in-depth research into every aspect of the Church and can lead Catholics and non-Catholics to understand better the significance and power of Catholicism.

But Chapter 2 delves into the supernatural being of Catholicism. As Father Mullady writes, “The Church is not a sacrament in the strict sense of the word, as, the seven sacraments are, causing grace ex opera operato — from the performing of an action.” Rather, he adds, the Church “… is a society in which the communion of persons found among the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity is made present to us here so that we can participate in it. The Church, then, both contains and communicates the invisible grace she signifies. It is in this analogical sense, that the Church is called a ‘sacrament.’”

Father Mullady also notes that the Church as “society” reflects Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution of the Church. That text comes from the Vatican and explains that the Church is organized with many elements that include both the visible society — the earthly Church — and the spiritual Church endowed with “heavenly riches.”

Father Mullady continues by explaining that the basic way to understand the Church is to understand communion, “the heart of the Church’s self-understanding,” adding, “This communion is a true participation in the society of the Trinity, which is the result of the presence of sanctifying grace in the soul. … Christ introduces the light of grace into the soul of the Christian, thus establishing a relationship in being with the Trinity.”

This “supernatural society” of relationship is made up of different members but all brought together “by the same sacraments and gifts of the Holy Spirit, given and sustained by the power of Christ.” As Father Mullady further clarifies, those who are baptized and accept the Holy Eucharist are thus brought into Christ’s Mystical Body.

And he underscores that the Church is a mystery, not because people cannot fully understand it, but because it is “not an earthly society as we ordinarily define such an assembly. … As the Church is a mystery, a sacrament of invisible realities, a society based on the society of the Trinity, this consummation can occur only in the beatific vision of God where all is ‘wholly communion and feast.’”

 

 

WATCH

Father Mullady will discuss his book on this weekend’s EWTN Bookmark, Dec. 15 at 10 a.m. ET with re-airings Monday, Dec. 16, at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m., as well as Saturday, Dec. 21, at 11:30 p.m.