When Exactly Did The Church Begin?
When did the Church actually begin? Undoubtedly, we have heard different answers to this important question throughout the years. Was it the moment the Roman soldier’s lance pierced Christ’s side and blood and water flowed out and spilled upon the ground on Calvary? Was it the result of the “…happy fault, O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the death of Christ” when, shortly thereafter, “Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld” (from the Exsultet)? Or was it when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles at Pentecost, strengthening and convicting them to go out and preach the Gospel to all nations? Scripture, Tradition and the Teaching Authority of the Church provide some disparate, yet provocative answers.
The language in both Lumen Gentium and the Catechism of the Catholic Church is quite clear: The Church is born primarily of Christ’s total self-giving for our salvation, anticipated (my emphasis) in the institution of the Eucharist and fulfilled on the cross. “The origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus” (Lumen Gentium 3; cf Jn 19: 34). “For it was from the side of Christ as He slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church” (CCC 766).
Given the fact that salvation history must trace its roots to Adam and Eve and their original sin in Genesis, and since the Old Testament in so many instances prefigures the New Testament typologically, the Church can, arguably, find her beginning “In the beginning…” (Gn 1: 1) when the original sin of our first parents necessitated a need for salvation, and therefore, a Savior. We recognize the Church Triumphant, the Church Suffering and the Church Militant – One Church – includes members from the time of Adam and Eve and down through the ages, from among anyone who ever lived, the living and everyone who ever will live.
