THE CHURCH IN THE NEW COVENANT

By Ian Knox, C.S.Sp

Nero punished, with exquisite torture, a race of men detested for their evil
practices, by vulgar appellation commonly called Christians. The name was derived
from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius, suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of
Judea. By that event the sect, of which he was the founder, received a blow, which, for a
time, checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and
spread with recruiting vigour, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the
city of Rome. Nero proceeded with his usual artifice. He found a set of profligate
wretches who were induced to profess themselves guilty, and on the evidence of such
men, a number of Christians were convicted, not, indeed, upon clear evidence of having
set the city on fire, but on account of their sullen hatred of the whole human race. They
were put to death with exquisite cruelty, and to their sufferings Nero added mockery and
derision.
Thus does the Roman historian Tacitus (79-112 C.E.) describe in his Annals how
the Emperor Nero instituted a persecution of the Christian community in Rome,
According to Tacitus, Nero persecuted the Christians on the pretext that they were the
ones who had set the great fire of Rome (64 C.E.), which destroyed three-quarters of the
city. In this persecution perished the apostles Peter and Paul, the leaders of the infant
church. Tacitus writing provides us with evidence, from a secular and pagan historian,
that the Christian church had spread to Rome a scant ten years from its beginning in
Jerusalem after the death of Christ.
Jesus attracted bands of followers during his lifetime. His chosen group of
apostles, and some others, particularly some women, traveled with him as he went
about preaching the message of the kingdom of God throughout Judea and Galilee. This
little band of Jesus followers would not have known the word church or the word
Christian. The appellation Christian, as we are told in the book of Acts, was first given
to the infant church in the city of Antioch (in modern-day Turkey) years after the death of
Christ. Nevertheless, it is this particular communal lifestyle that sets the tone for the
development of other communities that are the building blocks of the Christian church.
Despite the fact that early bands of followers attached themselves to Jesus
during his lifetime, the day that traditionally marks the beginning of the Christian church
is the day of Pentecost (CCC 1076). Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, is one of the
three great feasts of Passover (hence the name Pentecost). The first Christian
Pentecost thus occurred 50 days after the resurrection, which is why today we celebrate
Pentecost 50 days after Easter.
The twelve apostles, and some of the early band of followers, including Jesus
mother, Mary, were gathered in a house in Jerusalem. Here is how Luke, in the Acts of
the Apostles, describes what happened:
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.
And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it
filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues
as of fire, which parted and rest on each one of them. And they were filled with
the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled
them to proclaim. (Acts 2:1-4 NAB)

From being a rather insignificant and somewhat frightened group, the apostles
were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and boldly preached the message they
had learned from Jesus. Wherever they preached, those who came to believe in Jesus
and who accepted baptism formed themselves into small communities. These
communities would meet for prayer and particularly for the celebration of the Eucharist.
They also supported and helped one another, and shared their goods in common (see
Acts 2:42-47).
The early communities ultimately came to be called ekklesia, the Greek word for
church, which means a grouping or assembly of people. In most northern European
languages, the word church comes from the Greek Kyriake oikia, meaning the family
of the Lord. Always, therefore, the essence of church is a gathering, a family, a closeknit group. Sometimes the word was applied to a small house gathering or to Christians
in a specific locality; sometimes it was applied to the whole group of Christians
everywhere. So, even today, a small gathering for celebration of the Eucharist can be
called church; so also can all the Catholics in a local area such as a diocese. Catholics
all over the world constitute the Universal Church. Such a diverse use of the word is
obviously confusing, and so, when we use the word today, we must be well aware of the
context. Only much later in history did the word church is to be applied to the building
where the ekklesia worships and celebrates the Eucharist.
From this somewhat sketchy summary of the beginnings of the church some
important points emerge. From its origin, church means people: people who believe in
Jesus, who come together to profess their faith, to worship and celebrate together, to
commemorate the Lords death and resurrection and to help one another. Therefore, one
of the salient features of the early Christian church was a sense of community, a sense
of togetherness. Community a helping, sharing, caring community is the bedrock
principle on which the church is built. The human race was meant to live in harmony and
peace with God, with one another, and with the earth, but sin changed all that. Jesus
Christ came to re-establish our true unity with God and with one another; his work was to
overcome the destruction and alienation of sin. His instrument for accomplishing his
purpose is the church built on the ideal of community, a community centered in the
Eucharist where it experiences Christs unifying presence.
However, as time went on, the church became more and more institutionalized
and defined in legalistic terms. The sense of church (community) was to a large extent
lost; the church became an it, not a we. This loss of the sense of being church, of our
own personal involvement in church affairs, is truly a tragic quirk of history that has had
the effect of altering our whole thinking and our whole theology of church. One effect, for
example, is the way we think about and participate in the sacraments. We too often tend
to view sacraments as things done to us, things that we receive from the ministers
of the church, rather than actions we do. Another effect of the legalistic definition of
church is that the word church came to be applied almost exclusively to the leaders of
the church: the Pope, bishops, and clergy. The general tendency of those who write or
speak about the church today is to identify the church with its leaders. It is true that
these leaders are an essential part of the church; however, they belong to the whole
people of God and are not separate and apart from this people. They should not, and do
not, form a special caste, though this is often the common perception.
Source: Theology for Teachers, Ian Knox, CSSp, Claretian Publications, Quezon City, 2011, pp.
165 167.