One of the great theological words on the nature and structure of the Church of Jesus Christ, a favorite of Pope Paul VI, is “The Church of the Word Incarnate” by Charles Journet. At the end of his first volume Journet wrote of the three ages of the world. The Age of the Father preceded the Fall of Mankind. There God governed his people without visible intermediary and the Church was not yet constituted. The Age of the Son began after the Fall and continued until the death of Jesus. God then decided to gather his people around a Mediator and the Church, the Body of Christ, came to birth. In this period the Mediator had to be hoped for, awaited for long years until the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary. God then governed his people through the human nature of Christ. This Age of the Son was short and prepared for the last age of salvation history, the Age of the Spirit. Here God governs his people through the human nature of Christ “who has now entered the spiritualizing light of glory and preserves contact with us through the hierarchy.” This is the present regime of the Church. As the second age added benefits to the first, so the third age added new benefits to the second. As John the apostle wrote: “It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” The Holy Spirit is the supreme mystical personality of the Church. He continues to rule her in the third and last stage of the world, through the heart and mind of this Christ “whom God has raised from the dead and set on his right hand in the heavenly places” there to make Him head over all the Church. (Ephesians 1:20-22)
Journet concludes: “The supreme unity of the Holy Spirit, is also the unity of the glorified Christ, both hidden from our eyes, must be externally expressed, so that their single voice may be audible to the senses of men. And they could not have chosen a simpler instrument, a clearer ‘sacrament’ of their single and sovereign but invisible jurisdiction, than by investing with the supreme visible jurisdiction a single head who should gather all the Church around himself. Surely we have here the reason why the Gospel, which announces the Age of the Spirit, the last age of the world, tells of the pre-eminence of Peter and his successors.” This is why the Acts of the Apostles that relates the beginning of the Age of the Spirit relates also the inauguration of the primacy of Peter and his successors. The Age of the Spirit does not suppress the law of salvation by corporeal contact with Christ. And what has once been given to us is not to be withdrawn: “Behold I am with you all days to the consummation of the world.” But for immediate contact with the passible Body of Christ it substitutes a mediate contact with his ‘spiritual body” which is in heaven under its proper appearances and becomes accessible to us only under the veil of borrowed appearances in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Here Charles Journet awakens us to the temporal mystery of the Church of Jesus Christ that makes present through the sacraments and authority of the apostolic hierarchy the spiritual power of the Incarnate Word of God now sent to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit. In this final Age of Pentecost the Holy Spirit is “the supreme mystical personality of the church.” Or as Cardinal Suenens concluded: “No Spirit, no Church.”
Father Robert J. Randall is a senior priest of the Diocese of Providence, as well as a scholar and artist who served as a member of the Providence College faculty for more than 25 years. Father Randall taught English, theology and courses in the Development of Western Civilization Program. Providence College established the Randall Chair Professorship in his name which exemplifies the commitment to educational excellence and Christian values that defined Father Randall’s life as an educator and priest.
