COMMENTARY: Chapter 7 of Lumen Gentium presents the Council’s teaching on some essential aspects of the Church’s teaching: judgment, souls in purgatory, and our union with the saints in heaven.

Second Vatican Council Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentiumoffers a compelling portrait of the church as God’s people.

As the council reflected on this truth, it realized that its description of the Church would be incomplete without reference to those members of this people who no longer belong to the present world—namely, the saints in heaven and those souls who experience their final purification in purgatory. The Council would eventually include this material in Chapter 7 i Lumen Gentiumentitled “The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church and its Union with the Church in Heaven.”

We may wonder why such key topics were not included in the original plan for a constitution on the Church. For the sake of clarity, the Preparatory Theological Commission – which produced the original draft with the help of a special sub-commission – decided to focus on the Catholic Church in its form here on earth, that is, what is traditionally known as the “Church Militant”. ”, that part of the church which is struggling towards its final end of heavenly glory.

Such a focus made it easier to explain the identity of the Catholic Church as both the mystical body of Christ and a visible society governed by the Pope and the bishops. Nevertheless, as the Council reflected on the mystery of the Church, some Council Fathers believed that a document focused exclusively on the Pilgrim Church on Earth would be lacking. For example, Bishop John Edward Petit, a bishop in Wales, argued that the Constitution’s teaching on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ would be incomplete if there were no mention of the whole Church—not only the Church Militant, but also, even more prominently, the ” triumphant church,” that is, those who have reached the glory of heaven.

As the British bishop pointed out, St Paul’s image of the Church as a “body” conveys the unity of all the believers in Christ, whether they are on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven. In this context, he recalled how the saints in heaven help the rest of the Church through their example and prayer. Citing a new growth in devotion to saints in England and elsewhere, he rejected the idea that such devotions had lost their relevance in our day or were inappropriate for the people of northern Europe. He proposed that the Council add a special chapter to the Constitution of the Church on the Church Triumphant which could propose the Catholic doctrine of authentic veneration of the saints.

Many other council fathers shared this sentiment, along with Pope John XXIII, whose specific indication was at the beginning of this chapter. A special subcommission was assigned the task of drafting the text and compiled a draft chapter which, after extensive revision, was presented to the Council Fathers in September 1964. With a few more minor adjustments, this text would become the final text of Chapter 7 of Lumen Gentium.

As the title of the chapter indicates, the council did not want to deal only with devotion to the saints and other heavenly realities. Rather, the Constitution focuses on eschatological or ultimate realities to which the church’s life is directed. After chapters recalling specific vocations in the Church—ordained ministry, lay, religious—as well as a chapter on the universal vocation to holiness, Vatican II wanted to remind that the final culmination of all these vocations will occur only in the next life. As the chapter notes in its opening words:

“The Church … will attain its full perfection only in the glory of heaven, when there comes a time for the restoration of all things.”

With these words, the Council introduces a description of what are traditionally known as the “last things”, which many council fathers had wanted the text to mention: the reality of judgment, the “eternal fire” of hell, the need for souls to be purified in purgatory, the hope of heaven and the resurrection of the body.

At the same time, the council fathers did not want to present these truths as completely bound to the next life. The conciliar assembly was deeply aware that the risen and glorious Christ “is constantly at work in the world” to lead them to the Church, through which he “can make them partakers of his glorious life by nourishing them with his own body and blood ” (48).

After this description of the church in its present state, with its hope of the life to come, the chapter proceeds to describe the union of the pilgrim church with those in both purgatory and heaven. The Council expresses its conviction that all members of the Church, in this world and beyond this world, exist in an intimate communion of grace:

“All in different ways and degrees are in fellowship in the same charity of God and neighbor and all sing the same praise to our God.”

This sense of solidarity among the whole Church prepares the way for a comment on the essential role that devotion to the saints plays in the life of the Church. While many Council Fathers had wished to address this subject, several of them were concerned that certain excesses of devotion might take away the centrality of Christ and make it difficult for the Church’s efforts for unity with separated Christian brothers.

Against the background of such concerns, ch. 7 Lumen Gentium places great emphasis on how the church’s union with the saints is rooted in and directed toward Christ. The efficiency of the saints in strengthening the church in holiness comes from the fact that they “are more closely united to Christ” and their merits also come from him who is “the only mediator between God and men.” With an awareness of the unity of the entire mystical body, the chapter also mentions the practice of prayer for the dead, a practice found in the Church “from the very earliest ages of the Christian religion.”

The chapter concludes with a creed on the Church’s tradition of devotion to the saints and souls in purgatory, with reference to previous councils. While adhering to these precedents, the Council did not simply repeat the teachings of the past. Rather, the Dogmatic Constitution wanted to give a new vitality to these traditional practices, calling on the Church to remove or correct “all abuses, excesses, or defects” in this area, and at the same time to appreciate more deeply the true basis of such practices. .

As the Council affirms, authentic devotion to the saints “consists not so much in multiplying external actions, but rather in the greater intensity of our love.” Such reverence never takes away, but rather enriches, the Latreutian worship, or adoration, which “we give to God the Father through Christ in the Spirit.”

With this text on the eschatological and heavenly dimension of the Church, the Council formulated an essential aspect of the mystery of the Church that it wanted to present to the world in its Constitution on the Church. The chapter continues to vividly remind us of the ultimate realities which, while lying beyond this present world, shape and guide the Church on her pilgrimage through history.