Our People

A Quick Theology of Communion

Beauty Point, Clifton Gardens, Mosman & Neutral Bay Parishes

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
22 June 2005

There is a lot of talk around today in Church circles about community. It is a rough translation of the complex theological concept of ‘communio’ used to describe both the ‘internal’ life of God and God’s ‘external’ life in his ‘household’ (as it was called in tonight’s reading: Eph 2:19-22), the Church. But the translation ‘community’ rather limps.

On the one hand, there is a widespread craving for companionship in our anonymous cities and a lot of perfectly understandable talk these days of “recovering a sense of community” and “building up community”. Unfortunately the concept is also being much abused and so demeaned in the process, as when almost every loose group is called a ‘community’ even if the members have about as much common life as a school of piranhas: for example, talk of ‘the gambling community’, ‘the gay community’, ‘the arts community’ or ‘the drug users community’.

Sometimes the misuse of the term is a cover for darker political purposes, as when talk of “one nation” is actually code for divisiveness, intolerance or exclusion, or when talk of “care in the community” means putting the aged or the mentally ill out of institutions and then abandoning them. Less sinister, perhaps, but just as common, is the trivialisation of the idea of community as a warm fuzzy feeling felt in the company of like-minded people, or the romanticisation of ‘community’ as if it is the place of everything good when particular communities are often in fact quite dysfunctional (e.g. ‘the international community’).

The effect of all these misconceptions can be disappointment, even cynicism, about groups and institutions and even denial of the very idea of community, as when a British Prime Minister claimed “there is no such thing as society, only individuals”. Whether wittingly or not, she was promoting the view that we are all independent atoms, cut off from our fellows, each seeking our own private ends, in a world of survival of the fittest.

What might the doctrine that God is a communion of Three Persons in One have to all this? Well, first of all, if we look at the three Persons of God we discover that they act with and through each other. God the Father creates through his Son, and all that is has its being through him. That same Son is “the Wisdom of God cried abroad”, the Word proclaimed by God the Father, the Word spoken to us. How do we now hear and understand that Word, now he has been spoken to us definitively in history in Jesus Christ? “I am sending you another Counsellor,” he said, “the very Spirit of Truth”. That Holy Spirit will continue my living, breathing presence among you, making the Truth ever fresher, ever clearer, ever fuller in you, drawing you more and more fully into that communion which is the very life of God. Time and again, our provident Father-God acts through Christ Jesus and in the Spirit, creating, redeeming, revealing, inspiring, empowering: as in tonight’s reading, where God the Father builds his church with Jesus Christ his only Son as the cornerstone as a place for God the Holy Spirit to dwell in with us

Which, you might say, is all very nice for God, but what’s it got to do with us and the big questions we are facing as four parishes? A great deal: like all the mysteries of our faith, the mystery of the Trinity not only reveals God to us: it reveals us to ourselves, so that even though we are very different from God, there is much we can learn about selves from contemplating Trinity in whose image we were created and in whose likeness we were redeemed as the household of God.

In the Blessed Trinity we meet distinct persons who retain their distinction without becoming atomised or opposed; persons who are interrelated and united without losing their individuality. We too are distinct persons: our dignity lies in our very individuality, our uniqueness, each of us free to be and to do, to create and to destroy our world, others, even ourselves, in our own way. To some extent the same might be said about our several parishes Yet for all our individuality and freedom, we cannot live and flourish in isolation: we have to come together with others and do things together in a family, a school, a workplace, a church, a city, a nation if we are to be truly happy. So much of what we do, from food and movies to heart surgery and worship, we do as a common project with others. The Trinitarian God reveals and confirms that we must work together, with and through other persons, if we are to achieve much that is worthwhile: new life and creativity only come through working with others, often for us new others and in new ways.

But there is more. The Trinity is not just a kind of cosmic joint venture with three venture-capital partners who come together just for a time either out of force of circumstances or to serve their private (and ultimately rival) interests. The life of the Trinity is a commitment, a cosmic friendship, a communio. Being with and for others, sharing life with others, is not only a way of getting what we want: it is precisely one of those things we most deeply want. Comradeship, friendship, love: these are among our highest goals, our most fulfilling experiences. Not only do we need community in order to achieve our worthwhile purposes: community itself is one of our most worthwhile purposes.

One last thing I will mention that I think the life of the Trinity might tells us about community: the Three Persons give and receive from each other not merely activities or friendship but their very identity. God the Father is only Father because he eternally begets the Son. God the Son is only Son, Wisdom and Word because he is eternally conceived by the Father. God the Holy Spirit is only the Spirit of Love and Truth because he is the very love and communication between the Father and the Son, eternally breathed forth by them. And that reminds us that in sharing our lives, including the distinctive characters of our several parishes, we are not only doing things together and feeling things together, we are actually becoming things together. The people I relate to give me the greater part of my values, purpose and sense of self, my identity; so too with our parishes.

According to our Catholic faith, then, we can never settle with just being who we are or have been and close off the new possibilities that Providence offers us by prompting us to a greater and deeper communio. Whatever our distinctiveness, whether as individuals or communities, we have far more in common than we have that distinguishes us. And we only become ourselves with and through others, by mutual relationships of giving and receiving, with those we love, those we live and work with, love and grow with, pray with and play with, those we are united with in Baptism and the Body of Christ. So, contrary to contemporary individualism, our freedom and identity do not depend just on our being independent atoms, but rather on our being elements of complex molecules and those molecules constituent of still more complex compounds and those compounds the basis of our wonderful created universe. To realize our individuality and freedom we need others, who shape and form us, nurture and direct us, liberate us and give us opportunities to flourish as the unique persons and parish communities that we are. We ask tonight for the wisdom and courage to take this to heart.