A priest met a Catholic not so long ago who informed him that he was now attending a Lutheran church.  The priest was fascinated; the man speaking to him  wasn’t in the least  aware of the incongruity of the situation.  Nor was he embarrassed; nor did he think he was doing anything wrong.  In a country where generic food is sold at bargain basement prices and generic drugs are seen to be as good as the brand name variety, it seems that many people feel that generic religion is just fine too.  But that was not what the early Christians thought. And it is not what most Christians have thought through the centuries.  Most people have wanted to know what makes a church the true Church.  In our Scripture readings for Easter, we are given the answer.

The Church must be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.  That’s the witness of the Scriptures. And any church that doesn’t measure up to that isn’t true.  “One” means tied together in unity.  “Holy” means possessing the Spirit of God.  “Catholic” means embracing the totality of truth and reaching out to all nations.  “Apostolic” means in touch with the Apostles. In the Easter Scriptures, this idea of “oneness” and of being “tied in with the Apostles” is heavily stressed.

On the way to Emmaus, confused disciples encounter Christ.  In their sorrow and disarray, they are walking into the sunset, into the darkness, away from Jerusalem the shining City of God.  Fortunately, they are brought together with Jesus and each other through the Eucharist.  The Eucharist and the unity it brings are marks of the authentic nature of the Catholic Church.  The Scripture focus on the Apostles (especially Peter)  and their importance brings into sharp relief the fact that personal faith in Christ is not enough.  The Risen Lord has brought the Church into existence, built upon Peter and the Apostles, and given the sacraments — especially the Eucharist — to this Church in order to remain in contact with his people.  Remember what the disciples on the road to Emmaus did once they recognized the Lord in the Eucharist?  They went back to Jerusalem, to the Apostles, to where the Church was.  They were no longer confused.

The early Church knew what we often forget: unless we stay in close contact with the Apostles who are the witnesses to the resurrected Christ, we will not belong to the Church, we will not have the truth.  The apostolic and sacramental nature of our faith ensures that the Roman Catholic Church is the one, true Church.  We stay in touch with the Apostles through the fact that bishops are the successors of the Apostles and the pope is the successor to St. Peter.  That unity down through the centuries guarantees that we still have our fingers on the pulse of our faith.  Through sacraments, guarded by the successors of the Apostles, we touch the Risen Lord and are brought together, not simply as separate individuals with private faith lives, but as a community of believers — the Church!  To make all this theology concrete, just reflect on Bishop-elect David Malloy: the excitement around his ordination as Bishop and installation as the ninth bishop of Rockford comes from the fact that he represents the oneness, the holiness, the apostolicity of our Catholic Church.

Everybody today seems to want to define Christianity however they as individuals see it.  But that is not our tradition and it certainly isn’t Scriptural.  The problem of what is authentic Christianity troubled even the Apostles and they settled that issue pretty convincingly.  We must be in union with the Apostles and in touch with Christ through the sacraments.  In our entire world, only one community of believers does this completely and totally — the Roman Catholic Church.  To say we are the one, true Church is not a boast of better against worse; rather, it is an invitation to all to believe completely what the Apostles believed.  Those who say that all churches are the same are wrong.  As it was in the early Church, so it is now — each of us is given the obligation to search for the truth.  Like so many who came before us, may each of us find in our Catholic faith the oneness, the holiness, the catholicity and the rootedness in apostolic faith that will give us the courage we need to witness to Christ in our daily lives and to the world at large.