The Kingdom of God is alive and growing

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Ez 17:22-24
Second Reading: 2 Cor 5:6-10
Gospel Reading: Mk 4:26-34

Jesus commanded just before his ascension: “proclaim the good news to all creation.” Obediently, his apostles passed on what they had received from Christ’s words, actions, and way of life “at the prompting of the Holy Spirit,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Starting at Pentecost, they did it in two ways. First, they did it by their preaching, their example, and the institutions they established. Second, some of them, and others associated with them, recorded it in writing.

Moreover, to ensure that “the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church,” they “left bishops as their successors,” giving them “their own positions of teaching authority,” so that what they had handed on would be “preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.”

The Church uses the term sacred Scripture for the writings she accepted by her Christ-given teaching authority, or magisterium. She uses the term sacred tradition for the “living transmission” of God’s revelation by the apostles and their successors, right down to Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver.

Like sacred Scripture, sacred tradition is guarded by the Holy Spirit, so it is not subject to the changes, errors, additions, deletions, and omissions that frequently distort ordinary tradition. Rather, it transmits divine revelation “in its entirety” to the Pope and the bishops in communion with him so that “they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it abroad by their teaching.” It ensures that the Church, “in her doctrine, life, and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is” and “all that she believes,” says the Catechism.

Accordingly, the Church “does not draw her certainty about all revealed truth” from sacred Scripture alone; she accepts and honours sacred tradition and sacred Scripture “with equal feelings of devotion and reverence,” for they make up “a single sacred deposit” of revelation. Believing Catholics accept “all that is contained in the word of God, written or handed down, which the Church proposes for belief as divinely revealed.”

The words “deposit” and “tradition” do not imply stagnation or stultification, for the “single sacred deposit” of revelation is alive. The Catholic faith is not “a written and mute word, but incarnate and living.” It is the seed planted, once and for all, by Christ, as we hear in this Sunday’s readings.

The unity of divine revelation—scripture and tradition—is “the unity of a living body,” Pope Francis said in Lumen Fidei, and a body grows. Accordingly, said Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, “the tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church”; “there is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on.”

Notice: there is growth, as when an acorn becomes an oak; not change, as if an acorn became an elm. Growth occurs “with the help of the Holy Spirit,” who guides the Church to all truth, as Christ promised—even truth the apostles had not been ready for. It is as if God, who spoke, once for all, in Christ, continues to “converse” with the Church, whom St. Paul called Christ’s spouse.

The Church grows in her understanding of divine revelation in three ways: through “contemplation and study” by believers; from “the intimate sense of spiritual realities” that “believers experience;” and from the preaching of the bishops, to whom God has given “the sure charism of truth.”

“Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing toward the fullness of divine truth.”

Some Catholics want the Church to change her doctrine. Others want her to stop developing her understanding of her doctrine, and to appear exactly as she did after the Fourth Lateran Council, or the reforms of Pope Pius V—or whatever historical period appeals to them most.

No, said Jesus; the kingdom of God is “like a mustard seed,” which grows from a tiny seed to a great shrub.