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LIKE A TRAVELER, man must hurry through an ever changing world. The Bible tells how the Jews wandered in the Sinai desert in transit from Egyptian slavery to their God-promised Land of Palestine. Their course is symbolic of Christian man's historical pilgrimage through an unbelieving world to the Promised Land of Heaven.

The Guide for this pilgrimage is Emmanuel, the Son of God, Who became man that man might find his way back to God. In becoming man and dying for man, in defeating sin and death through His resurrection, Christ fashioned brotherhood with men so that all might be reborn of Christ's Holy Spirit to higher life and love. Christ's union with man would not only be through the inner, personal help of grace, but would also involve a sharing in a religious society, a Church, called His mystic body: "Now you are the body of Christ, member for member" (1 Cor. 12:27). Through time and space Christ continues His leadership of a new People of God so that basically: "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today, yes and forever" (Heb. 13:8).

APOSTOLIC WITNESSES (30-100 A. D.)

Christ chose to save men through men-freely. He had attracted disciples and from them chose twelve leaders whom He called apostles (Luke 6:14), delegates. Their immediate personal task was to be witnesses (Acts 1:8) to Christ's life, teaching, death, and resurrection. Courageously they carried out this commission throughout the Mediterranean civilized world. Once inspired and emboldened by the promised coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:2f.), they testified: "This Jesus God has raised up and we are all witnesses of it" (Acts 2:32); "Him God exalted with His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins, and we are witnesses of these things" (Acts 5:30).

The official and long-term task of these apostles and their successors "unto the consummation of the world" was to rule Christ's Church, under Christ, its now invisible Head, and the Holy Spirit, its soul. Christ had given them a custodian's power, symbolized by keys. (Matt. 16:19; 18:18). On one of them, Simon Peter, and his successors Christ had promised to build His Church (Matt. 16:18); to him He had pledged unfailing faith apt to rally others (Luke 22:32); to him this Good Shepherd had committed His own flock: "Feed my sheep" (John 21:15-17).

The inspired Acts tell how Peter and the Apostles discharged their duty with the meekness of Christ (Acts 2-15). The early Church's greatest crisis came when convert Jews would have imposed on convert Gentiles observance of the Mosaic Law. Under Peter's presidency the Apostolic Council asserted: "We believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus," and then "the whole meeting quieted down" (Acts 15:11-12).

The way lay open for mass conversion of the Gentiles, especially through the inspired preaching and writings of Paul. As Gentiles came to prevail in what was at first a Jewish sect, the disciples came to be called Christians (Acts 11:26), and Catholics (St. Ignatius, Smyrneans, 8). Peter shifted his headquarters from Jerusalem to Greek Antioch, and eventually to Rome itself where he was martyred along with Paul about 67. All the other apostles shared their martyrdom save John, guardian of Christ's Mother Mary, Mother of Apostles, Mother of the Church (John 19:27; Acts 1:14). John survived to the close of the first Christian century to ensure the Church's fidelity to the Master and to predict its future in the Apocalypse.

AGE OF MARTYRS (100-313)

"Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife on account of the office of episcopate . . . For this reason . . . they appointed that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in the ministry . . ." (St. Clement, Corinthians, I, 42, 44). The Apostles had worthy successors, not only in the office of shepherding Christ's flock, but in fidelity to Christian witness. Hear but one of these, St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. c. 107). "There is only one Physician, both carnal and spiritual, born and unborn, God become man, true life in death, sprung from Mary and from God, first subject to suffering and then incapable of it: Jesus Christ our Lord" (Ephesians, 7). "You must all follow the lead of the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed that of the Father . . . Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Smyrneans, 8). "Take care to partake of one Eucharist, for one is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one the cup to unite us with his blood" (Philadelphians, 4).

Three centuries of testimony, written in the blood of martyrs like Ignatius, guarantee the faithful transmission of the Gospel in the Catholic Christian Church.

Christ had demanded man's supreme loyalty to God without denying Caesar's rights (Matt. 22:22). But a totalitarian Roman Empire held its official idolatry to be the test of patriotism and waged war on Christ's disciples for three centuries. The Church survived this ordeal with divine protection (John 16:33). It did more than survive, it gradually won over its persecutors because of the exemplary lives of the average Christians; the invincible courage of martyrs, especially women and children; the apostolic zeal of believers; the international and classless outlook of a Church in a melting pot of peoples; and the sublimity of its doctrine as contrasted with the outworn misery of pagan myth and sensuality. When the great Constantine ended the persecutions in 313, perhaps only a tenth of the Empire's 50,000,000 to 75,000,000 citizens were Christians. But they were the most able and progressive and the future was theirs.

Christian life survived above or under ground-in the catacombs. The walls of these cemeteries and escape tunnels still reveal Christian belief in Christ, the Good Shepherd, in His Virgin Mother Mary, in the leadership of Peter, the new Moses. There are pictured baptism in water; Eucharistic gatherings; there are inscriptions: "in Christ"; "in peace"; "Marcella and 150 martyrs of Christ," etc. Such death was victory: "The blood of Christians is seed" (Tertullian, Apology, 50).

Already hermits and monks were beginning to people the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Apologists pleaded the Christian cause before pagan persecutors; polemicists defended Catholic orthodoxy and unity against self-willed innovators, for "he who has not the Church for his mother cannot have God for a father" (St. Cyprian, Unity of Catholic Church, 4-6).

AGE OF THE FATHERS (313-565)

Constantine the Great, first Christian emperor, made it possible to hold the first general council of the Church, at Nicea in 325. It had been provoked by the Alexandrian rationalist Arius who argued from human analogy that if a son is always younger than his father, Christ as Son of God could be neither everlasting nor divine. The 300 Catholic bishops at Nicea firmly replied that though faith never contradicts reason, the norm in church teaching is not human intelligence but divine; that is, faith in God's revealed word. One of the conciliar members, St. Athanasius, noted: "The fathers of Nicea never said of faith: 'It is decreed,' but: 'Thus the Catholic Church believes'; and in declaring what they believed, they declared it to be not a recent, but an apostolic doctrine. What they committed to writing was not discovered by themselves, but the same things that the apostles taught, they taught" (On Synods, 5). In rebuttal of Arius, the Christian Church still recites the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God..."

Unfortunately the peaceful sequel of the Jerusalem council was not repeated after Nicea. The primitive disciplined charity of the early Christians had been diluted by self-willed scholars, ambitious politicians, and easy-going laxists, now that Christianity during the fourth century was becoming the favored, and soon the official, religion of the Empire. Constantine, and especially his successors, were prone to "Caesaro-Papism": the Christian imperial government desired to run the Church just as pagan Roman rulers had regulated religion from time immemorial.

Arians and semi-Arians were only first of a long line of pressure groups that sought to advance their ideas and interests by winning the government to endorse their stand. But courageous bishops were not lacking. Hosius, president of the Nicene Council, told the proArian ruler Constantius: "Intrude not yourself into the Church's business and give us no command regarding it, but instead learn from us. God has placed in your hands the Empire; to us He has committed administration of His Church . . . It is not permitted to us to bear rule on earth, nor have you the right to burn incense" (St. Athanasius, History of Arians, 44). And St. Ambrose later told Theodosius the Great: "The emperor is in the Church, not above it" (Against Auxentius, 36). Fifty years of imperial coercion and church politics failed to overthrow the Nicene Creed. In 381 the bishops met again in general session at Constantinople, reaffirmed the Creed, and for benefit of those who had denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, added: "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life; He proceeds from the Father, is adored and honored together with the Father and the Son; He spoke through the prophets." Lest any in future doubt where doctrinal authority lay, the Fathers gave marks for the Church: "We believe in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church." It required two more councils, those at Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), to formulate the teaching on Christ. For, declared the conciliar fathers, both Scripture and Tradition attest that God has revealed in Christ not a split personality nor a dual personality; not a ghost with the appearance of a body; not a demi-god, half divine, half human; but Jesus Christ, God-Man, two distinct but harmonious natures in one Person. God's humanity toward man was assured. Meanwhile in the West, Bishops under St. Augustine's lead opposed the Pelagian denial of grace. They defined that man does receive this share in the divine nature, and that he does need this Christ-merited heavenly help in order to be saved.

The "Fathers of the Church," as they are called, holy and learned bishops and priests of the early Church, worked out these basic theological principles, these words about God that Christian men live by. Theirs was not the job of inventing doctrine; God's revelation had taken care of that. Theirs was the problem of finding the first human words to expound the doctrine aptly to the people of their age. To name but a few, Sts. Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, and the two Cyrils in the East, and Sts. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the West expressed in classic terms the Church's meditation on the word of God. Jerome made the lasting "Vulgate" version of the Bible in the common western tongue, Latin. Augustine's genius provided the Church with a theological analysis that was popular for a thousand years, and has never lost value. His vision of a Christian City of God on earth became the ideal of the Middle Ages.

Liturgy in a Church emerging from the catacombs became organized. Admission to baptism was preceded by a careful period of training and testing called the catechumenate. Baptism, followed immediately by Confirmation, was a community rite. Should anyone desert baptismal pledges of loyalty to Christ in a serious and public way, he was obliged to do public penance before God and His Church, penance severe and humiliating, but also rich in faith and grace. Eucharistic liturgy was enhanced with additional prayers and rites; this Christian sacrifice and meal was already called by St. Ambrose "the Mass." Bishops and priests concelebrated, minor clergy ushered and kept order, all of the Christian faithful took part in making offerings, in praying and singing, and in receiving the body and blood of the Lord. Ritual also accompanied ordination to the priesthood, marriage of Christian spouses with priestly blessing, and the "veiling of a virgin," or religious profession. All in all, there was far more popular participation in the life of the Church than in that of the State as the declining Roman Empire became dictatorial while it collapsed in the West under barbarian infiltration. Liturgy, which once meant public civil service, now came to signify public church service.

Not that there were not also titans of Christian individualism. Sts. Anthony, Pachomius, and Benedict were pioneers in monastic lives of dedicated prayer and penance; Sts. Basil and Chrysostom were organizers of elaborate Christian welfare centers in the East. St. Fabiola, penitent divorcee, sponsored the first Christian hospital at Rome; Almachius ended the pagan gladiatorial combats at the sacrifice of his life. Epitaphs remind us that there were Christian soldiers, officials, hair-dressers, vegetable growers, laborers, etc. Slowly the Christian spirit made some impression on the world; torture on the cross was abolished; slavery was eased and regulated; Sunday became a holiday; churches and shrines were built.