November 16, 2025 -Pastor Message
November 17, 2025JUBILEE 2025 GAUDIUM ET SPES (cont.)
JUBILEE 2025
GAUDIUM ET SPES (cont.)
“‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in the field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’ Jesus spoke to them another parable. ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened’” (Matthew 13:31-33).
Gaudium et Spes (GS) speaks at length on the interrelationship of the Church and the world. The Church shines the light of the Gospel onto the cares and concerns of the world, while the world, with all its gifts and struggles, is the forum within which the Church carries out its mission. Like the mustard seed planted in the soil or the yeast mixed with the dough, the Church is inseparably bound to the world, and the two influence and shape each other according to God’s mysterious plan for the world’s salvation.
It is beyond the scope of this brief column, even over a series of weeks, to cover the entire breadth of GS, and I encourage you all again to read the full document, which you can find here: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_1965120 7_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. That said, there are a number of issues that GS addresses that are of special concern, not only in 1965, when the document was published, but also today, which I will present briefly below and in next week’s column. First, GS emphasizes the dignity and holiness of marriage and the family as the cornerstone of social life: “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of the community of marriage and the family” (GS, 47). This in no way is meant to lessen the value and dignity of those who are not or are no longer married, nor does it take anything anyway from the heroic witness of single-parent families. It celebrates the God-given gift of marriage and challenges us as a society to address the issues that are attacking God’s plan for marriage as a lifelong bond between one man and one woman open to life and tearing marriages and families apart.
GS also addresses the transformation of human culture in the modern world: “The word ‘culture’ in the general sense refers to all those things which go to the refining and developing of humanity's diverse mental and physical endowments…For different styles of living and different scales of values originate in different ways of using things, of working and of self-expression, of practicing religion and of behavior, of establishing laws and juridical institutions, of developing science and the arts and of cultivating beauty” (GS, 53). However, the radical and evermore fast-paced changes in society today, fueled by advances in communication technology which have outpaced humanity’s ability to understand or deal with their ramifications, have led to a crisis in culture. GS calls us to apply the timeless truths of the Gospel as well as the wisdom of the many cultures and ages encountered and transformed by the Church throughout our 2000 year history to positively shape our culture today.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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