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1. Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so, this
Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires,
by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature,[1] to bring the light
of Christ to all men, a light brightly visible on the countenance of
the Church. Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a
sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of
the unity of the whole human race, it desires now to unfold more fully
to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner
nature and universal mission. This it intends to do following
faithfully the teaching of previous councils. The present- day
conditions of the world add greater urgency to this work of the Church
so that all men, joined more closely today by various social,
technical and cultural ties, might also attain fuller unity in
Christ.
2. The eternal Father, by a free and hidden plan of His own wisdom
and goodness, created the whole world. His plan was to raise men to a
participation of the divine life. Fallen in Adam, God the Father
did not leave men to themselves, but ceaselessly offered helps to
salvation, in view of Christ, the Redeemer "who is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of every creature".[2] All the
elect, before time began, the Father "foreknew and pre- destined to
become conformed to the image of His Son, that he should be the
firstborn among many brethren".[3] He planned to assemble in the
holy Church all those who would believe in Christ. Already from the
beginning of the world the foreshadowing of the Church took place. It
was prepared in a remarkable way throughout the history of the people of
Israel and by means of the Old Covenant.[4] In the present era
of time the Church was constituted and, by the outpouring of the
Spirit, was made manifest. At the end of time it will gloriously
achieve completion, when, as is read in the Fathers, all the just,
from Adam and "from Abel, the just one, to the last of the
elect,"[5] will be gathered together with the Father in the
universal Church.
3. The Son, therefore, came, sent by the Father. It was in
Him, before the foundation of the world, that the Father chose us
and predestined us to become adopted sons, for in Him it pleased the
Father to re-establish all things.[6] To carry out the will of
the Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth and
revealed to us the mystery of that kingdom. By His obedience He
brought about redemption. The Church, or, in other words, the
kingdom of Christ now present in mystery, grows visibly through the
power of God in the world. This inauguration and this growth are both
symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of a
crucified Jesus,[7] and are foretold in the words of the Lord
referring to His death on the Cross: "And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all things to myself".[8] As often as
the sacrifice of the cross in which Christ our Passover [9] was
sacrificed, is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is
carried on, and, in the sacrament of the eucharistic bread, the unity
of all believers who form one body in Christ [10] is both expressed
and brought about. All men are called to this union with Christ, who
is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we
live, and toward whom our whole life strains.
4. When the work which the Father gave the Son to do on earth
[11] was accomplished, the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of
Pentecost in order that He might continually sanctify the Church,
and thus, all those who believe would have access through Christ in
one Spirit to the Father.[12] He is the Spirit of Life, a
fountain of water springing up to life eternal.[13] To men, dead
in sin, the Father gives life through Him, until, in Christ, He
brings to life their mortal bodies.[14] The Spirit dwells in the
Church and in the hearts of the faithful, as in a temple.[15] In
them He prays on their behalf and bears witness to the fact that they
are adopted sons.[16] The Church, which the Spirit guides in
way of all truth[17] and which He unified in communion and in works
of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and
charismatic gifts and adorns with His fruits.[18] By the power of
the Gospel He makes the Church keep the freshness of youth.
Uninterruptedly He renews it and leads it to perfect union with its
Spouse. [19] The Spirit and the Bride both say to Jesus, the
Lord, "Come!"[20]
Thus, the Church has been seen as "a people made one with the unity
of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."[21]
5. The mystery of the holy Church is manifest in its very
foundation. The Lord Jesus set it on its course by preaching the
Good News, that is, the coming of the Kingdom of God, which, for
centuries, had been promised in the Scriptures: "The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand"[22]. In the
word, in the works, and in the presence of Christ, this kingdom was
clearly open to the view of men. The Word of the Lord is compared to
a seed which is sown in a field;[23] those who hear the Word with
faith and become part of the little flock of Christ,[24] have
received the Kingdom itself. Then, by its own power the seed sprouts
and grows until harvest time.[25] The Miracles of Jesus also
confirm that the Kingdom has already arrived on earth: "If I cast
out devils by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come
upon you".[26] Before all things, however, the Kingdom is
clearly visible in the very Person of Christ, the Son of God and
the Son of Man, who came "to serve and to give His life as a ransom
for many:"[27]
When Jesus, who had suffered the death of the cross for mankind, had
risen, He appeared as the one constituted as Lord, Christ and
eternal Priest,[28] and He poured out on His disciples the
Spirit promised by the Father.[29] From this source the
Church, equipped with the gifts of its Founder and faithfully
guarding His precepts of charity, humility and self-sacrifice,
receives the mission to proclaim and to spread among all peoples the
Kingdom of Christ and of God and to be, on earth, the initial
budding forth of that kingdom. While it slowly grows, the Church
strains toward the completed Kingdom and, with all its strength,
hopes and desires to be united in glory with its King.
6. In the old Testament the revelation of the Kingdom is often
conveyed by means of metaphors. In the same way the inner nature of
the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either
from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building or even from
family life and betrothals, the images receive preparatory shaping in
the books of the Prophets.
The Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is
Christ.[30] It is a flock of which God Himself foretold He
would be the shepherd,[31] and whose sheep, although ruled by
human shepherds; are nevertheless continuously led and nourished by
Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd and the Prince of the
shepherds,[32] who gave His life for the sheep.[33]
The Church is a piece of land to be cultivated, the village of
God.[34] On that land the ancient olive tree grows whose holy
roots were the Prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and
Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about.[35]
That land, like a choice vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly
Husbandman.[36] The true vine is Christ who gives life and the
power to bear abundant fruit to the branches, that is, to us, who
through the Church remain in Christ without whom we can do
nothing.[37]
Often the Church has also been called the building of God.[38]
The Lord Himself compared Himself to the stone which the builders
rejected, but which was made into the cornerstone.[39] On this
foundation the Church is built by the apostles,[40] and from it
the Church receives durability and consolidation. This edifice has
many names to describe it: the house of God [41] in which dwells
His family; the household of God in the Spirit;[42] the
dwelling place of God among men;[43] and, especially, the holy
temple. This Temple, symbolized in places of worship built out of
stone, is praised by the Holy Fathers and, not without reason, is
compared in the liturgy to the Holy City, the New Jerusalem
[44]. As living stones we here on earth are built into
it.[45] John contemplates this holy city coming down from heaven
at the renewal of the world as a bride made ready and adorned for her
husband.[46]
The Church, further, "that Jerusalem which is above" is also
called "our mother".[47] It is described as the spotless spouse
of the spotless Lamb,[48] whom Christ "loved and for whom He
delivered Himself up that He might sanctify her",[49] whom He
unites to Himself by an unbreakable covenant, and whom He unceasingly
"nourishes and cherishes",[50] and whom, once purified, He
willed to be cleansed and joined to Himself, subject to Him in love
and fidelity,[51] and whom, finally, He filled with heavenly
gifts for all eternity, in order that we may know the love of God and
of Christ for us, a love which surpasses all knowledge.[52] The
Church, while on earth it journeys in a foreign land away from the
Lord,[53] is life an exile. It seeks and experiences those
things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right-hand of
God, where the life of the Church is hidden with Christ in God
until it appears in glory with its Spouse.[54]
7. In the human nature united to Himself the Son of God, by
overcoming death through His own death and resurrection, redeemed man
and re-molded him into a new creation.[55] By communicating His
Spirit, Christ made His brothers, called together from all
nations, mystically the components of His own Body.
In that Body the life of Christ is poured into the believers who,
through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ
who suffered and was glorified.[56] Through Baptism we are formed
in the likeness of Christ: "For in one Spirit we were all baptized
into one body"[57]. In this sacred rite a oneness with Christ's
death and resurrection is both symbolized and brought about: "For we
were buried with Him by means of Baptism into death"; and if "we
have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be
so in the likeness of His resurrection also"[58] Really partaking
of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the eucharistic bread, we
are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. "Because
the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake
of the one bread".[59] In this way all of us are made members of
His Body,[60] "but severally members one of another".[61]
As all the members of the human body, though they are many, form one
body, so also are the faithful in Christ.[62] Also, in the
building up of Christ's Body various members and functions have their
part to play. There is only one Spirit who, according to His own
richness and the needs of the ministries, gives His different gifts
for the welfare of the Church.[63] What has a special place among
these gifts is the grace of the apostles to whose authority the Spirit
Himself subjected even those who were endowed with charisms.[64]
Giving the body unity through Himself and through His power and inner
joining of the members, this same Spirit produces and urges love among
the believers. From all this it follows that if one member endures
anything, all the members co-endure it, and if one member is
honored, all the members together rejoice.[65]
The Head of this Body is Christ. He is the image of the invisible
God and in Him all things came into being. He is before all
creatures and in Him all things hold together. He is the head of the
Body which is the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from
the dead, that in all things He might have the first place.[66]
By the greatness of His power He rules the things in heaven and the
things on earth, and with His all-surpassing perfection and way of
acting He fills the whole body with the riches of His glory. [67]
All the members ought to be molded in the likeness of Him, until
Christ be formed in them.[68] For this reason we, who have been
made to conform with Him, who have died with Him and risen with
Him, are taken up into the mysteries of His life, until we will
reign together with Him.[69] On earth, still as pilgrims in a
strange land, tracing in trial and in oppression the paths He trod,
we are made one with His sufferings like the body is one with the
Head, suffering with Him, that with Him we may be
glorified.[70]
From Him "the whole body, supplied and built up by joints and
ligaments, attains a growth that is of God".[71] He continually
distributes in His body, that is, in the Church, gifts of
ministries in which, by His own power, we serve each other unto
salvation so that, carrying out the truth in love, we might through
all things grow unto Him who is our Head.[72]
In order that we might be unceasingly renewed in Him,[73] He has
shared with us His Spirit who, existing as one and the same being in
the Head and in the members, gives life to, unifies and moves through
the whole body. This He does in such a way that His work could be
compared by the holy Fathers with the function which the principle of
life, that is, the soul, fulfills in the human body.[74]
Christ loves the Church as His bride, having become the model of a
man loving his wife as his body;[75] the Church, indeed, is
subject to its Head.[76] "Because in Him dwells all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily",[77] He fills the Church,
which is His body and His fullness, with His divine gifts [78]
so that it may expand and reach all the fullness of God.[79]
8. Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains
here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and
charity, as an entity with visible delineation [80] through which
He communicated truth and grace to all. But, the society structured
with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to
be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the
spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched
with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which
coalesces from a divine and a human element.[81] For this
reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the
incarnate Word. As the assumed nature inseparably united to Him,
serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in a
similar way, does the visible social structure of the Church serve the
Spirit of Christ, who vivifies it, in the building up of the
body.[82] [83]
This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as
one, holy, catholic and apostolic, [84] which our Saviour,
after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd,[85] and
him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority,[86]
which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the
truth".[87] This Church constituted and organized in the world
as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by
the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with
him,[88] although many elements of sanctification and of truth
are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts
belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward
catholic unity.
Just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and
persecution, so the Church is called to follow the same route that it
might communicate the fruits of salvation to men. Christ Jesus,
"though He was by nature God . . . emptied Himself, taking the
nature of a slave",[89] and "being rich, became poor"[90]
for our sakes. Thus, the Church, although it needs human resources
to carry out its mission, is not set up to seek earthly glory, but to
proclaim, even by its own example, humility and selfsacrifice.
Christ was sent by the Father "to bring good news to the poor, to
heal the contrite of heart",[91] "to seek and to save what was
lost".[92] Similarly, the Church encompasses with love all who
are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor and afflicted sees
the image of its poor and suffering Founder. It does all it can to
relieve their need and in them it strives to serve Christ. While
Christ, holy, innocent and undefiled[93] knew nothing of
sin,[94] but came to expiate only the sins of the people,[95]
the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and
always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and
renewal. The Church, "like a stranger in a foreign land, presses
forward amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of
God"[96], announcing the cross and death of the Lord until He
comes."[97] By the power of the risen Lord it is given strength
that it might, in patience and in love, overcome its sorrows and its
challenges, both within itself and from without, and that it might
reveal to the world, faithfully though darkly, the mystery of its
Lord until, in the end, it will be manifested in full light.
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