LESSON 16
The Church following the apostolic and sub-apostolic age. The time of the Church as the time of the preaching of the Gospel, faith, witness and merit. The Church, community of believers and instrument of salvation. The lasting figure of the Church, until the end of time, just as Christ founded her.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no 149, teaches:
The Church finds her origin and fulfillment in the eternal plan of God. She was prepared for in the Old Covenant with the election of Israel, the sign of the future gathering of all the nations. Founded by the words and actions of Jesus Christ, fulfilled by his redeeming death and Resurrection, the Church has been manifested as the mystery of salvation by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. She will be perfected in the glory of heaven as the assembly of all the redeemed of the earth.
After the initial impulse, the Church had to continue witnessing to Christ. She had been sent to announce Him to all the nations and, in obedience to Jesus’ imperative command, Christian men have to continue striving to bring the Good News to all men.
The Church is essentially Catholic and missionary: Catholic because "[a]ll men are called to belong to the new people of God" (Lumen Gentium, no 13) and missionary because its purpose is to prolong throughout history the missions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father. Jesus wanted his universal missionary Church to be a community of faith. Lumen Gentium, no 2 teaches: The Father "planned to assemble in the holy Church all those who would believe in Christ."
The light of Christ must shine in the world through his Church, that is "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," says Lumen Gentium, no 1. In order to be light, the Church has to witness in a manifest way, not only Christ but also fraternal charity among men. "In this way they will know that you are my disciples if you love one another" (John 13:35). This is why when the Church, partially and temporarily, ceases to bear witness to charity, its light becomes dimmed , brings scandal to men and loses its transforming efficacy.
Finally the Church is an instrument of God to build up a treasure of merits for mankind, to benefit from it: merit belongs to Christ, but those who have been justified by him and are informed by charity, can transform all their actions into an opportunity to increase that treasure of merits , placing it at the disposal of all men , including those brothers of ours who are still being purified in purgatory.
In obedience to Christ the Church should always shine with those marks with which Christ Himself wanted Her to be endowed , being One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, as we pray in the Creed since apostolic times.
Lumen Gentium, no 2 teaches us:
The eternal Father, in accordance with he utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the whole universe and chose to raise up a new to share in his own divine life.
The family of God is being gradually formed, taking shape along the steps of human history, in keeping with the Father’s plan. In fact, Lumen Gentium (no 2) also says:
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. 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
St John tells us that "to those who receive him, he gave them the power of becoming children of God" (John 1:12). The Church is already the family of those who believe in Christ, hope in Him and love Him; but given our condition here on earth, it does not exclude sinners from its bosom, but on the contrary provides them with the means to return to the house of the Father.
Christian life will reach its perfection in the beatific vision in Heaven, completed afterwards with the resurrection of our bodies at the end of time, wonders that will happen not by our efforts alone but above all by the Grace that Christ has won for us. Outside the Church there is no salvation because there cannot be any except in and through Christ and the Church is Christ’s Body .
The Church in heaven is salvation in Christ, the perfection of the kingdom of God, but, in this world , the Church already provides the believer a foretaste of the life in union with the Blessed Trinity together with the joy of knowing that we have already been made children of God. For others it is only a sign of God’s mercy, a shower of truth and goodness, a testimony of the divine presence in the world . And finally, for some it is a stumbling block, or simply is nonexistent: yet the Spirit of God is already working in their souls in preparation for the Kingdom, helping them to direct their lives to their ultimate destiny as God’s children.
The Lord promised mankind in the Old Testament that someone whose kingdom will have no end will bring peace and blessedness to all nations of the world.
Jesus told his Apostles to go and preach that the Kingdom was already at hand, to teach all men what he had taught to them, comforting them by saying that "I will be with you until the end of time" (Matthew 28:20). Through the Church , as he had done before through the people of Israel, He established now with the world a new and everlasting Covenant.
Contemplating the progressive unfolding of the history of salvation, we may ask ourselves if there could not be other covenants or other paths open to men. The answer is negative.
Around the year 1,000, there was a group that preached a new Church of the Holy Spirit. They were condemned since the Church founded by Jesus was already the Church to which the Holy Spirit had been sent. Now, we hear again about new models of Church, about alternative paths to salvation and even about the coming of a New Age, the one of Aquarius.
Regardless of the limited merits these proposals could have, the answer of the Christians is always on the negative. The summit of the History of Salvation was reached in the Golgotha. Led now by the Spirit, we will continue working building up God’s Kingdom , with the help of his Grace and our personal correspondence to it, listening to Jesus’ voice until the end of the world. An end that will occur when "the number of the elected is already completed".
(This chapter, aside from the quotation from the CCCC is an edited version of J de Pedro's manuscript of History of Salvation.)