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Category: Believe

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In the new series of Catecheses that began a few weeks ago, we are considering the origins of the Church so as to understand Jesus' original plan and thereby grasp the essential of the Church that lives on through the changing times. Thus, we also understand the reason for our being in the Church and how we must strive to live it at the dawn of a new Christian millennium.

In thinking about the newborn Church, we can discover two aspects:  a first aspect is strongly highlighted by St Irenaeus of Lyons, a martyr and great theologian of the end of the second century, the first to have given us a theology that was to a certain extent systematic. St Irenaeus wrote:  "Wherever the Church is, God's Spirit is too; and wherever God's Spirit is, there is the Church and every grace; for the Spirit is truth" (Adversus Haereses, III, 24, 1:  PG 7, 966).

Thus, a deep bond exists between the Holy Spirit and the Church. The Holy Spirit builds the Church and gives her the truth; he pours out love, as St Paul says, into the hearts of believers (cf. Rom 5: 5).

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Category: Believe

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Through her apostolic ministry the Church, a community gathered by the Son of God who came in the flesh, will live on through the passing times, building up and nourishing the communion in Christ and in the Holy Spirit to which all are called and in which they can experience the salvation given by the Father.

The Twelve - as Pope Clement, the third Successor of Peter, said at the end of the first century - took pains, in fact, to prepare successors (cf. I Clem 42: 4), so that the mission entrusted to them would be continued after their death. The Church, organically structured under the guidance of her legitimate Pastors, has thus continued down the ages to live in the world as a mystery of communion in which, to a certain extent, the Trinitarian Communion itself is mirrored.

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Category: Believe

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Letter to the Ephesians presents the Church to us as a structure built "upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone" (Eph 2: 20). In the Book of Revelation the role of the Apostles, and more specifically, of the Twelve, is explained in the eschatological perspective of the heavenly Jerusalem, presented as a city whose walls "had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb" (21: 14).

The Gospels agree in mentioning that the call of the Apostles marked the first steps of Jesus' ministry, after the baptism he received from John the Baptist in the waters of the Jordan.

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Category: Believe

Pope Benedict has been giving, during his weekly General Audiences, an extraordinary series of short talks about the Church, the Apostles and the Church Fathers. What better guide can we have to the early history of the Church.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Following the Catecheses on the Psalms and Canticles of Lauds and of Vespers, I would like to dedicate the upcoming Wednesday Audiences to the mystery of the relationship between Christ and the Church, reflecting upon it from the experience of the Apostles, in light of the duty entrusted to them.

The Church was built on the foundation of the Apostles as a community of faith, hope and charity. Through the Apostles, we come to Jesus himself. The Church begins to establish herself when some fishermen of Galilee meet Jesus, allowing themselves to be won over by his gaze, his voice, his warm and strong invitation:  "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men" (Mk 1: 17; Mt 4: 19).

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Category: Believe

Via Fr Tim Finigan's blog, the Hermeneutic of Continuity , ten suggestions for Advent as we prepare for the feast of our Saviour's birth.

1. Go to Confession
2. Have some daily family prayers
3. Buy Christmas cards that portray a scene from the Nativity of Christ.

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