la Chiesa comunione

(Speech of Rev. Mo Father George Marie Martin Cottier

Teologician of the Pontificial House

The Church is a mystery of faith. It must be seen with the eyes of the faith. It is a mystery as it is inscribed in the salvific plan of God.

This mystery is a mystery of communion. This is the main intuition of the Lumen gentium Constitution underlined by the posterior reflexion.

The conciliar text, in fact, by mentioning Saint Cipriano, stands that the universal Church is like a people who receives the unity from the unity of its Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, de unitate Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti plebs adunata (n.4).

By talking of communion, we enter the nature of this unity. It is given to us, it is communicated to us by Christ the only mediator between God and the uman beings: the Church, which is his body is held out entirely to Christ. It is nothing without Christ. It lives of the divine life that we share with God. " God has summoned all those who rely on J esus, who is the author of the salavation and principle of unity and peace, still says the Council, and with him he rected the Church, in order to be the visible sacrament of this salvific unity, for the eyes of all and each one," (n.9, cf. also n.1).

It is communion; it introduce us to the divine life: This is the mystery of the grace. The Church communicates and diffuses this partecipation. The Church shows the mystery of Christ.

On the eve of the celebration of All Saints, remember one of his names: communion of saints.

Later, I would like to underline two points.

In 1977, the Holy Father proclamed Saint Theresa of Lisieux, who was already Patron of the Missions, Doctor of the Church.

Let's mention the main text of her message (manuscript B) where Therese tells us, after having searched with distress

which was her ecclesial vocation, how she realised that the Church has a heart, and that this heart burns with love. The divine love which has been lavished into our hearts through the Saint Spirit which has been given to us (cf. Rm 5, 5) here is her vocation.

It is clear, then, the deepness of comunnion. And our being ecclesial, is life and this life is the love of charity. So, the Church calls, to the holiness, those who are baptized, ,that holiness which is formed by the perfection of the charity (cf. Lumen gentium, c.V.)

The New Millennium Ineunte in the proceeding of the Council will stand that the first fundament in the pastoral program which is present today in the Church, is the research of the holiness (n. 30). Church and holiness: is the first subject that brings the theologian to the reflection.

The second theme is connected to the previous one. ........on the paradox of the christian vocation. The Church, the Body of Christ, is the immage of the enbodied Word, true God and true man. But while, in virtue of the hypostatic union, the umanity of Jesus is perfectly holy, we receive the divine life in vases of clay, we are settled by the sin, then, the first effect of the grace is the convertion in us

The sin is an obstacle for our ecclesial condition which must defeated the sin. The sin in us is an offence to our deep identity. Here is an other theme of meditation for the theologian: The Church is without sin and its sinner members are called to the convertion and holiness. This paradox lits up the approach of asking for forgiveness and the purification of the memory. Other themes may be shown, for example the universality of the salvation in Jesus Christ and the degrees of the belonging to the Church (cf. Lumen Gentium, 13-17).