Church as Communio

Pope John Paul II, Church in Oceana, Dec 5, 2001, Par. 10

"The Second Vatican Council chose the notion of communio as particularly apt to express the profound mystery of the Church; (Cf. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 4; 8; 13-15; 21; 24-25) and the Extraordinary Synod Assembly of 1985 has made us more conscious of communio as the very heart of the Church. So too the Synod Fathers declared that "the Church is essentially a mystery of communion, a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This sharing of the life of the Blessed Trinity is the source and inspiration of all Christian relationships and every form of Christian community" (Propositio 44). This understanding was the spiritual and doctrinal background of all the Synod's deliberations. It is "complemented and illustrated in the understanding of the Church as the People of God and the community of disciples. Church as communion recognises the basic equality of all Christ's faithful, lay, religious and ordained. The communion is shaped and enlivened by the Holy Spirit's gifts of offices and charisms" (ibid.).

The communio of the Church is a gift of the Blessed Trinity, whose deep inner life is most marvellously shared with humanity. Communio is the fruit of God's loving initiative, fulfilled in the Paschal Mystery of Christ by which the Church shares in the divine communio of love between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5). On the day of Pentecost, Christ's Passover was brought to completion by the outpouring of the Spirit, which gave us the first fruits of our inheritance, a share in the life of the Triune God, which enables us to love "as God loved us" (1 Jn 4:11). "


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