THE MYSTICAL NATURE OF THE CHURCH

The Church as a mystery links the church dynamically
and inseparably to the mystery of the Trinity.
It rises from the father’s eternal design to raise
all men and women to participate in the divine life.
This also involves the gathering of all men and
women who believe in Christ under the church.

“and made manifest in the outpouring of
Established in the last age of the world,
the spirit, it will be brought to glorious
completion at the end of time. At that moment,
as the fathers put it, All the just from the time
of Adam, from Abel, the just one, to the last of
the elect Will be gathered together with the father
in the universal church”

Mystery in this context did not refer to the unknowability
or incomprehensibility of the church. It refers to the
transcendtal nature of the church which is revealed and
manifested in a sensible way. It is indeed a complex
reality that comprises of divine and human, seen and
unseen, charismatic and institutional elements.
However, the mystery of the church does not exclude
the visible and institutional.
“the universality of the church is founded
on the universal will of God to save. This
mystery has it’s source in the salvific
mission of the son to restore all things
and inaugarate the kingdom of God in
the world and effect the union of all
men and women by his paschal mystery.”

In this regard the Holy spirit is also on
mission to continue and perpetuate the
mystery by his abiding and efficacious
presence in the church. Through the action
of the Holy spirit the church received
sanctification so that all the believers
in Christ shall have access to the father
through the son in the one spirit.

The mystery of the holy church
is already brought to light in the
way it was founded. For the lord
Jesus inaugurated his church by preaching
the good news, that is the coming of
the kingdow of God, promised over the
ages in the scriptures.

The church as a mystery is not a surrender to
esoterism, relativism or indifference but a
consciousness of the teleological, mission-oriented,
Trinitarian vision of the church of Christ.Therefore
the universal church is seen as a people brought into
unity from the unity of the father, the son and the
Holy Spirit.

“Henceforward the church endowed with the
gift of her founder and faithfully observing
his precepts of charity, humility and self
denial, receives the mission of proclaiming
and establishing among all peoples the kingdom
of Christ and of God, and she is, on
earth, the seed and the beginning of
that kingdom”

In the gospel of John, Jesus Christ prayed for the
unity of all believers “I pray not only for them but
also for those who will believe in me through their
word, so that they may all be one, as you, father,
are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me” John 17:20-21.