We, the Church

“If two or three, gathered in the name of Jesus, call to Jesus and Christ is in their midst, then they actually become what we could define as a “perfect society”, being two persons together with God-made-Man. It is – in embryo – the “human-divine” society, namely the Church. But it is important to note that what is asked of us is to “gather together”, to “dialogue” as contemporary social philosophy puts it.

We see what happens when someone keeps to themselves, segregating themselves individualistically from others. As in the example of electricity, when the two poles do not make contact, no light is generated. Now, God’s grace makes use of human channels, and of natural elements such as water (Baptism) and bread (Eucharist) etc, almost as a continuation of the incarnation. In the same way, when one person is placed alongside another, and love springs to life between them: a light appears on the earth. This light is Christ who is Love, and our access to the fount (of Love) is opened up. Jesus came to break the chains of isolation and the bitterness of exile. He did not come to constitute separate individualities but rather a society, an “organic” living together which, as in every form of life, has Love as its guiding law. In order to love, there must be at least two persons, and in order to form a society there must be love.

As “love comes from God” (1 John, 4:7), loving is actually allowing God to live in us, allowing God to be among us. So, loving – which involves putting in common (communicating) one’s own soul with the soul of the person being loved – is not so much in order to achieve joy and peace for oneself, and not even to give peace and joy to the other person, bur rather so that God can live among the two. The crowning glory of love is “making yourself one”, the oneness that is, in fact, Christ. In this way, the mystical Christ becomes present in the one who loves and in the one being loved.

With this step, we look forward to experiencing the fullness of Christ, the building up of the “complete” Christ. Loving someone in Christ allows the Holy Spirit to circulate between the two. And it is the same Holy Spirit who circulates between the Father and the Son. It is therefore the life of the Holy Trinity alive in them. In this way we find ourselves 24 hours a day participating in another most mysterious and immense achievement: the construction, stone by stone, of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. In this, we are collaborating with God as we use our strength and live our lives for this, while at the same time contributing to the communion of saints.

This means each person is Christ for their brother or sister, and each sister or brother is Christ for the other person.

This society with the Trinity is the Church. Loving one another in Christ is to live with the Church, to live the Church and at the same time to bring it to completion, to the point of its fulfillment.

Christianity’s perfection lies in understanding, and above all, in living the mystical Body. The health of all its members depends on the orderly functioning of this Body. If it exudes health, then all its members feel the benefit; if it produces toxins, then everyone else suffers too. The ills of the body of the Church cannot be cured by polemics or past regrets, but only by its own holiness, which can act as healthy globulins, released by each cell into the body’s circulatory system.

The mystical Body has an effect on the body of society in the same way as the soul affects the physical body.

All the good that the mystical Body achieves on earth is the spirit of God present in humanity. It is God who lives among the people, bringing them back to Himself. The Church is the vehicle for bringing creation back to the Creator.”

Igino Giordani, La divina avventura, (The divine adventure), Città Nuova, Roma, 1993, pp.47-64.