Holy Spirit Encyclical (cont'd) - Part III -Section 5, paragraph 64

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

St. JPII practiced what he preached. When he spoke to the world after being made Pope, he said: “Be not afraid! Open wide the doors of your heart to Christ”. He did this himself and he received all the graces he needed, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be Pope – Christ’s Vicar on earth, and to lead His Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us hear what he wrote:

1. If the Church is the sacrament of intimate union with God, she is such in Jesus Christ, in whom this same union is accomplished as a salvific reality. She is such in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. The fullness of the salvific reality, which is Christ in history, extends in a sacramental way in the power of the Spirit Paraclete. In this way the Holy Spirit is “another Counselor,” or new Counselor, because through his action the Good News takes shape in human minds and hearts and extends through history. In all this it is the Holy Spirit who gives life.

When we use the word “sacrament” in reference to the Church, we must bear in mind that in the texts of the Council the sacramentality of the Church appears as distinct from the sacramentality that is proper, in the strict sense, to the Sacraments. Thus we read: “The Church is…in the nature of a sacrament-a sign and instrument of communion with God.” But what matters and what emerges from the analogical sense in which the word is used in the two cases is the relationship which the Church has with the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone gives life: the Church is the sign and instrument of the presence and action of the life-giving Spirit.

Vatican II adds that the Church is "a sacrament. . . of the unity of all mankind. "Obviously it is a question of the unity which the human race which in itself is differentiated in various ways-has from God and in God. This unity has its roots in the mystery of creation and acquires a new dimension in the mystery of the Redemption, which is ordered to universal salvation. Since God "wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,"279 the Redemption includes all humanity and in a certain way all of creation. In the same universal dimension of Redemption the Holy Spirit is acting, by virtue of the “departure of Christ.” Therefore the Church, rooted through her own mystery in the Trinitarian plan of salvation with good reason regards herself as the “sacrament of the unity of the whole human race.” She knows that she is such through the power of the Holy Spirit, of which power she is a sign and instrument in the fulfillment of God’s salvific plan.

In this way the “condescension” of the infinite Trinitarian Love is brought about: God, who is infinite Spirit, comes close to the visible world. The Triune God communicates himself to man in the Holy Spirit from the beginning through his “image and likeness.” Under the action of the same Spirit, man, and through him the created world, which has been redeemed by Christ, draw near to their ultimate destinies in God. The Church is “a sacrament, that is sign and instrument” of this coming together of the two poles of creation and redemption, God and man. She strives to restore and strengthen the unity at the very roots of the human race: in the relationship of communion that man has with God as his Creator, Lord and Redeemer. This is a truth which on the basis of the Council’s teaching we can meditate on, explain and apply in all the fullness of its meaning in this phase of transition from the second to the third Christian Millennium. And we rejoice to realize ever more clearly that within the work carried out by the Church in the history of salvation. which is part of the history of humanity, the Holy Spirit is present and at work-he who with the breath of divine life permeates man’s earthly pilgrimage and causes all creation, all history, to flow together to its ultimate end, in the infinite ocean of God.

Again and again, I hear through St. JPII’s words, the identification of Mary as “Escatalogical icon of the Church” (title given to her in the Catechism of the Catholic Church). Mary is Mother as the Church is Mother, given by Christ to all, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary, our Mother and Model, pray for us.