Lumen Gentium: The Mystery of the Church (7)

Chapter I of Lumen Gentium is entitled “The Mystery of the Church.” It continues as follows:

“7. In the human nature united to Himself the Son of God, by overcoming death through His own death and resurrection, redeemed man and re-molded him into a new creation.(50) By communicating His Spirit, Christ made His brothers, called together from all nations, mystically the components of His own Body.

“In that Body the life of Christ is poured into the believers who, through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ who suffered and was glorified.(6*) Through Baptism we are formed in the likeness of Christ: ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body’.(51) In this sacred rite a oneness with Christ’s death and resurrection is both symbolized and brought about: ‘For we were buried with Him by means of Baptism into death’; and if ‘we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be so in the likeness of His resurrection also’.(52) Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. ‘Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread’.(53) In this way all of us are made members of His Body,(54) ‘but severally members one of another’.(55)”

(50) Cf. Galatians 6:15; 2 Corinthians 5:17.

(51) 1 Corinthians 12:13.

(52) Romans 6:15.

(53) 1 Corinthians 10:17.

(54) Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:27.

(55) Romans 12:5.

(6*) Cfr. S. Thomas, Summa Theol. III, q. 62, a. 5, ad 1.

 

To access the complete document, please visit:

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium