Lumen Gentium: The Mystery of the Church (8, continued)

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

“8. . . . Just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and persecution, so the Church is called to follow the same route that it might communicate the fruits of salvation to men. Christ Jesus, ‘though He was by nature God . . . emptied Himself, taking the nature of a slave’,(77) and ‘being rich, became poor’(78) for our sakes. Thus, the Church, although it needs human resources to carry out its mission, is not set up to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim, even by its own example, humility and self-sacrifice. Christ was sent by the Father ‘to bring good news to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart’,(79) ‘to seek and to save what was lost’.(80) Similarly, the Church encompasses with love all who are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor and afflicted sees the image of its poor and suffering Founder. It does all it can to relieve their need and in them it strives to serve Christ. While Christ, holy, innocent and undefiled(81) knew nothing of sin,(82) but came to expiate only the sins of the people,(83) the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal. The Church, ‘like a stranger in a foreign land, presses forward amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God’(14*), announcing the cross and death of the Lord until He comes.(84) By the power of the risen Lord it is given strength that it might, in patience and in love, overcome its sorrows and its challenges, both within itself and from without, and that it might reveal to the world, faithfully though darkly, the mystery of its Lord until, in the end, it will be manifested in full light.”

(77) Philippians 2:6.

(78) 2 Corinthians 8:9.

(79) Luke 4:18.

(80) Luke 19:10.

(81) Hebrews 7:26.

(82) 2 Corinthians 5:21.

(83) Cf. Hebrews 2:17.

(84) Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:26.

(14*) S. Augustinus, Civ. Dei, XVIII, 51, 2: PL 41, 614.

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Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium