Chapter VII of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is entitled “The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church and Its Union with the Church in Heaven.” It continues as follows:
“48. . . . Joined with Christ in the Church and signed with the Holy Spirit ‘who is the pledge of our inheritance’,(245) truly we are called and we are sons of God(246) but we have not yet appeared with Christ in glory,(247) in which we shall be like to God, since we shall see Him as He is.(248) And therefore ‘while we are in the body, we are exiled from the Lord (249) and having the first-fruits of the Spirit we groan within ourselves(250) and we desire to be with Christ’.(251) By that same charity however, we are urged to live more for Him, who died for us and rose again.(252) We strive therefore to please God in all things(253) and we put on the armor of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil and resist in the evil day.(254) Since however we know not the day nor the hour, on Our Lord’s advice we must be constantly vigilant so that, having finished the course of our earthly life,(255) we may merit to enter into the marriage feast with Him and to be numbered among the blessed(256) and that we may not be ordered to go into eternal fire(257) like the wicked and slothful servant,(258) into the exterior darkness where ‘there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth’.(259) For before we reign with Christ in glory, all of us will be made manifest ‘before the tribunal of Christ, so that each one may receive what he has won through the body, according to his works, whether good or evil’(260) and at the end of the world ‘they who have done good shall come forth unto resurrection of life; but those who have done evil unto resurrection of judgment’.(261) Reckoning therefore that ‘the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us’,(262) strong in faith we look for the ‘blessed hope and the glorious coming of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ’(263) ‘who will refashion the body of our lowliness, conforming it to the body of His glory’(264), and who will come ‘to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at in all those who have believed’(265).”
(245) Ephesians 1:14.
(246) Cf. 1 John 3:1.
(247) Cf. Colossians 3.4
(248) Cf. 1 John 3:2.
(249) 2 Corinthians 5:6.
(250) Cf. Romans 8:23.
(251) Cf. Philippians 1:23.
(252) Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:15.
(253) Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:9.
(254) Cf. Ephesians 6:11-13.
(255) Cf. Hebrews 9:27.
(256) Cf. Matthew 25:31-46.
(257) Cf. Matthew 25:41.
(258) Cf. Matthew 25:26.
(259) Matthew 22:13 and 25:30.
(260) 2 Corinthians 5:10.
(261) John 5:29; Cf. Matthew 25:46.
(262) Romans 8:18; Cf. 2 Timothy 2.11-12.
(263) Titus 2:13.
(264) Philippians 3,:21.
(265) 2 Thessalonians 1:10.
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