Pope reflects on relation between Church’s ‘visible and spiritual reality’
October 29, 2014
Continuing his series of Wednesday general audiences on the Church, Pope Francis devoted his October 29 audience to the relationship between the visible reality and the spiritual reality of the Church.
The Church, he said, includes all the baptized, and not simply priests and religious. “So many acts of love, so much faithfulness in families, so much work in educating children, to carry on, to transmit the faith, so much suffering in the sick who offer their suffering to the Lord,” he said. “How can one know of all the wonderful things that, through us, Christ is able to operate in the hearts and lives of each person?”
He continued:
Even in Christ, in fact, through the mystery of the Incarnation, we recognize a human nature and a divine nature, united in the same person in a wonderful and indissoluble way. This applies in a similar manner to the Church. Just as in Christ, human nature serves the divine in accordance with the fulfillment of Salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible reality serve the spiritual reality of the Church. The Church, therefore, is also a mystery, in which what is not seen is more important than what is seen, and can only be recognized with the eyes of faith
“Look, how Christ used his humanity, because he was also a man, to announce and carry out God's plan of redemption and salvation, so it must be for the Church,” he added. “Through its visible reality-- everything we see, the sacraments and testimony of all of us Christians-- it is called every day to draw closer to every person, starting with the poor, those who suffer and those who are marginalized, in order to continue to help all feel the compassionate and merciful gaze of Jesus.”
Pope Francis concluded by reflecting on Christians who give scandal to nonbelievers through their poor example. “Yes, we can become a source of scandal but we can also be a source of hope through our lives our witness, just as Jesus wants.”
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