Sublime

How someone treats His Church is the same as how they treat Jesus. When the Father looks at the Church, He sees His beloved Son, as they have become joined together as one.

It sees Jesus in light of his communion with the Father, which is the true center of his personality; without it, we cannot understand him at all, and it is from this center that he makes himself present to us still today.

This is the ultimate destiny of Church – to show heaven, in its entirety, who God is and what He is like.

The spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth, the training of disciples to follow and obey Christ, and the formation of churches are all at the very heart of God’s Mission.

While Christ “holy, blameless, unstained” (Heb 7, 26) knew no sin (see 2 Cor 5, 21), and came only to expiate the sins of the people (see Heb 2, 17), the church, containing sinners in its own bosom, is at one and the same time holy and always in need of purification and it pursues unceasingly penance and renewal.