Food for Thought

Oct 30, 2015

In 1992, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church titled Some Aspects of the Church as Communion. Communion, the document said “involves a double dimension.” There is communion with God and communion among people.

The Church, the document says, “is not a reality closed in on herself; rather, she is permanently open to missionary and ecumenical endeavor, for she is sent to the world to announce and witness, to make present and spread the mystery of communion that is essential to her: to gather together all people and all things into Christ.”

And it’s important, the document said, that Christians understand that communion be “recognized, above all, as a gift from God, as a fruit of God’s initiative, carried out in the paschal mystery. The new relationship between man and God that has been established in Christ is communicated through the sacraments, but it “also extends to a new relationship among human beings.”