The Church is both a historical institution founded by Jesus Christ and a mystery of communion for all people in the love of the Trinity

At the General Audience of 15 January the Holy Father continued his catechesis on the Church. In the 21^st talk of the series he spoke of the Church as a mystery of communion based on love. Here is a translation of the Pope's address, which he gave in Italian.

1. We also begin this catechesis with a beautiful text from the Letter to the Ephesians, which says: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ... as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.... In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favour of his will ... to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth" (Eph 1:3-10). With a bird's-eye view and a profound sense of the Church's mystery, St Paul is lifted up in contemplating God's eternal plan of reuniting everything in Christ the Head. Men and women, eternally chosen by the Father in his beloved Son, find in Christ the way to reach their goal as adopted children. They are united to him by becoming his Body. Through him they return to the Father as one whole with everything on earth and in heaven.

This divine plan is historically realized when Jesus institutes the Church, which he first announced (cf. Mt 16:18), and then established by the sacrifice of his blood and the mandate conferred on the Apostles to shepherd his flock. It is a historical fact as well as a mystery of communion in Christ, which the Apostle is not satisfied merely to contemplate, but in the presence of which he feels compelled to express the truth he has contemplated in a song of blessing: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ".

2. To accomplish this communion of human beings in Christ, which was eternally willed by God, the commandment which Jesus himself called "my commandment" has an essential importance (Jn 15:12). He called it "a new commandment". "I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another" (Jn 13:34). "This is my commandment: love one another as I love you" (Jn 15:12).

The commandment to love God above all things and to love one's neighbour as one's self is rooted in the Old Testament. But Jesus summarizes it, formulates it in clear-cut terms and gives it a new meaning as the sign that his followers belong to him. "This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:35). Christ himself is the living model and constitutes the measure of the love he speaks of in his commandment: "As I love you", he says. He even presents himself as the source of that love, as "the vine", which bears the fruit of this love in his disciples, who are his branches. "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). And so he exhorts them: "Remain in my love" (Jn 15:9). The community of disciples, rooted in that love with which Christ himself loved them, is the Church, the Body of Christ, the one vine of which we all are the branches. It is the Church as a communion, the Church as a community of love, the Church as a mystery of love.

3. The members of this community love Christ and in him they love one another. It is a love, however, which comes from the love with which Jesus himself loves them, and it is linked to the source of Christ's, the God-Man's, love, i.e., the communion of the Trinity. Its whole nature and its supernatural character derive from this communion and tends toward it as its definitive fulfilment. This mystery of trinitarian, Christological and ecclesial communion is revealed in John's text, which tells of the Redeemer's priestly prayer at the Last Supper. That evening Jesus said to the Father: "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me" (Jn 17:20-21). "I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them even as you loved me" (Jn 17:23)

4. In his final prayer Jesus drew the complete picture of the interpersonal and ecclesial relations which originate in him and in the Trinity, and he proposed to his disciples, and to us all, the supreme model of that "communio" which the Church is called to be by reason of her divine origin: it is he himself in his intimate communion with the Father in the life of the Trinity. In his love for us Jesus showed the extent of that commandment which he left his disciples, as he said on another occasion: "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). He said it during the sermon on the mount, when he urged them to love their enemies: "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust" (Mt 5:44-45). Many other times, especially during his passion, Jesus confirmed that this perfect love of the Father was also his love: the love with which he himself loved his own until the end.

5. This love which Jesus taught his followers, as a likeness of the same love he has, is clearly related in the priestly prayer to the model of the Trinity. "That they also may be one in us", Jesus says, "that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them" (Jn 17:26). He emphasizes that this is the love with which "You [O Father] loved me before the foundation of the world" (Jn 17:24).

And precisely this love, on which the Church is founded and built up as a "communio" of believers in Christ, is the condition of his saving mission: may they be one as we are one—he prays—so that "the world may know that you sent me" (Jn 17:23). This is the essence of the Church's apostolate: to spread and to make acceptable and believable the truth of Christ's and God's love, witnessed, made visible and practiced by her. The sacramental expression of this love is the Eucharist. In the Eucharist the Church, in a certain sense, is continually reborn and renewed as that "communio" which Christ brought to the world by fulfilling the Father's eternal plan (cf. Eph 1:3-10). Particularly in the Eucharist and through the Eucharist, the Church contains in herself the seed of the definitive union in Christ of everything in heaven and on earth, as Paul told us (cf. Eph 1:10): a truly universal and eternal communion.