Through her witness to Christ, the Church shows humanity the way to its complete fulfilment by sharing in the life of the risen Saviour

At the General Audience on Wednesday, 20 May, the Holy Father continued his catechesis on the mystery of the Church. In the 33^rd talk of the series he discussed how the lives of Christians are a prophetic witness to their faith in Jesus Christ. Here is the text of the Pope's address, which he gave in Italian.

1. The prophetic office which we spoke of in the previous catechesis is exercised by the Church through the witness of faith. This witness includes and highlights all the aspects of Christ's life and teaching. We find this stated in a text of Vatican II, in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, where it presents Jesus Christ as the new Man who casts his light on the otherwise insoluble riddle of life and death. "It is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh", the Council says, "that the mystery of man truly becomes clear" (Gaudium et spes, n. 22). It goes on to state that this is the help which the Church wants to offer people so that they may discover or rediscover in divine revelation their true and complete identity. We read: "The Church is entrusted with the task of opening up to man the mystery of God, who is his last end; in doing so she opens up to him the meaning of his own existence, the innermost truth about himself. The Church knows well that God alone, whom she serves, can satisfy the deepest cravings of the human heart, for the world and what it has to offer can never fully content it" (Gaudium et spes, n. 41). This means that the Church's prophetic office, which consists in proclaiming divine truth, also entails revealing to the human person the truth about himself, the truth which is revealed in all its fulness only in Christ.

2. The Church shows the human person this truth not only in a theoretical or abstract way, but also in a way which we can call existential and very concrete, because her vocation is to give people the life which is in Christ crucified and risen: as Jesus himself foretold to the Apostles, "because I live and you will live" (Jn 14: 19).

The bestowal of new life in Christ on a human person begins at the time of Baptism. St Paul states this in an incomparable way in his Letter to the Romans: "Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through Baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.... Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus" (Rom 6:3-5, 11). This is the mystery of Baptism, which is an initiation into the new life that the "New Man", Christ, shares with those who are sacramentally inserted into his one Body which is the Church.

3. In Baptism and the other sacraments we truly can say that "the Church reveals to man the meaning of his own existence" in a living and vital way. We can speak of a "sacramental evangelization" which belongs to the Church's prophetic office and enables us to understand better the truth about the Church as a "prophetic community".

The Church's prophetic ministry is expressed when she proclaims and sacramentally produces the "following of Christ" which becomes an imitation of Christ not only in a moral sense, but as a true and proper reproduction of Christ's life in the individual—a "newness of life" (Rom 6:4), a divine life, which through Christ is shared with man, as St Paul states over and over: "And even when you were dead in transgressions ... he brought you to life along with him [Christ]" (Col-2:13), "So whoever is in Christ is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17).

4. Christ, then, is the divine answer which the Church gives to basic human problems: Christ, who is perfect Man. The Council says that "whoever follows Christ ... becomes himself more a man" (Gaudium et spes, n. 41). By giving witness to the life of Christ, the "perfect Man", the Church shows every person the way to realize fully his or her own humanity. Through her preaching she offers everyone an authentic model of life, and with the sacraments she instills in believers the vital energy which allows the new life to develop and spread from member to member in the ecclesial community. For this reason, Jesus calls his disciples the "salt of the earth" and the "light of the world" (Mt 5:13-14).

5. In giving witness to Christ's life, the Church enables people to know him who, during his earthly life, most perfectly fulfilled "the greatest commandment" (Mt 22:38-40), which he himself proclaimed. He fulfilled it in its twofold dimension. In fact, through his life and death Jesus Christ showed what it means to love God "above all else" in that attitude of homage and obedience to the Father which led him to say: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work" (Jn 4:34). He also confirmed and perfectly fulfilled the love of neighbour by which he defined and conducted himself as "the Son of Man [who] did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:28).

6. The Church is a witness to the Beatitudes Jesus proclaimed (cf. Mt 5:3-12). She strives to increase in the world the number of:

—"the poor in spirit", who do not seek the goal of life in material possessions or money;

—"the meek", who reveal Christ's "meek and humble heart" and reject violence;

 —"the clean of heart", who live in truth and sincerity;

 —"those who hunger and thirst for righteousness", i.e., for the divine holiness which seeks to be established in individual and social life;

 —"the merciful', who have compassion on the suffering and help them;

 —"the peacemakers", who foster reconciliation and understanding between individuals and nations.

 7. The Church is a witness and bearer of the sacrificial offering which Christ made of himself. She follows the way of the cross and always remembers the fruitfulness of suffering borne and offered in union with the Saviour's sacrifice. Her prophetic office is exercised in recognizing the value of the cross. Therefore, the Church strives especially to live the Beatitudes of the suffering and the persecuted.

Jesus predicted persecution for his disciples (cf. Mt 24:9, par.). Perseverance in persecution is part of the witness which the Church gives to Christ: from the martyrdom of St Stephen (cf. Acts 7:55-60), the Apostles, their early successors and so many Christians, to the sufferings of Bishops, priests, religious and the faithful who in our day have also shed their blood and suffered torture, imprisonment and humiliations of every kind for their fidelity to Christ.

The Church is a witness to the resurrection; a witness to the joy of the Good News; a witness to eternal happiness and to that happiness which is already present in earthly life and which the risen Christ gives, as we shall see in the next catechesis.

8. In giving this multifaceted witness to the life of Christ, the Church fulfils the prophetic office proper to her. At the same time, through this prophetic witness she "reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling", as the Council said (Gaudium et spes, n. 22).

It is a question of a prophetic mission which has a clearly Christocentric meaning and which, precisely for this reason, has a profound anthropological value, as a light and vital force coming from the incarnate Word. Today more than ever the Church is involved in this mission on behalf of human beings, for she knows that in human salvation the glory of God is achieved. For this reason, from my very first Encyclical, Redemptor hominis, I have said that "man is the way for the Church" (Redemptor hominis, n. 14).