The Church as the Universal Sacrament of Salvation

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council tell us that the Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, is the Universal Sacrament of Salvation. It is in and through the Church, which is Christ’s Body and can never be separated from Christ the Head, that all peoples, from every time and place, find salvation and eternal life in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

It follows that God calls all people throughout the world to share fully in this Catholic unity by becoming members of his Catholic Church. Until this unity of the whole of humanity is achieved, all peoples are related or ordered towards the Church in varying degrees, even those who do not at present explicitly belong to it.

Sacraments, Sacred Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium

It is in and through the Catholic Church that we are able to meet the Risen and Glorified Jesus in a personal and real encounter. In the Sacraments of the Church, and most especially in the Holy Eucharist, the saving Sacrifice of love made by Jesus on the Cross is made present to us here and now, and that same saving and self-giving love is applied to our own lives. We are taken up in that self-same movement of Jesus to the Eternal Father in the Holy Spirit through the Cross and Resurrection.

In the Bible, which is the Church’s Book and which the Church alone has the authority to interpret, and through the Teaching and Tradition of the Church, Jesus continues to teach us today.

In the Church’s Teaching Authority, or Magisterium, the Church passes on this Teaching to every generation with the same authority and voice as Our Lord. It is through the Catholic Church that we come to know Jesus Christ, not just as an historical figure from the past that we can read about, or even simply by keeping his memory and message alive, but by actually coming to know and meet him as a living Person. It is only through the Church that we can be sure of a genuine, real and living encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ.

From the first moments of his earthly ministry, Jesus called to himself a community of disciples to share his life and saving work and to continue his mission. From this communion of believers he chose some as Apostles to govern, and from this college of Apostles he chose Peter as the Rock on which the Church would be built, giving to him the keys of the Kingdom, the power to bind and loose, along with the promise that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church he founded. This same structure, willed by Christ for all time, continues today in the Catholic Church.