Nurtured by the Church by Jorge Mario Bergoglio

JESUS ESTABLISHES THE CHURCH, and he establishes us within the Church. The mystery of the Church is closely united to the mystery of Mary, mother of God and mother of the Church. Mary brings us forth and cares for us, and the Church does also. Mary helps us grow, and the Church does also. And at the hour of death, the priest bids us farewell in the name of the Church and leaves us in the arms of Mary. She is "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Apoc 12: 1). That is the Church and that is the modest Virgin that our faithful people venerate. That is why in speaking of the Church we need to feel the same devotion as we feel for the Virgin Mary. A favorite expression of Saint Ignatius was Santa Madre Iglesia hierarchica, "our holy Mother the hierarchical Church" (SpEx 353). This expression evokes three concepts that are linked to one another: holiness, fruitfulness, and discipline.

WE WERE BROUGHT FORTH for holiness within the body of our holy Mother the Church. Keeping ourselves firmly inserted in that holy body is the key to our apostolic fruitfulness and our calling to "be holy and immaculate in God's presence. " The Church is holy: it is present to the world "as a sign-simultaneously obscure and luminous-of a new presence of Jesus, of his departure and of his permanent presence. She prolongs and continues him" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15). The Church's holiness is manifest in "the intimate life of this community-the life of listening to the Word and the apostles' teaching, of charity lived in a fraternal way, of sharing of bread (cf. Acts 2: 42-46; 4: 32-35; 5: 12-16). This intimate life acquires its full meaning only when it becomes a witness, when it evokes admiration and conversion, and when it becomes the preaching and proclamation of the Good News" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15). The Church's holiness is not naïve, for she knows that "she is the People of God immersed in the world and often tempted by idols, and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the ‘mighty works of God' (cf. Acts 2: 11; 1 Pet 2: 9) which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by him and reunited" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15). The holy Church Fathers expressed this mystery of the Church's holiness by calling her casta meretrix, the "chaste prostitute. " The Church's holiness is reflected in the face of Mary, the sinless one, the pure and spotless one, but she does not forget that she gathers in her bosom the children of Eve, mother of all us sinners.