“Reflect deeply on this. I cannot overemphasize its importance. Fix your eyes on the crucified and everything else will seem insignificant. Since Christ demonstrated his love by doing such amazing things and suffering so radically for us, how can your mere words be enough to please the Beloved? Do you know what it means to be truly spiritual? It means to become a slave to God. We are branded with the sign of the cross. It is the token we have given him our freedom. Now he can offer us as servants to the whole world, as he offers himself.” – St. Teresa of Avila
The visible Church itself is the Lord’s mystical body. The Church is the visible expression of Christ’s grace and redemption, realized in the form of a society which is a sign. Any attempt at dualism here is the work of evil – as if one could play off the inward communion in grace with Christ against the juridical society of the Church, or vice versa. The Church therefore is not merely a means of salvation. It is Christ’s salvation itself, this salvation as visibly realized in this world.- Edward Schillebeeckx O.P.
“‘Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.’” – Luke 10:16