Living Church

Is the Church just an institution? No. Its true nature is Motherhood, defined by tenderness and healing. As the Body of Christ, the Church holds both the divine life of the Holy Spirit and our human burdens – our sweat, our pain, our tears. We don't receive grace just for ourselves. We rely on radical interdependence, nourishing one another to build the community. The Church must be a home and a womb where everyone can be reborn in Christ. Not just by her title, but by her nature and inherent attitude, the Church must be welcoming, caring, and healing. Only through this tenderness can the Church truly be called a Mother.

Just like Christ, the Church, as the Body of Christ, possesses both human and divine dimensions. The Holy Spirit fills the Church with divine life, meaning we live by grace. Yet, we live bearing our burdens, pains, and emptiness; we sweat and weep. We, together, make up the Church, and the holiness of this Body shines brightly in our honest living and radical interdependence. Crucially, the graces we receive are not meant for ourselves alone; they run throughout the Body, nourishing and completing one another, thereby building up the community. Whether as a teacher, a scientist, a watchman, a preacher or a priest, we participate equally in the holiness of God, sustained by mutual grace.

Taking Mother Mary as the type of the Church, the entire Body, including all its members, cooperates with the will of God through this active interdependence. In doing so, we continue the life of Christ, being his own Body. That Body is the temple where God dwells; there we worship and adore God. It is Christ who is the sole truth of the Church. Consequently, the Church’s vital life and unity are threatened by any single person, devotion, or ideology that claims to be the only way. Such exclusive tendencies, by fragmenting the Body, deprive the Church of its fundamental capacity to be a Mother. The Church exists as a home and a womb where everyone can find a place and everyone can be reborn in Christ. If the Church is to embody this maternal nature, each member must strive to personalize and live out these welcoming and self-giving attitudes in their own lives.