When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm Humanity, she implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of faith the gathering together of everyone and everything in him who has "the keys of Death and Hades," who "is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." 174

The vocation of Humanity is to show forth the image of God and to be transformed into the image of the Father's only Son. This vocation takes a personal form Since each of us is called to enter into the divine beatitude; it also concerns the human community as a whole.

The Eucharist, the sacrament of our Salvation accomplished by Christ on the cross, is also a sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for the work of creation. In the Eucharistic sacrifice the whole of creation Loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and the Resurrection of Christ. Through Christ the Church can offer the sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for all that God has made good, beautiful, and just in creation and in Humanity.

Sacred Scripture calls this mysterious renewal, which will transform Humanity and the world, "new heavens and a new earth." 630 It will be the definitive realization of God's plan to bring under a Single head "all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth." 631

Her role in relation to the Church and to all Humanity goes still further. "In a wholly Singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reaSon she is a mother to us in the order of grace." 509

By her very mission, "the Church . . . travels the same journey as all Humanity and shares the same earthly lot with the world: she is to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ and transformation into the family of God." 351 Missionary endeavor requires patience. It begins with the proclamation of the Gospel to peoples and groups who do not yet believe in Christ, 352 continues with the establishment of Christian communities that are "a sign of God's presence in the world," 353 and leads to the foundation of local churches. 354 It must involve a process of inculturation if the Gospel is to take flesh in each people's culture. 355 There will be times of defeat. "With regard to individuals, groups, and peoples it is only by degrees that [the Church] touches and penetrates them and so receives them into a fullness which is Catholic." 356

To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by Sin, the Father willed to call the whole of Humanity together into his Son's Church. the Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and Salvation. the Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood. 334

As sacrament, the Church is Christ's instrument. "She is taken up by him also as the instrument for the Salvation of all," "the universal sacrament of salvation," by which Christ is "at once manifesting and actualizing the Mystery of God's Love for men." 199 The Church "is the visible plan of God's love for Humanity," because God desires "that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit." 200

The Greek word mysterion was translated into Latin by two terms: mystenum and sacramentum. In later usage the term sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of Salvation which was indicated by the term mystenum. In this sense, Christ himself is the Mystery of salvation: "For there is no other mystery of God, except Christ." 196 The saving work of his holy and sanctifying Humanity is the sacrament of salvation, which is revealed and active in the Church's sacraments (which the Eastern Churches also call "the holy mysteries"). the seven sacraments are the signs and instruments by which the Holy Spirit spreads the grace of Christ the head throughout the Church which is his Body. the Church, then, both contains and communicates the invisible grace she signifies. It is in this analogical sense, that the Church is called a "sacrament."

"Christ is the light of Humanity; and it is, accordingly, the heart-felt desire of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that, by proclaiming his Gospel to every creature, it may bring to all men that light of Christ which shines out visibly from the Church." 135 These words open the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. By chooSing this starting point, the Council demonstrates that the article of faith about the Church depends entirely on the articles concerning Christ Jesus. the Church has no other light than Christ's; according to a favorite image of the Church Fathers, the Church is like the moon, all its light reflected from the sun.

Anointing. the symbolism of anointing with oil also signifies the Holy Spirit, 30 to the point of becoming a synonym for the Holy Spirit. In Christian initiation, anointing is the sacramental sign of Confirmation, called "chrismation" in the Churches of the East. Its full force can be grasped only in relation to the primary anointing accomplished by the Holy Spirit, that of Jesus. Christ (in Hebrew "messiah") means the one "anointed" by God's Spirit. There were several anointed ones of the Lord in the Old Covenant, pre-eminently King David. 31 But Jesus is God's Anointed in a unique way: the Humanity the Son assumed was entirely anointed by the Holy Spirit. the Holy Spirit established him as "Christ." 32 The Virgin Mary conceived Christ by the Holy Spirit who, through the angel, proclaimed him the Christ at his birth, and prompted Simeon to come to the temple to see the Christ of the Lord. 33 The Spirit filled Christ and the power of the Spirit went out from him in his acts of healing and of saving. 34 Finally, it was the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. 35 Now, fully established as "Christ" in his humanity victorious over death, Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit abundantly until "the saints" constitute - in their union with the humanity of the Son of God - that perfect man "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ": 36 "the whole Christ," in St. Augustine's expression.

It is incumbent on those who exercise authority to strengthen the values that inspire the confidence of the members of the group and encourage them to put themselves at the service of others. Participation begins with education and culture. "One is entitled to think that the future of Humanity is in the hands of those who are capable of providing the generations to come with reaSons for life and optimism." 34

The Ten Commandments belong to God's revelation. At the same time they teach us the true Humanity

"God is Love and in himself he lives a Mystery of perSonal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image . . .. God inscribed in the Humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion." 114

The term "to hallow" is to be understood here not primarily in its causative sense (only God hallows, makes holy), but above all in an evaluative sense: to recognize as holy, to treat in a holy way. and so, in adoration, this invocation is sometimes understood as praise and thanksgiving. 66 But this petition is here taught to us by Jesus as an optative: a petition, a desire, and an expectation in which God and man are involved. Beginning with this first petition to our Father, we are immersed in the innermost Mystery of his Godhead and the drama of the Salvation of our Humanity. Asking the Father that his name be made holy draws us into his plan of loving kindness for the fullness of time, "according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ," that we might "be holy and blameless before him in Love." 67

Beginning with Mary's unique cooperation with the working of the Holy Spirit, the Churches developed their Prayer to the holy Mother of God, centering it on the perSon of Christ manifested in his mysteries. In countless hymns and antiphons expresSing this prayer, two movements usually alternate with one another: the first "magnifies" the Lord for the "great things" he did for his lowly servant and through her for all human beings 29 The second entrusts the supplications and praises of the children of God to the Mother of Jesus, because she now knows the Humanity which, in her, the Son of God espoused.

In Prayer the Holy Spirit unites us to the perSon of the only Son, in his glorified Humanity, through which and in which our filial prayer unites us in the Church with the Mother of Jesus. 27

But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: Jesus. the divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our Humanity the Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: "Jesus," "YHWH saves." 16 The name "Jesus" contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and Salvation. To pray "Jesus" is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who Loved him and who gave himself up for him. 17

There is no other way of Christian Prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or perSonal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus. the sacred Humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father.

When Jesus openly entrusts to his disciples the Mystery of Prayer to the Father, he reveals to them what their prayer and ours must be, once he has returned to the Father in his glorified Humanity. What is new is to "ask in his name." 78 Faith in the Son introduces the disciples into the knowledge of the Father, because Jesus is "the way, and the truth, and the life." 79 Faith bears its fruit in Love: it means keeping the word and the commandments of Jesus, it means abiding with him in the Father who, in him, so loves us that he abides with us. In this new covenant the certitude that our petitions will be heard is founded on the prayer of Jesus. 80

All the troubles, for all time, of Humanity enslaved by Sin and death, all the petitions and intercessions of Salvation history are summed up in this cry of the incarnate Word. Here the Father accepts them and, beyond all hope, answers them by raising his Son. Thus is fulfilled and brought to completion the drama of Prayer in the economy of creation and salvation. the Psalter gives us the key to prayer in Christ. In the "today" of the Resurrection the Father says: "You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession." 62

Jesus often draws apart to pray in solitude, on a mountain, preferably at night. 46 He includes all men in his Prayer, for he has taken on Humanity in his incarnation, and he offers them to the Father when he offers himself. Jesus, the Word who has become flesh, shares by his human prayer in all that "his brethren" experience; he sympathizes with their weaknesses in order to free them. 47 It was for this that the Father sent him. His words and works are the visible manifestation of his prayer in secret.

The Son of God who became Son of the Virgin learned to pray in his human heart. He learns to pray from his mother, who kept all the great things the Almighty had done and treasured them in her heart. 41 He learns to pray in the words and rhythms of the Prayer of his people, in the synagogue at Nazareth and the Temple at Jerusalem. But his prayer springs from an otherwise secret source, as he intimates at the age of twelve: "I must be in my Father's house." 42 Here the newness of prayer in the fullness of time begins to be revealed: his filial prayer, which the Father awaits from his children, is finally going to be lived out by the only Son in his Humanity, with and for men.

The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future Humanity. 194 Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation. 195

"Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living." 548 Christ's Ascension into heaven signifies his participation, in his Humanity, in God's power and authority. Jesus Christ is Lord: he possesses all power in heaven and on earth. He is "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion", for the Father "has put all things under his feet." 549 Christ is Lord of the cosmos and of history. In him human history and indeed all creation are "set forth" and transcendently fulfilled. 550

This final stage stays closely linked to the first, that is, to his descent from heaven in the Incarnation. Only the one who "came from the Father" can return to the Father: Christ Jesus. 537 "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man." 538 Left to its own natural powers Humanity does not have access to the "Father's house", to God's life and happiness. 539 Only Christ can open to man such access that we, his members, might have confidence that we too shall go where he, our Head and our Source, has preceded us. 540

The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine perSon of God's Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed: Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in Humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; "like us in all things but Sin". He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our Salvation, was born as to his humanity of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. 91

The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human perSon joined to the divine person of God's Son. OppoSing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed "that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man." 89 Christ's Humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: "Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh." 90

The first heresies denied not so much Christ's divinity as his true Humanity (Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian faith has insisted on the true incarnation of God's Son "come in the flesh". 87 But already in the third century, the Church in a council at Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. the first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father", and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God "came to be from things that were not" and that he was "from another substance" than that of the Father. 88

After his Resurrection, Jesus' divine Sonship becomes manifest in the power of his glorified Humanity. He was "designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead". 57 The apostles can confess: "We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." 58

The name of the Saviour God was invoked only once in the year by the high priest in atonement for the Sins of Israel, after he had sprinkled the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies with the sacrificial blood. the mercy seat was the place of God's presence. 25 When St. Paul speaks of Jesus whom "God put forward as an expiation by his blood", he means that in Christ's Humanity "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." 26

Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality other names would be futile. To try to understand what sin is, one must first recognize the profound relation of man to God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity as Humanity's rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weigh heavy on human life and history.

God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. the Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him." 242 None of the animals can be man's partner. 243 The woman God "fashions" from the man's rib and brings to him elicits on the man's part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of Love and communion: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." 244 Man discovers woman as another "I", sharing the same Humanity.

In order to gather together scattered Humanity God calls Abram from his country, his kindred and his Father's house, 16 and makes him Abraham, that is, "the father of a multitude of nations". "In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." 17

This state of division into many nations, each entrusted by divine providence to the guardianship of angels, is at once cosmic, social and religious. It is intended to limit the pride of fallen Humanity 10 united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as at Babel. 11 But, because of Sin, both polytheism and the idolatry of the nation and of its rulers constantly threaten this provisional economy with the perversion of paganism. 12

Since the Word became flesh in assuming a true Humanity, Christ's body was finite. 112 Therefore the human face of Jesus can be portrayed; at the seventh ecumenical council (Nicaea II in 787) the Church recognized its representation in holy images to be legitimate. 113

The mission of the Holy Spirit is always conjoined and ordered to that of the Son. 122 The Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the giver of Life", is sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and divinely fecundate it, cauSing her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a Humanity drawn from her own.

From the first formulations of her faith, the Church has confessed that Jesus was conceived solely by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, affirming also the corporeal aspect of this event: Jesus was conceived "by the Holy Spirit without human seed". 146 The Fathers see in the virginal conception the sign that it truly was the Son of God who came in a Humanity like our own. Thus St. Ignatius of Antioch at the beginning of the second century says: You are firmly convinced about our Lord, who is truly of the race of David according to the flesh, Son of God according to the will and power of God, truly born of a virgin,. . . he was truly nailed to a tree for us in his flesh under Pontius Pilate. . . he truly suffered, as he is also truly risen. 147

"So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God." 531 Christ's body was glorified at the moment of his Resurrection, as proved by the new and supernatural properties it subsequently and permanently enjoys. 532 But during the forty days when he eats and drinks familiarly with his disciples and teaches them about the kingdom, his glory remains veiled under the appearance of ordinary Humanity. 533 Jesus' final apparition ends with the irreversible entry of his humanity into divine glory, symbolized by the cloud and by heaven, where he is seated from that time forward at God's right hand. 534 Only in a wholly exceptional and unique way would Jesus show himself to Paul "as to one untimely born", in a last apparition that established him as an apostle. 535

Christ's Resurrection is an object of faith in that it is a transcendent intervention of God himself in creation and history. In it the three divine perSons act together as one, and manifest their own proper characteristics. the Father's power "raised up" Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son's Humanity, including his body, into the Trinity. Jesus is conclusively revealed as "Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead". 514 St. Paul insists on the manifestation of God's power 515 through the working of the Spirit who gave life to Jesus' dead humanity and called it to the glorious state of Lordship.

By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his Passion. 508 Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ's Humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father's divine realm. 509 For this reaSon too the risen Jesus enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as he wishes: in the guise of a gardener or in other forms familiar to his disciples, precisely to awaken their faith. 510

By embracing in his human heart the Father's Love for men, Jesus "loved them to the end", for "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 425 In suffering and death his Humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the Salvation of men. 426 Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to save, Jesus freely accepted his Passion and death: "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord." 427 Hence the sovereign freedom of God's Son as he went out to his death. 428

At the end of the parable of the lost sheep Jesus recalled that God's Love excludes no one: "So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish." 410 He affirms that he came "to give his life as a ransom for many"; this last term is not restrictive, but contrasts the whole of Humanity with the unique perSon of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us. 411 The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: "There is not, never has been, and never will be a Single human being for whom Christ did not suffer." 412

Consequently, St. Peter can formulate the apostolic faith in the divine plan of Salvation in this way: "You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your Fathers... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake." 402 Man's Sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death. 403 By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen Humanity, on account of sin, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 404

The Gospels were written by men who were among the first to have the faith 174 and wanted to share it with others. Having known in faith who Jesus is, they could see and make others see the traces of his Mystery in all his earthly life. From the swaddling clothes of his birth to the vinegar of his Passion and the shroud of his Resurrection, everything in Jesus' life was a sign of his mystery. 175 His deeds, miracles and words all revealed that "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." 176 His Humanity appeared as "sacrament", that is, the sign and instrument, of his divinity and of the Salvation he brings: what was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his divine Sonship and redemptive mission

Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary's womb because he is the New Adam, who inaugurates the new creation: "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven." 162 From his conception, Christ's Humanity is filled with the Holy Spirit, for God "gives him the Spirit without measure." 163 From "his fullness" as the head of redeemed humanity "we have all received, grace upon grace." 164

Mary's Virginity manifests God's absolute initiative in the Incarnation. Jesus has only God as Father. "He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed. . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his Humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures." 161

After the unity of the human race was shattered by Sin God at once sought to save Humanity part by part. the covenant with Noah after the flood gives expression to the principle of the divine economy toward the "nations", in other words, towards men grouped "in their lands, each with (its) own language, by their families, in their nations". 9