![\"Saint](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ASaint_Peter's_Square_from_the_dome.jpg\")
<\/a>By valyag (Own work) [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>When Jesus ascended to Heaven, He did not leave His Church orphan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will not let you orphans; I will come to you\u201d (John 14, 18).<\/p>\n
He gave His Disciples the guarantee He would stay with them to the end of times.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd behold, I am with you always, until the end of age\u201d (Matthew 28, 20).<\/p>\n
Not to leave His Church orphan, He sent His Spirit:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 He breathed on them and said to them, \u2018Receive the holy Spirit\u2019\u201d (John 20, 22).<\/p>\n
He gave them the Holy Spirit when He appeared for the first time to His Disciples in the Cenacle. On the day of Pentecost, Saint Peter declared:<\/p>\n
\u201cExalted at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and poured it forth, as you [both] see and hear\u201d (The Acts of the Apostles 2, 33).<\/p>\n
The Effusion of the Holy Spirit over the Apostles on Pentecost made the invisible communion between Jesus and His Church even more intense. After His Ascension, instead of being \u201cwith\u201d His people, Jesus is \u201cin\u201d His people, in His Church, through the Holy Spirit. Vatican Council II teaches us:<\/p>\n
By communicating His Spirit, Christ made His brothers, called together from all nations mystically the components of His own Body\u201d (Lumen Gentium, 7).<\/p>\n
\u201cFor in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit\u201d (The First Letter to the Corinthians 12, 13).<\/p>\n
The Sacrament of Baptism joins us to the Death and Resurrection of the Christ; it also makes us in His likeness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection\u201d (Romans 6, 4-5).<\/p>\n
Therefore we become members of Christ\u2019s Body (see The First Letter to the Corinthians 12, 17): \u2018so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another\u201d (Romans 12, 5).<\/p>\n
This is the Church!<\/p>\n
Saint Leo the Great\u00a0(died 461 AD) says:<\/p>\n
\u201cO Christian, acknowledge your dignity. You share the divine nature\u2026Always remember the Head you belong to and the Body you are a member of\u201d (Sermons 21, Chapter 3).<\/p>\n
The Church is not simply congregated around the Christ; She is unified in Him and in His Body. It is not a mere \u201cclub\u201d; it is the Body of Jesus that goes on living all through human history.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prof Felipe Aquino<\/p>\n
Professor Felipe Aquino\u00a0is a\u00a0widower, father of five children. <\/span>On TV Can\u00e7\u00e3o Nova he presents the program \u201cEscola da F\u00e9\u201d [School of faith] and \u201cPergunte e Responderemos\u201d [Ask and respond], on Radio he presents the program \u201cin the heart of the Church\u201d. <\/span>On weekends he preaches deepening meetings throughout Brazil and abroad. He w<\/span>rote 73 books of Catholic background by publishers, Loyola and Cleopas and Can\u00e7\u00e3o Nova. His t<\/span>eacher\u2019s page:www.cleofas.com.br<\/a>\u00a0Twitter: @pfelipeaquino<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Jesus ascended to Heaven, He did not leave His Church orphan. \u201cI will not let you orphans; I will come to you\u201d (John 14, 18). He gave His Disciples the guarantee He would stay with them to the end…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18855],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17375"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17550,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17375\/revisions\/17550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}