{"id":17583,"date":"2017-05-05T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T06:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/?p=17583"},"modified":"2017-04-26T15:42:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T20:42:10","slug":"the-church-complete-lesson-18-the-church-a-plan-born-in-the-fathers-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/2017\/05\/05\/the-church-complete-lesson-18-the-church-a-plan-born-in-the-fathers-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church Complete Lesson 18: The Church, A Plan Born in the Father's Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saint<\/a>The Church is \u201cGod\u2019s Family\u201d, redeemed and reunited in Jesus Christ: the Church is God\u2019s People. She is \u201ca plan born in the Father\u2019s Heart\u201d, says the Catechism of the Church (CCC # 759).<\/p>\n

Saint Augustine says that: \u201cEverything we read in the Holy Gospel was written before the Lord\u2019s Advent: there is no other reason for that than to prepare for His Coming and to mark beforehand the future Church: God\u2019s people among all peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vatican Council II teaches us that: \u201cAlready from the beginning of the world the foreshadowing of the Church took place. It was prepared in a remarkable way throughout the history of the people of Israel and by means of the Old Covenant. In the present era of time the Church was constituted and, by the outpouring of the Spirit, was made manifest. At the end of time it will gloriously achieve completion, when, as is read in the Fathers, all the just, from Adam and \u2018from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect,\u2019 will be gathered together with the Father in the universal Church\u201d (Lumen Gentium # 2).<\/p>\n

Saint Justine, the Pastor of Hermas, the first Christians and many other outstanding people affirmed that: \u201cthe Church was foreshadowed before the foundation of the world\u201d (Hermas, Visions 2,4,1; Justine, Apol. 2.7; Aristides. Apol. 16,6).<\/p>\n

These words mean that the Church \u201cconvokes the whole of mankind, through the Christ, to be in communion with God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saint Epiphany follows the same trend of thoughts and affirms that the Church \u201cis the final goal of all things\u201d (Epiphany, haer 1,1,5).<\/p>\n

Saint Clement of Alexandria affirmed that:<\/p>\n

\u201cGod\u2019s Will is an action that we call \u2018the world\u2019 and His intention is mankind\u2019s salvation that we call \u2018the Church\u2019\u201d (Paed. 1, 6).<\/p>\n

The Church is God\u2019s people redeemed and reconciled to Him: She was prepared since the moment when original sin broke the union between mankind and God and dispersed His children far away from Him. God immediately started preparing a Covenant with mankind: it started with Noah, went on with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Prophets and so on, until the establishment of the New and Eternal Covenant in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

That was the pathway God prepared in human history so that the Church could emerge like \u201cGod\u2019s Family\u201d, the place of the new communion between mankind and God.<\/p>\n

One can say that Israel is the Church of the Old Testament, the people God prepared so that His Son could be born as one of them: Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, Head of the Church.<\/p>\n

Next lesson we will see something about the pathway God prepared in Israel\u2019s history to create His Church.<\/p>\n

Prof Felipe Aquino<\/em><\/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

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Church is \u201cGod\u2019s Family\u201d, redeemed and reunited in Jesus Christ: the Church is God\u2019s People. She is \u201ca plan born in the Father\u2019s Heart\u201d, says the Catechism of the Church (CCC # 759). Saint Augustine says that: \u201cEverything we…<\/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":[18855,178913],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17583"}],"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=17583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17585,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17583\/revisions\/17585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}