Sobornicity at St. John Chrysostom and its significance for the Church's mission today

Sobornicity at St. John Chrysostom and its significance for the Church's mission today

15 September 2015

Although both the Monastery and the Parish are institutions that are profoundly involved in the life of society, their ultimate goal is to lead to the revelation of another society – the Kingdom of which Christ spoke to Pilate. Every Monastery and Parish is, above all, the Eucharist community, they are the One Catholic Church, which could not truly help the world if she limited herself only to sociocultural programmes and activities, or even to spiritual ones. Christian communities are not church consular offices distributed throughout the world with the aim of improving the quality of social life through religious services or moralising sermons; they are the new creation. In each of these communities, human nature, restored and integrated, is made available to every man who wants to ascend from the status of a simple individual, part of a multitude, to the status of a person. Christians do not only have the consciousness of belonging to the one body of the Church, but they are also conscious that this body, because it is one, exists in its entirety in each of of them. As a result, the mission of the Monastery and Parish is to offer man the possibility of rediscovering himself and re-creating himself as a universal being. Only thus, fulfilled and restored, man can truly receive help and become useful for others. This is only possible depending on the degree to which the Monastery and Parish realise that they do not only need to be missionary, but they also themselves are the mission of the Church in the world, they are the new man.

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