The feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, celebrated last week, highlights the Church’s catholicity. The term “catholic” implies “totality” and “universality”. The Church “receives from [Christ] ‘fullness of the means of salvation’ which he has willed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 830). Furthermore, the Church is catholic because she was commissioned by Christ to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world. Both Peter and Paul ended their mission in Rome, the centre where different nations came together.

The totality and universality of the Christian message connote that catholicity espouses the vertical and horizontal areas of human existence. It is the same God who reveals himself to all those who open their hearts to him. It is He who unites his Son’s believers into one people, the People of God, the Church.

Through the God of Jesus Christ, the Church’s multiplicity becomes her unity and vice versa. This is magnificently expressed by St Iraneus of Lyon, the founder of Catholic Theology. “The Church spread across the world diligently safeguards this doctrine and this faith, forming as it were one family: the same faith, with one mind and one heart, the same preaching, teaching and tradition as if she had but one mouth. Languages abound according to the region but the power of our tradition is one and the same.

“The Churches in Germany do not differ in faith or tradition, neither do those in Spain, Gaul, Egypt, Libya, the Orient, the centre of the earth; just as the sun, God’s creature, is one alone and identical throughout the world, so the light of true preaching shines everywhere and illuminates all who desire to attain knowledge of the truth” (Adversus. Haereses, I 10, 2). The same content of the Christian Apostolic faith unites a global multinational Church.

Father, unite and disperse your Church in every nation under the sun by the powerful intercession of St Peter and St Paul. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann