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The Church and Charity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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The Church and Charity are two realities which are intimately connected with one another: the community (koinonia) which is the Church is grounded in a loving union (agape) and the union which is charity (agape) is in turn based on a communion (koinonia). To state more precisely the relationship existing between the Church and charity will be our concern in what follows.

Of the many references in Holy Scripture to the bond which exists between the Church and charity the most notable is that of Ephesians 4, 15-16: ‘Rather we should hold the truth in charity, and grow in all things into him who is the head, Christ. From him the whole body, welded and compacted together by means of every joint of the system, part working in harmony with part—from him the body deriveth its increase, unto the building up of itself in charity.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1953 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

* The substance of the opening lecture of the Life of the Spirit Conference, flawkesyard, September 1952. The paper has subsequently appeared in French in La Vie Sfiritudle, November 1952.

1 in Eph. 2, lee. 5.

2 IIIa qu. 144.

3 For ‘communicatio’ cf. IIa IIae 24, 2, c; 12, c; c. 25, 5obj. 2, 25, 8, im, 10 Im, 12 c; 26, I, c; 2 c; III S. 18, I, 7, c. in Joa. 13, 34 lec. 7.

4 IIa IIae, 4, 7, 4m

5 IIa IIae, 23 ; 8, 2m.

6 IIIa 90 , 3, 2m.

7 IIa IIae 3, 8, 2, m.

8 IIa Ilae, 26, 4 c; 5c.

9 IlIa C.G. 144, IIa IIae 25, 2 c, et 2m; III S. 29, 1, 6, De Car. 2 c. fine. Contra imp. De cultum c. 3.

10 De Car. II, 6m; Ia IIae, 32, 6. III S. 27, 2, 1, IIm; 29, 4.

11 I C.G. 91. De perf. vit. spirit, c. 13.

12 De perf. vit. spirit, c. 13.

13 Ia IIae 109, 4, Im.

14 De Car. 2, c.

15 St Augustine: In Epist. ad Parthos, 10, 3, 8, 35, 2055, 56.

16 I use the word mysterion from the Greek because it seems impossible to translate it adequately.