CCC 752 In Christian usage, the word “church” designates the liturgical assembly,1 but also the local community2 or the whole universal community of believers.3 These three meanings are inseparable. “The Church” is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ’s Body.
CCC 1695 “Justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God,”4 “sanctified. .. [and] called to be saints,”5 Christians have become the temple of the Holy Spirit.6 This “Spirit of the Son” teaches them to pray to the Father7 and, having become their life, prompts them to act so as to bear “the fruit of the Spirit”8 by charity in action. Healing the wounds of sin, the Holy Spirit renews us interiorly through a spiritual transformation.9 He enlightens and strengthens us to live as “children of light” through “all that is good and right and true.”10
1 Cf. 1 Cor 11:18; 14:19,28,34,35.
2 Cf. 1 Cor 1:2; 16:1.
3 Cf. 1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13; Phil 3:6.
4 2 Cor 6:11.
5 1 Cor 1:2.
6 Cf. 1 Cor 6:19.
7 Cf. Gal 4:6.
8 Gal 5:22, 25.
9 Cf. Eph 4:23.
10 Eph 5:8, 9.