and our love must be focussed on Christ, our Risen Lord. We cannot prescind from the particularity of our Christian faith. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life and our mission is to communicate that Truth to all humanity since it is the Truth for all humanity.

ix.

Two other pictures follow on logically and naturally from the scene of the cross. One, of course, is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of the Risen Lord - was poured out upon Our Lady and the apostles. This created a completely new life and a completely new kind of human unity which St Paul described as "communion in the Holy Spirit". In the power of the Spirit the apostles preached the message of Christ the Risen Lord and baptised those who put their faith in Him. Thus the Church came into being.

x.

The Acts of the Apostles gives a beautiful vision of the Church:
          "These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood,
          to the breaking of bread and to the prayers."
          (Acts 2:42)
And,
          "The whole group of believers was united heart and soul; no one claimed for his own
          use anything that he had, and everything they owned was held in common."
          (Acts 4:32)

xi.

The word "brotherhood" in the above text translates the Greek word koinonia which we translate as communion. Literally the word "communion" means shared participation in a single reality. It is clear that St Paul understood the Church as the body of those who participated together in the Holy Spirit. Hence his famous greeting at the end of the second letter to the Corinthians: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit be with you all."