Catechism for Adults:

Extract

We, writes St Paul, are chosen in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspoiled in his sight in charity (Ephesians 1, 4). It is only in so far as man is chosen in Christ and one with Christ, that he belongs to God. Christ, raised from the dead, rules and is made ‘head over all the Church’ (Ephesians 1, 22). The Church is the body of Christ (Ephesians 1, 23); and to this body all those who at one time were afar off are joined, or in St Paul’s phrase ‘are made nigh’ (Ephesians 2, 13). All men are born under the condemnation of Adam and are therefore afar off from God, but ‘in the blood of Christ’ they are made near to God. Made near because Christ ‘is our peace’ (Ephesians 2, 23). It is Christ who ‘has made both one’ and who breaks down ‘the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh... that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in his flesh’ (Ephesians 2, 14-16).

The cross of Christ, which is the presence in the world of God’s judgment and love, is creative of that peace or unity that overcomes all division and enmity. The divisions that arise from sin or pride, all conflict as between flesh and spirit, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, are transcended in Christ. The death of Christ created a new unity, that of those who are called apart to live in charity in the presence of God. No escape from the world, but a transformation of all that goes to make up the world. This holiness of life is the basic category of life—the only purpose of existence. By it not merely the middle wall of partition between men is destroyed but the division between man and God, opened by sin, is closed. ‘You are no more strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and domestics of God’ (Ephesians 2, 14).