Editor’s note: This post was originally published on August 23, 2013 as part of a series called To the Heights. The entire series can be found here. Father Pier Giorgio Dengler was ordained to the priesthood in May 2018 and serves as Parochial Vicar at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, New York.
Father Pier Giorgio Dengler, O.P., speaks about the Church and the Holy Spirit (CCC, 683–747):
“The Church . . . will receive its perfection only in the glory of heaven,” [Lumen Gentium 48] at the time of Christ’s glorious return. Until that day, “the Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world’s persecutions and God’s consolations” [St. Augustine, De civ. Dei, 18, 51]. Here below she knows that she is in exile far from the Lord, and longs for the full coming of the Kingdom, when she will “be united in glory with her king” [Lumen Gentium 5]. The Church, and through her the world, will not be perfected in glory without great trials. Only then will “all the just from the time of Adam, ‘from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect,’ . . . be gathered together in the universal Church in the Father’s presence” [Lumen Gentium 2].
—Catechism of the Catholic Church, 769
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Image: Caspar David Friedrich, The wanderer above the sea of fog
