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How could a community be truly united without a "deep and intimate relationship with each of its members to its full extent"?
Pope Pius XII discusses the Communion of the Saints in his 1943 encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ, Mystici Corporis Christi:
- But, corresponding to this love of God and of Christ, there must be love of the neighbor. How can we claim to love the Divine Redeemer, if we hate those whom He has redeemed with His precious blood, so that He might make them members of His Mystical Body? For that reason the beloved disciple warns us: "If any man say: 'I love God' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not? And this commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God loveth his brother also."[I John, IV, 20-21.] Rather it should be said that the more we become "members one of another"[Rom., XII, 5.] "mutually careful, one for another,"[I Cor., XII, 25.] the closer we shall be united with God and with Christ; as, on the other hand, the more ardent the love that binds us to God and to our divine Head, the closer we shall be united to each other in the bonds of charity.
75. … Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself.
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89. … the divine Redeemer is most closely united not only with His Church, which is His Beloved Spouse, but also with each and every one of the faithful, and He ardently desires to speak with them heart to heart, especially after Holy Communion.