How the Church grows

The body of Christ doesn’t grow as a house grows, by the addition of brick to brick and door to door and wall to wall. It grows like a cell. First, there is this divine life that came to this earth, namely, God in man. It starts with the humanity of Christ, this body of his. Now he says he is going to form a new body. It will not be a moral body or a political body, so he has to give it a new name. The name that has been given to it through the centuries is “mystical” to indicate that the unity that binds it together does not come from men but from his Spirit, from himself. That was why there had to be a Pentecost: to put a soul into this body.