Category: Part 2: The Pilgrim Church

About the text: The Church is on a pilgrimage to the Promised Land, the New Jerusalem. This is prefigured in the people of Israel as they left Egypt during the Exodus. Leaving the bondage of slavery and crossing through the water of the Red Sea, the people of Israel were gathered at Mount Sinai where…

About the text: The First Letter of Peter is known as one of the “catholic epistles,” not because it is read only by Catholics, but because it was written to the whole, that is “catholic,” Church. In it Peter addresses Christians as exiles, living in a land not their own; while he encourages us to…

About the text: Drawing especially from St. Augustine’s City of God and the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the current state of the Church as one of pilgrimage to the heavenly Kingdom. Just as he provided manna for the Israelites to eat on…

About the author: Augustine of Hippo (354-430), a native of North Africa—the Roman Empire’s most profitable Latin-speaking province—was faced with the turmoil that erupted following the sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth in 410. Rather than lament the desecration of the “eternal city,” he wrote a refutation of the pagans who were blaming the…