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II. THE WORK OF THE MEANS OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS
6.
Communio et Progressio is rooted in a vision of communication as a way toward
communion. For "more than the expression of ideas and the indication of
emotion", it declares, communication is "the giving of self in
love".8 In this respect, communication mirrors the Church's
own communion and is capable of contributing to it.
Indeed,
the communication of truth can have a redemptive power, which comes from the
person of Christ. He is God's Word made flesh and the image of the invisible
God. In and through him God's own life is communicated to humanity by the
Spirit's action. "Since the creation of the world, invisible realities,
God's eternal power and divinity have become visible, recognized through the
things he has made";9 and now: "The Word has become
flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory: the glory of
an only Son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love".
10
Here,
in the Word made flesh, God's self-communication is definitive. In Jesus' words
and deeds the Word is liberating, redemptive, for all humankind. This loving
self-revelation of God, combined with humanity's response of faith, constitutes
a profound dialogue.
Human
history and all human relationships exist within the framework established by
this self-communication of God in Christ. History itself is ordered toward
becoming a kind of word of God, and it is part of the human vocation to
contribute to bringing this about by living out the ongoing, unlimited
communication of God's reconciling love in creative new ways. We are to do this
through words of hope and deeds of love, that is, through our very way of life.
Thus communication must lie at the heart of the Church community.
Christ
is both the content and the dynamic source of the Church's communications in
proclaiming the Gospel. For the Church itself is "Christ's Mystical
Body -- the hidden completion of Christ glorified -- who «fills the whole
creation»".11 As a result we move, within the Church and with
the help of the word and the sacraments, toward the hope of that last unity
where "God will be all in all".12
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