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

Communio et Progressio, n. 11, in AAS, LXIII (1971), p. 598.

Rm 1:20.

John 1:14.

Eph 1:23; 4:10.

1 Cor 15:28; Communio et Progressio, n. 11, in AAS, LXIII (1971), p. 598.