Citizenship Rooted in the Covenant

The Covenant as belonging to God

67. For ancient Israel as well as for the new people of God formed by Christ, the Covenant is always expressed in total belonging to God.  On Mount Sinai, God declared that the gift of the Covenant freely accepted will make Israel «a people peculiarly His own, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation» (Ex 19,6). In Jesus Christ, with the new and eternal Covenant completed in the Eucharistic Mystery, we are made children in the Son, «fellow citizens with the saints and the family of God» (Eph 2, 19). Jesus Himself guarantees our future citizenship assuring us that our names are written in heaven (cf Lk 10,20), where He has gone before us to prepares us a place close to Himself (cf Jn 14, 3). He is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters (cf Heb 2,11); in fact, He has defined as His new family, connected to Him with a relationship closer than blood, the community of those who, together with Him and like Him, do the will of God (cf Mk 3: 31-35).

And reciprocal belonging

68. This total, intimate belonging to God in Christ, made possible in the Spirit, generates in the Christian community, and even more in the community of consecrated persons, a reciprocal belonging to each other. The community then becomes the space where evangelical citizenship is lived in the concreteness of every day.  Doing the will of God together, nourished by the Eucharistic Bread and the Word, we become always more attuned to the heart of Christ, we share His passion for every man and woman and His love for all that He has created. From here springs our active and creative commitment in the mission, considered as an extension of the mission of Jesus in the Church and the concrete fulfillment of our citizenship in the world and in history.

Like Mary, the first citizen of the Kingdom

69.  Mary, woman of the New Covenant and first citizen of the Kingdom, is she who has realized in fullness the relationship, the sonship with God, welcoming His Word, keeping it in her heart, and expressing it in an existence of solidarity with her people. She guides us on the journey of living the Covenant and she helps us to manifest our evangelical citizenship in communion among ourselves and in the commitment, taking care of young people, sharing, as she did, the plight of the poor and the little ones.