Lumen Fidei - page 26

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Those who believe come to see themselves in
the light of the faith which they profess: Christ
is the mirror in which they find their own im-
age fully realized. And just as Christ gathers to
himself all those who believe and makes them
his body, so the Christian comes to see himself
as a member of this body, in an essential rela-
tionship with all other believers. The image of a
body does not imply that the believer is simply
one part of an anonymous whole, a mere cog
in great machine; rather, it brings out the vital
union of Christ with believers, and of believers
among themselves (cf. Rom 12:4-5) Christians are
“one” (cf. Gal 3:28), yet in a way which does not
make them lose their individuality; in service to
others, they come into their own in the highest
degree. This explains why, apart from this body,
outside this unity of the Church in Christ, out-
side this Church which — in the words of Ro-
mano Guardini — “is the bearer within history
of the plenary gaze of Christ on the world” 16 —
faith loses its “measure”; it no longer finds its
equilibrium, the space needed to sustain itself.
Faith is necessarily ecclesial; it is professed from
within the body of Christ as a concrete com-
munion of believers. It is against this ecclesial
backdrop that faith opens the individual Chris-
tian towards all others. Christ’s word, once heard,
by virtue of its inner power at work in the heart
16 “Vom Wesen katholischer Weltanschauung” (1923), in Un-
terscheidung des Christlichen. Gesammelte Studien 1923-1963 , Mainz,
1963, 24.