55
Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that
we enjoy a living contact with the foundational
memory. What was handed down by the apos-
tles â as the Second Vatican Council states âÂÂ
âÂÂcomprises everything that serves to make the
people of God live their lives in holiness and in-
crease their faith. In this way the Church, in her
doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and trans-
mits to every generation all that she herself is, all
that she believesâÂÂ.
35
Faith, in fact, needs a setting in which it can
be witnessed to and communicated, a means
which is suitable and proportionate to what is
communicated. For transmitting a purely doc-
trinal content, an idea might suffice, or perhaps
a book, or the repetition of a spoken message.
But what is communicated in the Church, what
is handed down in her living Tradition, is the new
light born of an encounter with the true God,
a light which touches us at the core of our be-
ing and engages our minds, wills and emotions,
opening us to relationships lived in communion.
There is a special means for passing down this
fullness, a means capable of engaging the entire
person, body and spirit, interior life and relation-
ships with others. It is the sacraments, celebrated
in the ChurchâÂÂs liturgy. The sacraments commu-
nicate an incarnate memory, linked to the times
and places of our lives, linked to all our senses; in
35
âÂÂDogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation
Dei Ver-
bum
, 8.
