Names and Images of the Church
The word "Church" (Latin ecclesia, from the Greek ek-ka-lein, to
"call out of") means a convocation or an assembly. It designates the
assemblies of the people, usually for a religious purpose.
Ekklesia is
used frequently in the Greek Old Testament for the assembly of the
Chosen People before God, above all for their assembly on Mount
Sinai where Israel received the Law and was established by God as his
holy people.
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By calling itself "Church," the first community of
Christian believers recognized itself as heir to that assembly. In the
Church, God is "calling together" his people from all the ends of the
earth. The equivalent Greek term Kyriake, from which the English
word Church and the German Kirche are derived, means "what
belongs to the Lord.
In Christian usage, the word "church" designates the liturgical
assembly, but also the local community or the whole universal
community of believers. These three meanings are inseparable.
"The Church" is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She
exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a
Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body
of Christ and so herself becomes Christ's Body.
In Scripture, we find a host of interrelated images and figures
through which Revelation speaks of the inexhaustible mystery of the
Church. The images taken from the Old Testament are variations on a
profound theme: the People of God.
In the New Testament, all these
images find a new center because Christ has become the head of this
people, which henceforth is his Body. Around this center are
grouped images taken "from the life of the shepherd or from the cultivation of the land, from the art of building or from family life and
marriage.
