Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of pure goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith.

The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension.

In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journeyed together toward our heavenly home. This is day 109. We are reading paragraphs 1. Sorry, 772 to 780. We get to the end of this section today, which is great. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations

of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic

Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com

slash CIY. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates

in daily notifications. Today is day 109. 772 to paragraph 780.

It's the end of this little mini section on the church. We actually continuing, obviously,

for days and days about the mystery of the church. And that's, in fact, the focus of today. The church

is the mystery of man's union with God. And the fact that the church is the universal sacrament of salvation. Those two pieces are incredible. And they're so essential. So, you know, we've been talking for the last couple days about how the church is part of God's plan. It is not accidental. It is not manmade. But it comes from the heart of the Father. In fact, Jesus Christ established this. The Holy Spirit

has been inspiring the church, but to what end? And that is revealed, well, it's been revealed for a while,

but we're talking about it once again today. In fact, you might even look at it like this in paragraph

776, the last paragraph of the section before we get to the bullet points, the little nuggets.

It says this. It says, as a sacrament, or as a sacrament, the church is Christ's instrument.

And say, what is that all about? Well, the church is Christ's instrument. What's Christ's mission?

Christ's mission is not only to forgive our sins, right, to save us, to reconcile us to the

father, to give that God's plan of

divine life to come into contact with us, to bring us into communion with Him, this is Christ's

instrument to do that. It goes on to say, she's taken up by him also as the instrument for the

salvation of all, the universal sacrament of salvation by which Christ is, and this is massive right here,

...