I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.                                                                                                                                                        I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, was Crucified,  and Resurrected.                                                                                                                                            I believe in the Holy Spirit.                                                                                                                                                                                              I believe in the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.                                                                                                                                                     I believe in the resurrection of the body.                                                                                              I believe in life everlasting,    Amen.

CC4 …. The True church was founded by Christ on living men (= the apostles), who are the witnesses and messengers of the Bible.

How does St.John describe the true Church ?
In the Book of Revelations (21: 10 – 14), St.John gives a description of the Church of all time: the Church of yesterday, of today and of always. This Church leads, travels her pilgrims way down the centuries, through struggles and victories, heroism and betrayals, boldness and cowardice.
But this same Church is based on the foundation-rock of the Apostles.

So the true Church is Apostolic, founded on “the Apostles of the Lamb” (Rev, 21:14)

Let us recall what St.Augustine said (Epist. 105):                                                          “We learn about Christ in the Scriptures; we learn about the Church in the Scriptures.  If you accept Christ, why do you not accept the church ?”        

 Who founded the Apostolic Church ?
We cannot find anywhere in the Gospel , that the Lord Jesus showed concern to write, to record His teachings or to have them written by anybody at all.  We read, instead, that from the first days of His public ministry, Christ invited some men to follow Him as disciples (Jn.1: 37 – 42)

This group grew ever more numerous.  The disciples were indeed many                  (Lk. 6:17).
A particular day arrived.
Having spent the whole night in prayer with God the Father (Lk. 6:12) Christ began to choose twelve men from among His followers, whom he called “Apostles”. (Lk. 6: 13).
“The names of the twelve apostles are these: first Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-collector; James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus; Simon the Canaean, and Judas Iscariot (from Kerioth), who betrayed Him” (Mt.10: 2).    /CC5

These twelve men formed the special inner circle among the disciples of Christ. For as much as thirty four times, the Gospel makes regference to this particular inner-group of disciples, calling them simply “the twelve”.    CC5




Extracts by kind permission of  HG Mons. Sylvester Magro ofm, Apostolic Nuncio of Benghazi.