Church

Saint Peter's Basilica, front view. Rome, Italy, Vatican City

The Church was founded by Jesus and rests on the Apostles and their successors, the bishops, in union with their leader Peter and his successors, the successive popes in the history of the Church.

The Church is both a temporal entity, endowed with a hierarchy and a earthly structure, but also a mystical entity: it is the Mystical Body of Christ and will persist in eternity.

On earth, its role is to lead Souls to eternal life through the teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and by administering the Sacraments that confer Grace.

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

• Announcement of the Church and institution of the name "Christian".
• The work of Jesus continues through the Church and Mary.         
• The destiny of James of Alphaeus the Apostle as bishop of Jerusalem and Pastor of Israel and description of the early days of the Church – The talents in the Church. 
• Jesus prophesies the organization of his Church.
• In truth, in the life of my Church all the vicissitudes of my life as a man will be repeated.
• That is why I have called you Cephas, and on you, Peter, I will build my Church, and the powers of Hell will not prevail against it. To you I will give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. And whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on the earth shall be loosed in Heaven. and
• I promised Peter that the Church, which will have as leader and foundation my Peter, will not be overturned by Hell in its repeated and increasingly fierce assaults.
• These are increasingly difficult times for Me and for the organism that I came to form. That is why many precautions must be taken to prevent it from being, I do not say wounded and killed, for it never will be until the end of the ages, but covered with mud. Its adversaries watch you closely, …
• Founder of an Organism that will last as long as the ages and that will be holy as its Founder and Head, an Organism that will last to represent Me, and will be one with Me, just as the members and the body of man are one with the head that rules them, …
• Jesus has the vision of the history of the Church.
• Go to Ephraim as your Master went. I say Ephraim to you to mean land of idols and pagans. But it will not be Ephraim of Palestine that you must choose as the seat of my Church. Remember well, when you are gathered together or when one of you alone, I have spoken about this, foretelling that you would have to tread the roads of the earth to reach its Heart and establish my Church there. It is from the Heart of man that blood spreads through all the members. It is from the Heart of the world that Christianity must spread throughout the Earth.
• Mary asks Lazarus to assign the Cenacle to Worship: it becomes the first Church.

In other works by Maria Valtorta

"Teachings of Jesus on the Church and the Consecrated"

In 2019, the Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation published a selection of texts chosen by Emilio Pisani and Claudia Vecchiarelli on the "Teachings of Jesus on the Church and the Consecrated".

The Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of July 30 : The chosen and precious cornerstone, the solid foundation on which the eternal Zion rises, is my Church and the morality that stems from my Law, of which the Church is the chair. It is vain to want to substitute another law for it. None is as sure and just as it is, for it is dictated by a divine spirit. (p. 196)
  No human force will be able, like a whirlwind, to devastate my Church to the point of destroying it. I will be with it like a stake and a rope. When the hour comes when the earth ceases to exist, the Angels will carry my Church to heaven, which cannot perish because it is cemented by the Blood of a God and of his saints (p. 197).      
• Catechesis of August 14 : I have founded a true society whose members live, in my thought, one for the other, each a support for the other. From the greatest to the smallest, you all have a reason to be part of the splendid team of my Church, one in essence and trine in form, like its King and divine Pontiff, both One and Threeness with the Father and the Spirit. (p. 226).          
• Catechesis of December 11 : Once all the seducers and all the persecutors who at a steady pace have disturbed the Church, my bride, are defeated, she will know tranquility and glory. (p. 549).

The Notebooks of 1944

• Catechesis of January 10 : Kneel before the true God, before the God who spoke at Sinai and announced the Gospel in Palestine, before the God who speaks to you through the Church, which I, the Spirit of God, have made Mistress.    
• Catechesis of January 10 : Vision of the triumphant Church: … Gathered in a blessed valley was the multitude of the Blessed in Christ, the army of those who bear the mark of the Lamb; this multitude was light, a light that is song, a song that is ADoration, an ADoration that is beatitude.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• "And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

In other sources

Church Texts

• Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi : "On the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and Our Union in Him with Christ" – Pope Pius XII – June 29, 1943: It must be noted immediately: just as the Redeemer of humanity was overwhelmed with Slanders and tortures by those very ones He undertook to To Save, so the society instituted by Him must also resemble its divine Founder in this. We certainly do not deny, on the contrary, we confess with a feeling of gratitude towards God, that in our troubled times, a considerable number of those separated from the fold of Jesus Christ look to the Church as the only port of salvation; yet we also know that not only is the Church of God despised and slandered with a proud hostility by those who, abandoning the light of Christian wisdom, miserably revert to the doctrines, morals, and institutions of ancient paganism; but that often many Christians, attracted by the deceptive appearance of error or charmed by the seductions and depravity of the world, ignore the Church, are indifferent to it, or act as if it inspired only boredom and disgust. Therefore, Venerable Brothers, in duty of conscience, and to respond to the desires of many, We want to place before all eyes and celebrate the purity, merits, and glory of our Mother the Church, to whom, after God, we owe everything...

• Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium – Pope Paul VI – November 21, 1964 - Christ is the light of the peoples; gathered in the Holy Spirit, the holy Council ardently wishes, in announcing to all creatures the good news of the Gospel, to spread on all men the clarity of Christ who shines on the Face of the Church (). The Church being, in Christ, in a way the sacrament, that is both the sign and the means of intimate union with God and of the unity of all humankind, proposes to shed brighter light on its own nature and universal Mission for its faithful and for the whole world, while connecting with the teachings of previous Councils. To this duty which belongs to the Church, the present conditions add a new urgency: that all men, now more closely united by social, technical, cultural bonds, also achieve their full unity in Christ...

Analyses

• Outside the Church, No Salvation? (catholique.org)
• Outside the Church, No Salvation. (Revue théologique de Louvain)

Place located in Jerusalem where Jesus celebrated Passover with his Apostles and instituted the Eucharist on the eve of his death (from Latin cenaculum: dining room). This place became the first Church at the request of the Virgin Mary.