When Pope Leo XIV greeted, and was greeted by, the city of Rome and the world (urbi et orbi), the reality and continued presence of the Church was on full display. Leo is the 267th pope, an astonishing number that marks a lineage going back 2,000 years to St. Peter. One of the main functions that Peter served — and his successors continue to serve — was uniting the Church and maintaining that unity. As the world eagerly awaited the new Holy Father, we were shown that the “office” of the papacy does unite.

In recent months, we have been looking at the kerygma, the proclamation of the Good News of salvation in Christ. Along the way, we have noted some of the basic elements of that proclamation. Last month, we looked at the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the “gift that keeps on giving” in the truest sense of that expression. One of the great works of the Holy Spirit is the Church. This is sometimes an element of the Good News that is left aside or given a peripheral status. But the Church is an essential piece of the proclamation of the Gospel.

In our contemporary society, we often hear people question the necessity of the Church. Why is a community of believers a necessary thing? After all, can’t we just come to God as individuals? This questioning of the necessity of the Church sometimes gets more contentious in the face of the many scandals that have plagued the Bride of Christ. Sometimes, we can feel frustrated with happenings in the Church that are out of our control, too. Yet, there is something about the Church that has enabled her to endure for millennia.

Christ calls each of us to a deep and personal relationship with him. We never really do this on our own; we need a community of believers. Even if we wanted to simply pick up Scripture and come to know God through the inspired Word, we would still have to recognize that the human authors of the New Testament were the leaders of the early Church. The Bible is only here in front of us because communities of believers — in cooperation with and inspiration from the Holy Spirit — wrote, preserved, translated and published it.

As human beings, we are never completely ourselves without a community, or communities, from which we derive orientation, meaning, purpose and identity. Human beings are naturally social creatures. With this in mind, the Good News about the Church is the same Good News we see in creation, the Incarnation and the Paschal mystery: God meets us in our need. Our loving Creator knows everything about us. Even though we are separated by sin, he wants to share his Divine love with us. God the Son came down and joined our humanness to his God-ness. He even died for us. But, he didn’t leave it there. He rose to new life, extending to us an offer of newness of life that transcends death itself.

To carry this along, the Father and the Son gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and guide us. The Holy Spirit continues to unite and animate (give life to) the Church. And, it is through this Church that we are given access to the fullness and abundance of God’s life: communion with the Trinity.

The Church is not a peripheral or secondary concept. She is the necessary link for us to a promised share in divine life. The Church, despite the flaws of her very human members, continues to make Christ present in the world. The palpable excitement of the papacy that was generated as Leo XIV stepped onto the balcony is an example of this presence and truth. The Church is truly a gift, and this gift is Good News to proclaim.