Notable and Quotable

Just as the fellowship of love has existed since the outset and will continue to the end, so also, from the start, division unfortunately arose. We should not be surprised that it still exists today. “They went out from us, but they were not of us,” John says in his First Letter [I Jn 1:1ff[, “for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they are not of us.”

Thus, in the events of the world but also in the weaknesses of the Church, there is always a risk of losing faith, hence, also love and brotherhood. Consequently, it is a specific duty of those who beleive in the Church of love and want to live in her to recognize this danger too and accept that communion is no longer possible with those who have drifterd away from the doctrine of salvation. [emphasis mine]. …

However, if the family of God’s children is to live in unity and peace, it needs someone to keep it in the truth and guide it with wise and authoritative discernment: this is what the ministry of the Apostles is required to do.

And here we come to an important point. The Church is wholly of the Spirit but has a structure, the apostolic succession, which is responsible for guaranteeing that the Church endures in the truth given by Christ, from whom the capacity to love also comes. …

What the Apostles represent in the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the Church of the origins is similarly represented by the ministerial succession in the relationship between the primitive Church and the Church of today. It is not merely a material sequence; rather it is a historical instrument that the Spirit uses to make the Lord Jesus, Head of his people, present through those who are ordained for the ministry through the imposition of hands and the Bishops’ prayer. [emphasis mine]

Consequently, through Apostolic Succession it is Christ who reaches us: in the words of the Apostles and of their successors, it is he who speaks to us; through their hands it is he who acts in the sacraments; in their gaze it is his gaze that embraces us and makes us feel loved and welcomed into the Heart of God. And still today, as at the outset, Christ himself is the true “Shepherd and Guardian of our souls” whom we follow with deep trust, gratitude and joy.

–Pope Benedict XVI, The Apostles (Our Sunday Visitor, 2007)