The Church is a historical fact, whose origin can be and has been documented. But the Church=s eternal foundation is the saving plan conceived by the Father within the Trinity.

"The eternal Father, in accordance with the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the whole universe, and chose to raise up men to share his own divine life; and when they had fallen in Adam, he did not abandon them, but at all times held out to them the means of salvation, bestowed in consideration of Christ, the Redeemer" (LG, n. 2).

In the eternal design of God the Church constitutes, in Christ and with Christ, an essential part of the universal economy of salvation in which the love of God is expressed.

That eternal plan contains the destiny of human beings, been created in the image and likeness of God, called to the dignity of children of God and adopted as children of the Father in Jesus Christ.

God chose us and "destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in his beloved Son" (Eph 1,4-6). And we read in the letter to the Romans, "For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom 8,29).

The same Pauline texts regard the destiny of the human person, chosen and called to be an adopted child of God, not only in the individual dimension of the human race, but in its community dimension as well. God conceives, creates and calls to himself a community of persons.

Christ is the keystone of the universe; the Church, the living body of those who belong to him by their response to the vocation of being children of God, is associated with him, as participant and minister, at the center of the plan of universal redemption.

When seen in the perspective of the Father's eternal plan, the Church appears from the beginning as the fruit of the infinite, divine love which unites the Father to the Son within the Trinity.

The Church's mission is, as it were, the continuation, or historical expansion, of the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and so one can call it a vital participation, in the form of ministerial association, in the Trinity's activity in human history.

The foundation of the community willed by God in his eternal plan is the work of Redemption, which frees human beings from the division and dispersion produced by sin. God willed to free humanity from this state through Christ.

This saving will of his seems to echo in Caiaphas' speech to the Sanhedrin, in regard to which John the evangelist writes, "Since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God" (Jn 11,51-52).

John knew well that Jesus had come to take away sin from the world and to save men (cf. Jn 1,29), and so he did not hesitate to give those words of Caiaphas a prophetic meaning, as a revelation of the divine plan.