The Holiness of the Church. The Church of Christ is One because the Body of Christ is One, and all Christians partake in this unity through the Mysteries (Sacraments). In the same way the Church of Christ is Holy because the Body of Christ is Holy, and all Christians partake in this holiness through the Mysteries (Sacraments).

The Church is one both in the sense that there is only Church, and in the sense that her members are united both with Christ and with each other. This unity is for the closest possible kind, both spiritually and bodily, and analogous to the unity of a man and his wife, being a participation, through the Sacraments, in the union effected by Christ with human nature at the annunciation. Christ is the Head and Bridegroom of the Church, and all the individual members of the Church are united with Him as with her Head and Bridegroom; for as the friend of the Bridegroom said, "I have betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one Husband (2 Corinthians 11:2; cf John 3:29).

In the devil, there is no truth. He is the very source itself of every form of lie. "For the devil has sinned from the beginning" (1 John 3:8), and leads mankind astray into sin. Satan is not simply a negative concept of evil but, quite the contrary, a real power. He has free will, devices (2 Corinthians 2:11), and wiles, (Ephesians 6:11). He is a personal force capable of perceiving, even before the Resurrection, that Christ is the Son of God.

As a contemporary Saint John Maximovich, puts it: "For the full sanctification of man, the body of the servant of the Lord must be united with the Body of Christ, and this is accomplished in the Mystery (Sacrament) of Holy Communion. The True Body and Blood of Christ which we receive, becomes a part of the great Body of Christ...We partake of the Holy and Precious Body and Blood of Christ, in the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments), so that we ourselves may be members of Christ's Body: THE Church."

There is no Christian dogma so fiercely under attack today, or subject to such man and varied interpretations, as the dogma of the Church. If the critical question dividing men is still the same that Christ asked the Apostles: "Whom do men say that I am? (St. Matthew 16:13), then that question must now be understood to refer, not only to the single Person of Christ but also to His many-personed Bride, the Church. For many are those who, while looking up to Christ as the Son of God and God, look down on His Church as "having no form or comeliness" (Isaiah 53:2), as a merely human and fallen institution with no part in His Divinity.

Brethren and Fathers, the present day is holy and to be venerated, for from this day the Lord begins to take on himself the sufferings of the Cross for our sake, in accordance with David's words: "Why did the nations rage and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth rose up and the rulers assembled together against the Lord and against His Christ" (Ps 2:1-2). They assembled together to plot an evil plan against the Master.