CSDC 51

According to the plan of God brought about in Christ, there corresponds to the identity and mission of the Church in the world “a saving and eschatological purpose which can be fully attained only in the next life”⁶⁰ Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 40: AAS 58AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 1058.. Precisely for this reason, the Church offers an original and irreplaceable contribution with the concern that impels her to make the family of mankind and its history more human, prompting her to place herself as a bulwark against every totalitarian temptation, as she shows man his integral and definitive vocation⁶¹ Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2244.. By her preaching of the Gospel, the grace of the sacraments and the experience of fraternal communion, the Church “heals and elevates the dignity of the human person, ... consolidates society and endows the daily activity of men with a deeper sense and meaning”⁶² Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 40: AAS 58AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 1058.. At the level of concrete historical dynamics, therefore, the coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be discerned in the perspective of a determined and definitive social, economic or political organization. Rather, it is seen in the development of a human social sense which for mankind is a leaven for attaining wholeness, justice and solidarity in openness to the Transcendent as a point of reference for one's own personal definitive fulfilment.