Theological Foundations new file

117 The Ecclesial Dimension to receive the Savior’s teaching, meditate upon His life and, first of all, His Holy Passion. There are many, however, who are devoted to Christ, love His teaching, confess it and meditate upon it constantly, but do not apply it in life and keep missing the gate of salvation. After all, “blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk 11, 28). Those who listen to the Word and fulfill it, will find safe and reliable pastures for themselves. 4 Later, on the basis of Christ’s words: “If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (Jn 10, 9), Father Papczynski wonders what this love for Christ’s sheepfold is to look like in our daily practice. “Assuming that your order is the said gate of Christ, consider that salvation is obtained both by those who come in through it and those who go out. It means that not only those religious will enter eternal life who, having once been accepted into the monastery, are always free to devote themselves to solitude, prayer, penance and the practice of other virtues, who never appear in public, never make even one step outside, but that eternal life was promised also to those who go out into the world, stimulated by either obedience and love or by piety and the desire to help one’s neighbor.” 5 It has been mentioned above that Father Papczynski called Christ’s teaching, which constitutes the content of the Church’s teaching, the gate of the sheepfold. He loved this teaching immensely and was proud to have been born and raised in the “Roman Catholic Faith” — as he confessed in his first testament — and that he could die in this faith believing what the Mother Church believes, what she teaches us to believe and what she will teach us to believe in the future. Concerned that he might have hastily thought, said or written something against the Church some time in the past, he revoked it all and expressed a wish that it would have never been thought, said or written. 6 In his second testa- ment, he confessed again that as he was about to leave this mortal life he did so in the Roman Catholic Faith, for which he was ready to shed his own blood during the time of the Swedish war. 7 In the same manner he confessed the faith of the Church in his Oblatio where he emphasized