What do the Fathers say about the sublimity of the Church?

St. Irenaeus says, “Wherever the church is, there is also the Spirit of God, and wherever the Spirit of God is, there the church and every grace is. The Spirit is the Truth.”¹⁰⁸¹

Pope Alexander of Alexandria says, “The one only Catholic and Apostolic Church can never be destroyed, though all the world should seek to make war with it, but it is victorious over every most impious revolt of the heretics who rise up against it.”¹⁰⁸²

St. Cyprian of Carthage says, “As there are many rays of the sun, but one light…thus also the Church, shines over with the light of the Lord, shedding forth her rays over the whole world, yet it is one light which is everywhere diffused.”¹⁰⁸³

It was also written in the Didascalia Apostolorum (the teachings of the twelve apostles): “Hear, therefore, these things, you laymen, the Church chosen of God, because that even the first people was called the Church. You then, Holy and perfect Catholic Church, royal priesthood, holy assembly, people of inheritance, great Church, Bride adorned for the Lord God.”¹⁰⁸⁴

St. Hippolytus of Rome says, “The sea is the world, in which the Church is set, like a ship tossed in the deep, but not destroyed for she has with her the skilled Pilot, Christ.”¹⁰⁸⁵

St. Ambrose says, “Whoever seeks the church, seeks Christ.”

And St. Augustine says, “Who can claim that the great church is nothing but a small part of the world? The great church is the entire world!” Again he says, “Honor, love and praise the holy Church, your mother, the heavenly Jerusalem, the holy City of God. It is she who, in this faith which you have received, bears fruit and spreads throughout the world, She is the ‘Church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of truth,’ who, in dispensing the sacraments, tolerates the wicked who are eventually to be separated and whom, meanwhile, disparity of customs keeps at a distance.”¹⁰⁸⁶

1081 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.24.1 (ANF 1:458).

1082 St. Alexander of Alexandria, Epistles on the Arian Heresy and the Deposition of Arius 1.12 (ANF 6:296).

1083 St. Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Catholic Church 1.5 (ANF 5:423).

1084 Margaret Dunlop Gibson, trans., The Didascalia Apostolorum in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903) Ch. 9: p. 47.

1085 St. Hippolytus, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist 59 (ANF 5:218).

1086 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons 214.11 (FOTC 38:141).

St. Clement of Alexandria says, “Oh, the amazing mystery! One is the Father of all, One is the Word for all, and One the Holy Spirit present everywhere. Likewise, there is one virgin mother whom I like to call, the Church.”