Though mankind is stricken with wonder at its own discoveries and its power, it often raises anxious questions about the current trend of the world, about the place and role of man in the universe, about the meaning of its individual and collective strivings, and about the ultimate destiny of reality and of humanity. Therefore, the council focuses its attention on the world of men, the whole human family along with the sum of those realities in the midst of which it lives that world which is the theater of man's history, and the heir of his energies, his tragedies and his triumphs that world which the Christian sees as created and sustained by its Maker's love, fallen indeed into the bondage of sin, yet emancipated now by Christ, Who was crucified and rose again to break the strangle hold of personified evil, so that the world might be fashioned anew according to God's design and reach its fulfillment.ģ. For the council yearns to explain to everyone how it conceives of the presence and activity of the Church in the world of today. Hence this Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.Ģ. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. For theirs is a community composed of men.

Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern Word-Gaudium et Spesġ.

Divinity 2 getting your own back