Evangelii Nuntiandi §61

61. Brothers and sons and daughters, at this stage of our reflection, we wish to pause with you at a question which is particularly important at the present time. In the celebration of the liturgy, in their witness before judges and executioners and in their apologetical texts, the first Christians readily expressed their deep faith in the Church by describing her as being spread throughout the universe. They were fully conscious of belonging to a large community which neither space nor time can limit: From the just Abel right to the last of the elect,[85] "indeed to the ends of the earth,[86] "to the end of time."[87]

This is how the Lord wanted His Church to be: universal, a great tree whose branches shelter the birds of the air,[88] a net which catches fish of every kind[89] or which Peter drew in filled with one hundred and fifty-three big fish,[90] a flock which a single shepherd pastures.[91] A universal Church without boundaries or frontiers except, alas, those of the heart and mind of sinful man.

85. Saint Gregory the Great, Homil. in Evangelia 19, 1: PL 76, 1154.

86. Acta 1:8; cf. Didache 9, 1: Fund Patres Apostolici, 1, 22.

87. Mt 28:20.

88. Cf. Mt 13:32.

89. Cf. Mt 13:47.

90. Cf. Jn 21:11.

91. Cf. Jn 10:1-16.