The Church ‘is the visible plan of God’s love for humanity’, because God desires ‘that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit’.200 IN BRIEF 777 The word ‘Church’ means ‘convocation’. It designates the assembly of those whom God’s Word ‘convokes’, i.e. gathers together to form the People of God, and who themselves, nourished with the Body of Christ, become the Body of Christ. 778 The Church is both the means and the goal of God’s plan: prefigured in creation, preparedfor in the Old Covenant ,founded by the words and actions of Jesus Christ, fulfilled by his redeeming cross and his Resurrection, the Church has been man!fested as the mystery of salvation by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. She will be perfected in the glory of heaven as the assembly of all the redeemed of the earth (cf Rev 14:4). 779 The Church is both visible and spiritual, a hierarchical society and the Mystical Body of Christ. She is one, yet formed of two components, human and divine. That is her mystery, which only faith can accept. 780 The Church in this world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and men. Paragraph 2. The Church — People of God, Body of Christ, Temple of the Holy Spirit I. The Church — People of God 781 ‘At all times and in every race, anyone who fears God and does what is right has been acceptable to him. He has, however, willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness. He therefore chose the Israelite race to be his own people and established a covenant with it. He gradually instructed this people. . . All these things, however, happened as a preparation for and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ... the New Covenant in his blood; he called together a race made up ofJews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit.’20’