The early Christians understood and demonstrated what Pope Benedict speaks of…. The Holy Spirit and the Church.

“God did not create the person so that he might be dissolved but so that he might open himself in his entire height and in his innermost depth-therefore, where the Holy Spirit embraces him and is the unity of divided persons.

“The Church is the icon of the Father, the image of God, and at the same time the image of man, so the Church is the image of the Holy Spirit. From here we can understand what the Church actually is in the deepest part of her nature: namely, the overcoming of the boundary between I and Thou, the union of men among themselves through the radical transcendence of self into eternal love. Church is mankind being brought into a way of life of the Trinitarian God.  For this reason she is not something that belongs to a group or a circle of friends.  For this reason she cannot become a national Church or be identifies with a race or a class.  She must, if this is true, be catholic in order ‘to gather into one the children of God, who are scattered abroad.  (John 11:52)

The Church does not being, therefore, as a club; rather, she begins catholic….The universal Church is not a federation of local churches but rather their mother.”

Pope Benedict XVI, IMAGES OF HOPE.  Ignatius pp.68-69.