Christ as King of Heaven and Earth means that He is present still in this world. We know this is true because He makes Himself visible through His Bride, the Church. “To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son’s Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation.” [1]
 
What are the Four Marks of the Church? The marks of the church are that it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.  “The four essential notes that characterize the Church of Christ, first fully enumerated in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed; one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. Since the Eastern Schism and the Protestant Reformation they have become means of identifying the true Church among the rival claimants in Christianity. Some writers add other notes besides the traditional four, e.g., St. Robert Bellamine with a total of fifteen, including the mark of persecution.” [2]
 
Why does the Church profess these four marks? “These four characteristics, inseparably linked with each other, indicate essential features of the Church and her mission. The Church does not possess them of herself; it is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, and it is he who calls her to realize each of these qualities.” [3] To speak of the Church is to speak of Christ. The Church is our mother. Like Mary, when asking to speak of herself she only direct to Christ “do whatever he tells you” [4] When we ask for the Church to speak of herself, she has little to say and everything to say of Jesus. We must keep this in mind when we ask the Church why she professes anything like the four marks. It is because she is professing what Christ has given us. We have to remember that if the Church is one, holy, catholic, apostolic then Jesus Christ is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. God the Father sent His begotten Son into this world for a mission to save souls.
 
How does the Church claim to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic? “Only faith can recognize that the Church possesses these properties from her divine source. But their historical manifestations are signs that also speak clearly to human reason. As the First Vatican Council noted, the ‘Church herself, with her marvelous propagation, eminent holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in everything good, her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of her divine mission.” [5]
 
Each of the marks is expounded upon in greater detail in subsequent lessons, but here is a great summary from the Catechism:

- “The Church is one: she acknowledges one Lord, confesses one faith, is born of one Baptism, forms only one Body, is given life by the one Spirit, for the sake of one hope, at whose fulfillment all divisions will be overcome.
 
- The Church is holy: the Most Holy God is her author; Christ, her bridegroom, gave himself up to make her holy; the Spirit of holiness gives her life. Since she still includes sinners, she is ‘the sinless one made up of sinners.’ Her holiness shines in the saints; in Mary she is already all-holy.
 
- The Church is catholic: she proclaims the fullness of the faith. She bears in herself and administers the totality of the means of salvation. She is sent out to all peoples. She speaks to all men. She encompasses all times. She is ‘missionary of her very nature’.
 
- The Church is apostolic. She is built on a lasting foundation: ‘the twelve apostles of the Lam’. She is indestructible. She is upheld infallibly in the truth: Christ governs her through Peter and the other apostles, who are present in their successors, the Pope and the college of bishops.
 
‘The sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,….subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines’.” [6]

[1] CCC 845
[2] Fr. Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, pg. 334
[3] CCC 811
[4] Jn. 2:5
[5] CCC 812
[6] CCC 866-870