7In this compelling new work, Father David Meconi tells the exciting story of, as the subtitle says, the first 500 years of Christ's life. How can that be, readers may ask, if Christ lived only 33 years on earth. Therein lies the uniqueness of Meconi's approach to this history. In these pages, he shows how the early Christians understood the Church not as a set of teachings or even as one more religion among many, but as the extension of Christ himself. The Church is ultimately the deifying union between Christ the Head and his sanctified members. Just as the Lord unfurls himself into the Eucharist, Jesus Christ also extends his divinely human presence into his Mystical Body, the Church. By focusing on the development of the early Church and the first 4 ecumenical councils in particular, these pages trace that development over the first 500 years of Jesus' life on earth.