What affects all, includes all and encompasses all is the Catholic or Universal Church. The word catholic is a Greek derived word that describes the Orthodox Church. It means the whole stock, what is common to all, general, and more literally over the whole or each whole to describe a whole that is distributed into parts. Parts are the whole insofar as they are in relation to each other. Catholic can also mean spiritually what is in heaven and on earth, what is open to all people, involving the whole human race, the Church where all categories of sin are healed, and all the kinds of virtues that are given to Christians.
There are no real geo-political boundaries for Orthodox Christians that the Holy Trinity cannot overcome, though we find ourselves in different places and under different governments. There are no limits to how the Holy Catholic Orthodox Church can reach the world. For millennia rulers of world empires and civilizations sought limitless kingdoms, eternal panaceas and utopias to bring all the parts into a whole and maintain that identity over time. But the divine liturgy in each local church led by one bishop is how the Church has taught and worshiped the same everywhere.
Catholicity is the principle of spiritual organization among Orthodox Churches around the world. St. Cyprian of Carthage describes catholicity or universality as distinct rays of the sun that remain a part of the same light or the waters that flow from a single river. St. John Chrysostom comments on 1 Corinthians that the “the whole body was not the Corinthian Church, but the Church in every part of the world … individually … i.e., the Church amongst you is a part of the Church existing everywhere and of the body which is made up of all the Churches.” The unity of the original Church has been the eucharist that is held in common among all churches everywhere because they are in relation to and in communion with each other with Christ as the Head of all churches or the Catholic Church. Each church is not merely a part lacking the fullness of a church, nor can bishops shepherd a church without being in communion with other bishops from other churches; in fact, according to the canons, bishops are confirmed to their role by other bishops. When all local churches and bishops are in communion with each other, they are called catholic, universal and meeting together in oneness in love and in the eucharist is called conciliarity. The Latin word concilium means to call together to meet and unite in peace. Just as a bride would meet the groom in unity or the members of the body would call each other together to work in unison, so too the Church is conciliar as a body or bride would be. If each individual church was not the universal church, then to seek and find the whole church one would either have to go to all churches at once or claim only one local church contained all, and so to alter the principle of catholicity and conciliarity among the apostles of Christ and the successors to the apostles.