Encountering Christ In Community, The New Mystic

The activity of the community is obvious, we must build the Church! Ironically, there is no better opportunity to experience God on the personal level than by participating in the activities of the Church at the communal level. It is the Eucharist, we call it Communion and it makes it possible for the Church, the believers themselves, to be in union with God. The desire of Heaven is for our reality to become Heaven itself. This is the activity of the Church. The Kingdom of Heaven wills to transform the substance of our reality into something greater, something that is capable of union with God; this is achieved by introducing a new and special element into the system of reality. Christ accomplishes this in giving us his resurrected body as food to eat. According to our own free will we must make our own substance, our own arrangement of matter (our bodies), to be within and become this new element (new to our reality) which is Heaven, which is God, who is Jesus the Christ. With the Eucharist we are given an element with the nature of both earth and Heaven to incorporate into our own selves. In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, we read the following on Corpus Christi Sunday:

“I am the bread of life […] I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh […] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day […] he who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6 48-58).

Within our reality it is the introduction of new elements to the process and organization of creation, i.e. change or evolution, that creates more complex unions that increase in consciousness and begin to act in their environment and outside of themselves with a goal in mind.[1] In the process of the Eucharist, through God’s grace, we are called to be co-creator’s in the universal destination of everything; in embodying the Church and becoming the Body of Christ we work to Sacramentally manifest the Kingdom of Heaven within our reality. The Church works as a living Sacrament; it is an arrangement within our reality that points to and manifests Heaven on earth. This is what the emergence of the Christ does for material creation, it provides a new element that advances the system in complexity and reveals the reality of Heaven in the Church around us.

Experiencing God on the personal level is the hallmark of the mystical practices. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church states that Mysticism is, “an immediate knowledge of God attained in this present life through personal religious experience.” For centuries in the ancient Church theological thought flourished, in discovering the boundaries of orthodoxy and in opening up the possibilities of the Christian worldview. In the late middle-ages Christendom, having overcome many heresies, grew hesitant in embracing movements that encouraged independence from the greater communal structure. With figures like Meister Eckhart, we can see that the Church was resistant in allowing this mysticism to leave the halls of the monasteries fearing that it would “corrupt” the uneducated laity. By the sixteenth century Protestant Reformers took the conversation, of achieving a personal relationship with God, into the realm of actual heresy. Considering we no longer live in the sixteenth century it is safe to say that, today things are different.

The Church, through the Eucharist, is like a creature being fed by the hand of God.  This understanding is actually the culmination of two thousand years of tradition. The Catechism of the Council of Trent regards the Effects of the Eucharist, as the text states, applying the words of St. Augustine, that the Sacrament is unlike normal food which we change into our own substance; but, instead we are changed into its nature.[2]

Sacramentalism is a label that fits well when considering how ought the Christian take to their Christian way. It speaks to the involvement of the body (the physical and material world) in the divine actions of salvation. The Sacraments are a complimentary action (or, arrangement of matter) on this side of the walls of Heaven, which signify an action that has occurred inside of Heaven. Because the Sacraments signify here on earth what has taken place in Heaven, they work to manifest God’s Kingdom as present in our reality. Nonetheless, taking this message in the fundamentalist sense suggests that there is no necessary moral component to the Christian way; that one simply take of the Eucharist and then do as they please in other aspects of life that require a moral pursuit; this is an error. However, we must not put ourselves in error as our Protestant cousins, Christianity should not fall on moralism alone. Christ was not a moral philosopher but in fact God incarnate and we must respond accordingly.

The most appropriate label to the most appropriate way is something along the lines of Natural Mysticism; Natural, as in all that has been created growing on a usual and logical course towards a great end (the one reality of Heaven and earth); and Mysticism, which suggests that this great end is dependent on the personal and intimate interaction between matter and spirit, between the body and Heaven. (Avoiding the classic label given to Mysticism, this effort embraces the community of the Universal Church). What is necessary is to incorporate the entire human self, the body and the soul being one in the goal of salvation. All of the matter, and all of the spirit.

An Ecclesiological Review of the Stated Principal

The term ecclesia in its Greek rendering means “an assembly,” particularly an assembly of those who have a voice in the community. The way the term was used in the early Church was slightly different. The early Christians gave the term equivalence to the Hebrew word quahal, which better represents the entire community, not just some, in a religious aspect.[3] The term ecclesia was used often by St. Paul to refer to the Church in a variety of forms, small house gatherings as well as larger gatherings of the faithful that incorporated entire cities. Essentially, where there are Christians present there is also the ecclesia. In referring to the ecclesia, Christian writers can sometimes use the word in a broad manner, and at other times in a highly restricted fashion. In its broadest sense it could represent all who have believed in the one true God from the very beginning of man. In denoting the whole body of the faithful the term includes not only those who are alive and practicing the faith (the Church Militant) but those who are in Heaven (the Church Triumphant) and those who are in Purgatory (the Church Suffering). Beyond a mere organization, this is a living structure that breaks the barriers humanity is accustomed to; as its whole self exists in a state that crosses the boundary of Heaven and earth. In its most common use it signifies the whole body of the faithful, every community large and small, religious along with lay, the rulers and the ruled.[4]

Catholic ecclesiology has focused on seeing the Church as the continuation of the Incarnation of God. A holy people gathered together creating the body that is the continuation of God following the Christ event. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII authored the encyclical Divinum illud munus, according to this document Christ is the head of the Church, the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, and the believers incorporate the body.  This is not the first time the Church was defined in such a way. In the era of Vatican II, Cardinal Dulles (d. 2008) presents multiple models of the Church. One model in particular to our interest is the Church as a “mystical communion;” in which he sees the Eucharistic expression as a call to community formation.  The very term communion, koinonia in Greek, implies a “sharing in one reality held in common.”  Related terms include fellowship, participation, community, communion, etc. This sort of communion, that makes many people one community, is based on the type of communion observed among the members of the Holy Trinity (three persons, one living God).[5] The Trinitarian Communion is the greatest form of community, living and creative unity sustained in love; the continuity of identity and personality within three different centers of consciousness. The Christian witnesses this communion and strives to adore its mystery and imitate it in practice.

The ecclesiology that unfolds is sacramental in nature. The sacraments mediate communion with God and also serve to construct the Church both in its formal organization and its spiritual body. Baptism introduces the faithful into the community while the Eucharist serves to perfect the unity of the Church. It is argued that 1 Corinthians 10: 16-17 is the earliest reference to the Eucharistic celebration and that this verse expresses a “causal subordination of the church’s ecclesial body to its Eucharistic body.”[6]  Which implies that even prior to observing the sacrament of Eucharist, the Church is made by the Eucharist. It is clear which one came first, the Eucharist was instituted by Christ before Pentecost, before His resurrection, before His crucifixion.

In the Eastern Tradition the Church is described within a cosmological setting.  In this ancient and orthodox tradition the Church as a body and organization provides a way for the human community to relate to and find a role within the universe. In this understanding the Church is the center of the universe, what is needed in attaining union with God is found within the sphere of the Church.  1 Corinthians 10: 16-17 reads:

“We have a cup that we bless; is not this cup we bless a participation in Christ’s blood? Is not the bread we break a participation in Christ’s body? The one bread makes us one body, though we are many in number; the same bread is shared by all.”

In the east, the Eucharist is essentially the function of the Church. In the letters of Paul the Eucharist is spoken of as both analogical and causal.  1 Corinthians 10: 16-17 speaks of the Eucharist and implies that the church is to bear witness to salvation in Christ not by simply “telling,” but by “doing” (participating) in remembrance of Christ. What is brought out of this passage, by the east, is that the function of the Eucharist is to make the Church. Therefore, the Church, the ecclesia, is God’s people gathered for the Eucharist. Because this ecclesiastical approach is strictly a local gathering, in every celebration the Whole Christ is thought to be present making every local church a true church.  In the east, these local churches are autonomous (under a Bishop) while united in the identity of the One Church.[7]

The differences between the east and the west are few and far between. In the east the approach to the Eucharist in respect to ecclesiology is heavy in language associated with the Holy Spirit. This relates to Pentecost and the risen Christ sending the Church out to the world. In the west the Eucharist, in respect to ecclesiology, is often associated with the Body of Christ (the Last Supper); first in the person of Jesus Christ and continued in the body of the Church. In both the east and the west the ordained clergy have a crucial role in the Eucharistic rite: the Bishops are disciples of the Apostles, the Apostles were commissioned by Christ to administer the Eucharist. Within this sustained tradition, because the Office of the Bishop has an unbroken Apostolic heritage, the Eucharistic Sacrament we know today is validly associated with what was given during the Last Supper. While in the east Bishops are autonomous/semi-autonomous, in the west the entire church structure is said to be “in communion” with the Bishop of Rome (the Office of Peter and the place where both Peter and Paul were martyred), otherwise known as the Pope (however that is not to say that the Bishop of Rome does not have a role in eastern theology).

[1] Delio, Ilia, “Christ in Evolution,” Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2008, Print, 71.

[2] “The Sacrament of the Eucharist,” In The Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests, Trans by John S. McHugh and Charles J. Callahan, New York: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1923.

[3] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03744a.htm

[4] Ibid

[5] Karkkainen, Veli-Matti, “An Introduction to Ecclesiology,”  Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002, 20-30.

[6] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03744a.htm

[7] Karkkainen, Veli-Matti, “An Introduction to Ecclesiology,”  Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002, 20-30