Rejecting the Church is rejecting Christ

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. (…) When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ (…) Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. John 6:56-57, 60, 66

It is the refusal of the Eucharist, not eating the body and blood of the Lord, that caused some followers to no longer accompanied Jesus, to no longer be his friends and his disciples.

Sadly, this is still the case today; whether or not one participates in the Sunday Eucharist distinguishes a practicing Catholic from a non-practicing one. Of the non-practicing Catholics, some think they can belong to the Church without participating in the Eucharist; others think they can reject the Church without rejecting Christ. Something like what many Protestants do in thinking that think they value Jesus more by taking away importance from Mary, his mother.

It is not possible to love Christ while hating the Church he founded. If Jesus of Nazareth is the historical Christ, the Church is the presence of Christ in history. Jesus said to Phillip: "I have been with you all this time, Phillip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? (John 14:9). If Christ represents God the Father, the Church represents Christ, whether well or not, she is his mystical body. This representation can be at times good or bad, close or far, but it is always a representation.

The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ - pluribus unum
Just as our body consists of about 37 trillion cells and each is a distinct unit with its particular role, they are all united in a single body because although they are many and very different, they have something in common:  their genetic code, their DNA.

In this same way, we Christians, who are more than a billion, are very different from each other. We live in different latitudes and longitudes, we speak different languages, we come from different human groups, cultures, nationalities, we have different idiosyncrasies and personalities, but we all have something in common: faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This makes us one community, one body, one family.

Christ, in physical and human form, could only live and die once. However, the patent salvific action of his whole earthly life was not only for the men of his time and the place he lived, but for men of any time and place. The Church was founded by Him to extend His saving action to all times and places. The Church is Christ in time and space; the Church is Christ here and now. In Israel, two thousand years ago, Christ existed without his Church; after his life on earth, neither the Church exists without Christ nor Christ exists in time and space without his Church.

The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the voice, the heart, the mind, and the hands and feet of the Lord in action here and now, in every time and place; it is the same saving action that Jesus performed from year zero to 33 AD in Israel.

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. John 14:12

The Eucharist, the sacramental body of Christ
A club, a company, an institution, a people that does not gather together cannot exist as such. The Eucharist, the sacramental body of Christ, is the reason why the mystical body of Christ gathers together. In the same place, the same Christ instituted the Eucharist and the Church, so that one does not exist without the other.

The day one ends, the other ends too. As before in the time of Jesus, the rejection of the Eucharist was the reason why they stopped walking with Him; in our times, this continues to be the reason. Whoever abandons the Eucharist, abandons the Church and vice versa. Whoever abandons the Church, abandons Christ and vice versa.

Many grains of wheat make one loaf of bread; many bunches of grapes make one bottle of wine; many Christians make one mystical body. Christ chose Bread and Wine to symbolize and signify his sacrifice for us; the Eucharist is the memorial of the Lord's life, passion, death and resurrection.

It is the Church that celebrates the Eucharist; the Eucharist is the Church’s reason for being, because it is the Eucharist that brings Christians together in response to the Lord's mandate, "Do this in memory of me" (Luke 22:19). The Eucharist gives the memory of the Lord and makes present the saving action of Christ. By participating in the Eucharist, we collect the fruits of redemption.

Christ is the body handed over and the blood shed for all mankind; Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Redemption is available to everyone, it is for everyone, those who take part in it are saved. God feeds the birds of the sky but He does not put the food in their nests, the birds have to get out and look for it in nature. Same thing with the Eucharist, it offers salvation to all, so come and get it.

So, Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.’ John 6:53-55

The Eucharist is the heart of the Church. In the human body, the function of the heart is to be the motor that moves blood from the cells to the heart and from the heart to the cells. In the same way, the life of the Christian is a shuttle between the Eucharist and the world. When the Mass was in Latin, at the end of it the priest would say "Ite missa est" which meant "you may go, the Mass is over", but it also meant "the Mass is over, the mission begins".

The Eucharist is to the Church and the Church to the Eucharist as the chicken is to the egg, and the egg to the chicken. In fact, both the Eucharist, born on Holy Thursday, and the Church, born on Pentecost, took place in the same Upper Room. The Eucharist was the moment of conception of the Church and Pentecost was the moment of her birth. The mystical body of Christ meets to celebrate the sacramental body of Christ and to communally feed on his body and blood, and his Word.

When one disappears the other disappears also. Therefore, he who being part of the mystical body of Christ that is the Church, ceases to participate in the Eucharist, he abandons the Church, and when there will no longer be people celebrating the Eucharist, there will no longer be a Church. The day the Eucharist ceases to be celebrated, that very same day the Church will also cease to exist.

If ever this happens, Christ dies in the history of humanity without ever resurrecting again, because it is the Church that preserves his memory and celebrates the Eucharist in his memory as He commanded (Luke 22:19). When there is no longer anyone in the world who celebrates the Eucharist in remembrance of Christ, He ceases to have on earth a physical body, the Church (his hands, feet, heart and mouth) to carry on the works of salvation, from one generation to the next.

I believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church
Protestants do not understand how Catholics can include in the Creed, faith in the Church right after professing faith in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We believe in the Church because she was founded by Christ and represents Christ, and through her, Christ makes his salvation present in the world even today. For all this, in her essence and through her founder, she is holy. By saying "I believe in the Church," I affirm that I believe in all that I have just said.

Saint and harlot, said a Catholic theologian. Yes, the Church is both holy and sinful. Holy in her essence because she was founded by Christ, sinful in her existence because she is constituted, since the beginning, by sinful men and women. If man, as St. Augustine defines him, is simul justus et peccator, at the same time just and sinful, so is the Church. But I don't reject her because she's my mother, no one rejects his mother because she has flaws.

Solus Christus, sola fide, sola scriptura
Luther's grave mistake was to throw away the Church. As we said earlier, today without the Church there is no Christ.

Solus Christus
It was Christ who founded the Church, this means that Luther rejects what Christ founded. It was Christ who gave life to the Church and still gives life to the Church, but it is also the Church that gives life to Christ because she represents Him here and now, because she makes real here and now the same thing that Christ made real during his time – it is for this that Christ founded the Church. Therefore, Christ gives life to the Church, and the Church gives life to Christ.

Sola fide
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Luke 18:8

It depends on the Church whether Christ will still find faith on earth when He returns to judge the living and the dead. It depends on her because it is she who passes on faith in Christ from generation to generation, like in a relay race the testimony is passed on.

This is because it is the Church that is the depository of faith in Christ. This is because our faith is apostolic, that is, the faith that Christ rose from the dead is apostolic because we believe in the testimony of the apostles: they saw, heard and touched the spiritual or glorious body of Christ. After them, no one else saw, touched, or heard Him as they saw, touched and heard Him (1 John 1:3). Just as today there is no Christ without the Church, nor Church without Christ, there is also no faith without the Church, nor Church without the faith.

Sola scriptura
The Christ we have is the Christ of the Church. It was she who gave birth to Christ for the world after his death and resurrection – if we think that the New Testament was written by Christian communities, it is Christ who holds the copyright. The group of apostles was already the Church, their preaching gave rise to new believers, and some of these faithful gathered in small Christian communities and wrote the gospels.

The apostles’ letters, especially Paul’s, were authentic letters because they had a sender, St. Paul, who addressed them to the small communities in Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, etc. Therefore, as far as the New Testament is concerned, there is no scripture without the Church.

Unus christianus nullus christianus - St. Augustine, the founder of the religious order of which Luther was a member, said, "one Christian, no Christian." Christianity was born into community and can only be lived in community. Without community, there is no Christianity. As all animals have a habitat where they live and thrive, so a Christian can only live and thrive within the Christian community.

Conclusion – Whoever ceases to participate in the Eucharist, abandons the Church, and whoever rejects the Church rejects the One who founded her as His mystical body, for she represents Christ in the here and now of history, from generation to generation. As He said, “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18) because “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Christ and the Religions of the World

The idea that all religions are equal and worth the same is widespread today; for non-believers, they are all bad; for believers, they are all good as they all lead to salvation, each one can choose the one that suits him the best or the one that culturally best adapts to his idiosyncrasy.

It is true that every culture has its own particular way of conceptualizing and worshipping God. We see this even within a single religion like Christianity. In Europe, where it emerged and flourished, the East became Orthodox and the West remained Catholic for a while until the rupture. Afterwards, the North became Protestant and the South remained Catholic.

However, today with the increasing globalization of cultures, differences or nuances in living and acting have become small, because of the one human nature that does not vary in time or space. Proof of this, and for the topic that occupies us, we can organize all religions, present or past, into three major categories: animists, polytheists and monotheists.

This is possible because since there is only one human nature invariable in time and space, there is also only one model of development. In other words, there is no alternative model of development to the one we have today, which involves the discovery of electricity, the automotive movement, the discovery of the printing press, the radio, the television, the internet, etc.

Evolution of religious sentiment
As soon as the human being became aware of himself, it was as if he had awakened from a great dream, and when he looked at the reality that surrounded him, the first belief he had was that everything around him was also aware of itself, that each had a spirit, an anima. This is how animism emerged as the first stage in the evolution of religious sentiment.

Animism
A bit like magic, animism is based on the belief that the world, both in its entirety and in its parts, has a soul or spirit; even the air we breathe is populated by spirits that are impersonal forces that can be invoked or summoned and manipulated by shamans, mediums, magicians, sorcerers or witches using formulas, rituals and magic spells.

Despite it being only the first stage of the evolution of religious sentiment, it is still practised today by indigenous tribes where these still exist: in both North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands.

Furthermore, in the modern world, all forms of superstition and divination, such as astrology, cartomancy, witchcraft, sorcery, are remnants of animism that have a huge popular acceptance. Objects that bring good luck and objects that bring bad luck, rituals that conjure good luck and rituals to avoid bad luck, continue to be part of our daily life such as entering with the right foot, believing in the power of rabbit’s foot, four-leaf clover, horseshoe ...

The New Age religion, which pretends to be the synthesis of all religions, has much of Neo-paganism or animism. If we wish, even the Franciscan spirituality can be seen from this perspective, in calling the wolf and the sun brothers, and the water and the moon sisters, St. Francis was giving back to these realities the soul they once possessed.

After the rain of materialism that has been increasingly falling since the Renaissance, today most people realize that a material object cannot have spiritual power. Only a spiritual being has spiritual power. However, there are still those who are superstitious, always reminding us of the animism of our ancestors.

If we compare the evolution of the notion of God with the maturation of man, animism corresponds to childhood - children do indeed have the tendency to see everything around them as having a soul, they talk to their dolls and toys, they live in an animated world of fairies, witches and boogeymen, and they believe in Santa Claus and magic; Walt Disney, in his films for children, knew well how to explore this side of childhood fantasy.

Polytheism
As the human being comes to know and therefore dominate his environment, the latter becomes materialized. All the realities that the human being knows, controls and dominates lose their soul and the power they have over him. The one who knows, exercises his power and control over the known reality. In this way the realm of the spiritual world outside the person is reduced.

There are, however, certain realities that the human being does not master with knowledge, where he still feels powerless and helpless, where he is at their mercy, these realities he calls them gods. Thus arises a god for each reality that the human being does not master: the god of war, Mars; the god of the sea, Neptune; the goddess of love, Venus, etc.

Monotheism
The prehistory of monotheism takes place when the human being groups all these gods and gives them a leader – Zeus in Greek mythology, and Jupiter in Roman mythology; they are the father of other gods. The first human being to proclaim that there is only one god was a pharaoh from Egypt named Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV, who reigned in Egypt in 14th century AC. The idea did not take hold among the Egyptians of that time, but was embraced years later by a people, in slavery in the land of Egypt – the Jewish people.

The discovery of the Hebrew people, in this sense, is that of a personal God who concentrates within himself all human aspirations, whatever that is good and perfect. Since the Jews were nomads, and nomads cannot have local gods, and as they move from place to place, it would be very cumbersome to carry their idols around, they then thought of a concrete reality that was everywhere. They looked up and found him in heaven.

Sedentary peoples tend to be polytheistic; nomadic peoples, on the other hand, are monotheistic. The Turkans, a nomadic people of northern Kenya, have the same word to designate Heaven and God. The Mongols, Turks and Tatars worshipped a common god called Tengri, the god of blue sky.

Christianity is no longer a religion, but God’s revelation
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Hebrews 1:1-2

It is true that all religions worship the same God and aim to humanize man. For this reason, the Church no longer presents herself to the world as the only plank of salvation and recognizes in all religions "semina verbum", fragmented pieces of truth. There is, therefore, salvation without the Church, but there can be no salvation without Christ, because he being God made man, is the fullness of truth and therefore valid for all times and all places.

Like the Old Testament prophets, the founders of all religions were the revealers of God's will and the longings of the peoples at a certain point in their history, leading them along the right path.

Christ, more than a prophet or the right man for a concrete moment, is the right man for all times and all places. He did not come to evangelize the Jewish people so that they would be faithful to their faith, nor did he come to purify the faith of the Jewish people. True, he was born among the Jewish people, but he did not come only for the Jewish people; as the prophet Isaiah prophesied so well, Christ came for all peoples.

Religion designates all the effort human beings have made over time to attract God’s blessing, through sacrifices, rituals and liturgies. Religion is, therefore, an initiative of the human race. Revelation is a divine initiative; it is no longer man making his way to God, but God making His way to man. You did not choose me but I chose you. (John 15:16)

Since Christ is no longer just a prophet, so in relation to the other religions, Christianity makes a qualitative leap and, in this way, all religions are to Christianity what the Old Testament of the Bible is to the New Testament.

At the individual level
“No one goes to the Father except through me”, Jesus said in (John 14: 6-14), and “whoever knows me knows the Father (John 14:7)," which is equivalent to saying that whoever does not know me does not know the Father. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)" which is equivalent to saying that there is no alternative way, truth, and life. Whoever does not gather with me scatters, he also said.

At the social level
Jesus of Nazareth knows that new men make new societies, and new societies through education, make new men, so it is necessary to act on both levels. Christianity is not like Buddhism which only aims at individual personal perfection and is disinterested in others, nor like Judaism that only aims at the salvation of the Jewish people and the condemnation of the rest non-Jewish pagans.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear. Isaiah 25:6

Christ came with a project for all peoples, the Kingdom of God, as was foretold rightly by the prophet Isaiah in the banquet for all peoples. Later, Jesus explains in parables what the kingdom of God is, where he often uses the image of a banquet open to all (Matthew 22, 1-14).

Christianity is a social revolution and an individual psychotherapy
Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey...  Exodus 3: 7-8

Jesus, as the new Moses, comes to take human beings out of all forms of slavery, he comes to offer himself as the role model to emulate so that man can be truly free. Since Christ, God made man, incarnated in life the most perfect model of humanity, He is the reference of all human beings; everyone who seeks and strives to be an authentic person, whatever his creed or religion, without having to profess the Christian faith, it is to Christ that he must compare himself and not to anyone else.

Jesus enters human history like a meteorite in the middle of the sea and makes waves in the form of concentric circles, from the centre to the farthest shores. Since it was a meteorite that ended the reign of the great reptiles, the dinosaurs, giving way to small mammals from which the human race evolved, so Christ is the King of the Universe who comes to re-establish his kingdom on earth that He, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, had created.

Inspired further with the metaphor of the meteorite that makes concentric circles with its fall, Christ bursts into the middle of human history dividing it into two periods: before his coming and after his coming, his birth being year zero.

Whether it is because Christians form the largest group, or because the Western culture of Christian matrix has become universalized because it is more advanced, the fact is that no matter how much the Jews, atheists and agnostics prefer to call it the Common Era instead, the birth of Christ is still year zero from which human history is counted backwards and forwards.

Christ is the cornerstone (Acts 4:11) of salvation history. He came to save both the living and the dead, that is, all who lived before him (Ephesians 4:9-10), having even thought (John 20:24-29) and prayed for those who would live after him (John 17:20).

Because He, fundamentally, did not come to found a new religion, but rather to teach man to be man, and how to relate to others, in order to make the world a better place, transforming it into the kingdom of God, that is, into a society where justice and peace reign.

I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, in prison or in the hospital, and you gave me or did not give me assistance... (Matthew 25:31-46). At the final judgment, which is same for all peoples, we will not be asked what religion we belonged to, what we were, the success we had in our lives or how many religious practices we carried out. The judgment is not religious at all because it does not contain questions of a religious nature, but exclusively of a social nature.

From the time God took on human nature, all human beings have become ipso facto his brothers and sisters. There is no longer anyone in this world who is all alone, who has no one to defend him, Jesus remains hidden in each one of us, especially in the poorest and the most disadvantaged. Through this final judgment, we learn that the assistance we provided or did not provide to those who crossed our path during our lives, it was to Him that we provided or did not provide.  

On the other hand, no atheist or agnostic would deny that there is no human life without love and that to live is to love. In which case, Jesus has only one commandment that says just that: to love God above all things, above yourself and about everything, to love yourself as God loves you and to love others as you love yourself. What's so religious about this? Interpreting this commandment, St. Augustine goes so far as to say: Ama et fac quod vis or love and do whatever you will...

Conclusion – All religions before Christ are like "Old Testaments"; Christ is the New Testament to all of them. There is salvation outside the Church, but there is no salvation outside of Christ, for He is the only Way, Truth, and Life to God the Father; as He himself said that no one goes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC