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
Very good!!!
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