Who has not felt one day that the best thing in life, in the end, is the joy of friendship, the pure and constant joy – I mean (eternal) – that results from the meeting and union of brothers in peace, harmony and accord, with open hearts, transcending all separation and distance, in a final existential union?

Yes, full participation among people, the human community, remains without a doubt the deepest desire of the human heart. And today in particular, this longed-for unity is sought, both in contemporary humanity and in the Church, in a realistic and painful way.

But it is also an old story: from the beginning, the unity of love, which began between the first ancestors in Paradise and was transformed by sin into plurality and conflict, we had to recover. But also from the beginning, from the Incarnation of the Word, ordained from eternity in God’s plan, as St. Maximus the Confessor says, the unity of men among themselves has been “restored” and “revised” in Christ, and is therefore here, with us and in us. But we must always discover it anew. Yes, since the divine Incarnation, humanity has become the Body of Christ, and the Church is the historical and spiritual place where renewed humanity becomes aware of its true being and its vocation: that is, that men are members of one another in one body. This fullness, this ultimate reality of human unity, which is only realized – within the ecclesial community – in the Eucharist, is what we must explore.

1) The Eucharist in the literature of the ancient Church is also known as an assembly, as a holy assembly, that is, it is at once the communion of the Body of the Lord and a communion among those present. In St. Paul, as in all the texts of the literature of the first century, there is an absolute connection and complete identification between the Eucharist and the Church.

And basically the Greek phrase in the Book of Acts (2:44) (All who believed were together(EPI TO AFTO) is a special technical expression used to denote the Eucharistic community: “And the Lord added to the church daily (to those who were together) those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

This is clear in the letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, and especially with Saint Justinus - who says this explicitly - that Christians do not gather in the church merely in meetings (in general) but rather In order to celebrate the EucharistThis correspondence between the Eucharistic community and the Church as a community is also clearly evident from the description by Justinus and Dionysius the Areopagite of the rite of initiation into the Church consisting of baptism immediately followed by the Eucharist, where membership in the Church through baptism takes the form of entry into the Eucharistic community… – For the Christians of the first centuries, the basic principle of the life of the Church was to be Together, united for one purposeIn other words, their meeting as a church is their meeting for the Eucharist, and their meeting for the Eucharist is their meeting as a church… And A.F. says: It is true that the church, always and everywhere, performs its sacraments as the community of God’s people in Christ, but the Eucharist is in a special way the (sacrament) of the church.

2) There is no certainty that this complete union in Christ through the Eucharist has Necessary conditions and reasons It prepares it and also contributes to its realization. Believers gather first around the remembrance of the Lord who rose from the dead, Jesus whom they followed, loved, and believed in. They gather in His living name which makes Him present among them: (Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am in the midst of them).

They also meet (must meet) reconciled and at peace with each other: “If you offer your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23-24) (This condition is essential and indispensable). And also at peace, each with himself, that is, reconciled and united with himself by confessing his sins and by humble repentance: for the body and blood of Christ are given (for the forgiveness of sins).

Then they come together to listen to the commandments of the Lord, to the word of the Gospel that unites them in the light it instills in the mind, and in the life it generously gives.

They also gather to worship and celebrate in praise and thanksgiving: (Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God... the Lamb who was slain and who lives... You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power... for you have purchased us for God with your blood...) Thus the entire creation gathers around the Lamb of the Book of Revelation and praises Him (Revelation: Chapters Four and Five).

But this unity of believers (established in the name of the Lord, in reconciliation, repentance and praise, is nourished by one (word) and one presence) It is not completed Really and truly Except in the Eucharist.

3) This is because the unity to which we are called (and for which we were created and in its image) is not a moral, spiritual, or psychological unity, nor even an existential unity, but rather it is an organic unity, a unity of existential essence: body one.

This phrase, the body of the Church is the body of Christ, has a Eucharistic basis for Paul the Apostle: “For there is one bread, of which we all partake, and we, being many, are one body” (Col. 10:17). And through the Eucharist we are all joined to the body of Christ (Ephesians 3:6).

Saint Cyril of Alexandria says that Communion – (by feeding us from one body) – creates communion which is a true union with the body and blood of Christ, a union in which we become, through bread and wine, the body of Christ. The Church of God is (in Christ) because God has gathered her in body Christ, and the word Church, cannot be truly understood, in all its scope, except in the light of the doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ in the true and real sense and not just a mystical body. (All merge and dissolve into each other, so to speak) says St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Athanasius of Alexandria says: (We are all parts of each other, completing each other).

The Church was therefore considered not only as a communion of believers, but as the Body of Christ. In the Book of the Teachings of the Twelve Apostles, one of the oldest Eucharistic texts, we read this prayer: (Just as this broken bread, which was formerly scattered on the hills, was gathered together to become one bread, so also gather your Church from the ends of the world). St. Ignatius of Antioch describes the members of the Church gathered in one temple, as if they were gathered around one altar and in one Jesus Christ - because the altar is Christ - and says: (He who is not inside the altar is deprived of the bread of God).

4) All this should urge us to realize anew and practice, in the real life of the Church, the original concept of the Church. Because this original concept has long been greatly obscured by the sweeping wave of individualism, so that Church life has at one time become a collection of individual lives, and the disappearance of the factor of the “community”, especially in the West, has led to the disintegration of the Eucharist.

We must understand more and more, and better and better, that communion is an act performed by the Church as one body. (When we receive communion, thinking that we are doing it individually, we separate ourselves from others; when we do not receive communion at all, we separate ourselves from the body of Christ, “although we are members of it.”) The Eucharist is at the heart of ecclesial life: it is not performed by individuals isolated and independent of one another, but it is performed in the Church, and through it those who participate in it become a Church. A Christian separated from others does not belong to Christ, for all belong to him together as members of his body, members who cannot live or act in the role of one another.

More than that: St. Ignatius was talking about the Eucharistic community that pool All together and he says that it is the medicine of immortality, that is, he could not imagine a Eucharist being held for only one group of believers… and holding another Eucharist in one city always indicated the existence of a schism in it. Holding two Eucharists in one parish church was something inconceivable.

This means that the Eucharistic meeting - presided over by the bishop - was the (one), (perfect), (all gathered together) Church (Col. 14:23). And this is essentially the dense truth expressed in the Creed by the word (catholic) with its wonderful breadth.

5) A company – a community like this that the Eucharist brings about in us – must be created and recreated ever anew… so that, day by day, it may mold us more and more into its image. Thus the total newness of God gradually works in the world, transforming the old man into a “new man” who lives In love and with loveIt is, so to speak, a dynamic unity into which we must enter, which the Holy Spirit presents to us in the sacraments of the Church, but which we must acknowledge, feel and realize little by little.

For the community, by partaking of the bread and wine, is transformed in its becoming also into the body and blood of Christ. It is transformed in the very process of its becoming, She is walking in Christ on the path of her tomorrow.By partaking of the bread and wine transformed into the body of Christ, believers not only take a step forward in their lives, but also take a decisive step in their own transformation into Christ. The bread and wine – offered to Christ – are not only the continuation of life, but also the ascension to Him.

The liturgy is therefore a growth for the faithful in their union with Christ, and Saint Maximus says that Communion “creates us anew and weaves us into the deepest depths of our being, even if we are not aware of this.”

6) There is also a (similarity) between this Eucharistic Church unity to which we must extend, and Life of the TrinityOur unity should be in the images of the Trinity, and the community’s fellowship should ultimately be a participation in the flow of love that is in the Trinity.

Let us not forget that in the person of man there is a correspondence between absolute unity and absolute difference, that is, all people are one and at the same time different from one another. St. John of Damascus says, “The persons of the Trinity are united not to mix but to contain one another.” People in general are neither similar nor enemies, but infinitely different and infinitely one. Likewise in the Triune God, absolute unity is inseparable from the absolute difference of the persons. On the other hand, our union with Christ in the Eucharist, in all its perfection, does not create a state of confusion and indistinction between Him and us, and for this reason we continue to desire to be united with Him more.

So through the Eucharistic union, The Trinity reveals and declares to us Not in the abstract, as intellectual knowledge, But as the law of life itselfTranscending the self, emerging from selfishness, opening up to God, this leads to the self opening up, expanding, flourishing, and accepting in its profound decisions the divine presence of unlimited generosity.

In a way, one becomes transcendent, transparent to the Spirit of the Trinity, freeing oneself little by little from one's individual limitations, expanding one's life to the measure of the unity of the (body), (losing) it for the love of Christ and of one's brothers. Thus our (knowledge) becomes not individual but shared, knowledge (in participation). We discover that personal conscience is not so much a consciousness of oneself as a consciousness of participation, an ecclesial consciousness: the life of each human being expands infinitely to become the life of other people, and thus a communion of saints.

7) It is clear that the realization of all this requires fundamental conditions and situations that must be found more and more among Christians and people in general. Unity through the reception of the Eucharist does not occur as if it were a single physical essence shared by those who receive it. It does not take place between individuals who come together in a casual, emotional and superficial way, without their desire to become one in their faith and life. Rather, it is the culmination of a spiritual unity, a unity of thought and love that believers reach by the grace of the Holy Spirit through praying together, praising God together, and confessing together one faith, becoming in this way (one body and one spirit) with Christ.

But if we anticipate the thought of communion, the true community, in order to establish a superficial participation in communion, we weaken the fundamental step towards the unity of the churches. The truth...and we slide towards a relative state that makes us abandon the demand for the most sublime unity and be content with the current situation...and perhaps this is an act of imaginary unity.

Therefore, the solution to the problem of the churches’ participation in the sacraments requires, on a general level, that each of the churches enter into the full presence of Christ, and thus unite with one another. To the extent that we work, each in his own church, to restore the Eucharistic Supper to its full unity and balance, to that extent unity will be achieved.

Meanwhile, we must multiply among ourselves (spiritual communion), that is, relationships and friendships by which our life in Christ is ever more closely connected and our similarity increases. The celebration of the Eucharist, each one of us, will be linked to the communion we seek to live and to the hope we have of tearing down the (partial walls) that still separate us. Our different Eucharists will be precisely the leaven that enables us to realize the fullness of communion.

Because ultimately, striving for unity is striving for God, and striving for God is striving for unity.