Abiding in Christ's Body

Below is an excerpt of an essay I wrote as one of the resources for the upcoming International Eucharistic Congress to take place in Sydney in 2028, for which I serve as a member of the theological commission. An accompanying video is also available.

I remember seeing, many decades ago, some literature that spoke of the Bible as an acronym for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. While we might find this a cute turn of phrase, we might be unaware of how deeply that phrase has come to define the Christian life.

Many, including many Christians, boil the Christian faith down to a series of rules to live by, or a kind of moralism that is rewarded after you die. While there is an unavoidable moral dimension, and while we do wait for our eternal reward in the life to come, the moral dimension is actually secondary, and our participation in the divine life has life in the here and now very much in mind.

As Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est reminds us, the beating heart of the Christian faith is a living encounter with the living person of Jesus Christ (DCE, 1). In a General Audience on 24 October 2012, the pope would go on to say that faith is not about accepting certain truths about God, but an act of ongoing entrustment of oneself into God’s care. God’s love and care, Benedict says, forms the indispensable foundation for the Christian life, framed as it is by hope and trust.

More to the point, Benedict says that…(Read Full Post on Eucharist ‘28).

For the video discussion of my unpacking of this essay with my colleague, Prof. Hayden Ramsay, click here.