ORTHODOXY AND HONORING GOD
Often, in the primitive Church, the Eucharist was called simply "agape," that is, "love," or even simply “pax” that is, "peace." The Christians of that time thus expressed in a dramatic way the unbreakable link between the mystery of the hidden presence of God and the praxis of serving the cause of peace, of Christians being peace.
For the early Christians, there was no difference between what today is often distinguished as orthodoxy and orthopraxis, as right doctrine and right action. Indeed, when this distinction is made, there generally is a suggestion that the word orthodoxy is to be disdained: those who hold fast to right doctrine are seen as people of narrow sympathy, rigid, potentially intolerant. In the final analysis, for those holding this rather critical view of orthodoxy everything depends on "right action," with doctrine regarded as something always open to further discussion.
For those holding this view, the chief thing is the fruit doctrine produces, while the way that leads to our just action is a matter of indifference. Such a comparison would have been incomprehensible and unacceptable for those in the ancient Church, for they rightly understood the word "orthodoxy" not to mean "right doctrine" but to mean the authentic adoration and glorification of God. They were convinced that everything depended on being in the right relationship with God, on knowing what pleases him and what one can do to respond to him in the right way.
The Sacrificial Aspect of the Eucharist
In the fundamental prayer of the Church, the Eucharist, the heart of our life is not merely expressed but is realized day after day. At the most profound level, the Eucharist has to do with Christ alone. He prays for us; he puts his prayer on our lips, for only he can say: This is my Body ~ This is my Blood.
Thus he draws us into his life, into the act of eternal love by which he gives himself up to the Father, so that we are made over into the Father's possession with him and that through this very act Jesus Christ himself is bestowed upon us. Thus the Eucharist is a Sacrifice: being given up to God in Jesus Christ and thereby at the same time having the gift of his love bestowed on us, for Christ is both the giver and gift.
Through him, and with him, and in him we celebrate the Eucharist. Communion with him is that communion with the whole, without which there is no communion with Christ. A part of Christian prayer and of the Christian act of faith is committing oneself in faith to the whole, overcoming one's own limits.
The Liturgy is not the setting up of some club, an association of friends; we receive it from the whole Church, and we have to celebrate it as coming from the whole and directed toward the whole. Only then do we believe and pray aright, when we are living it in the context of this act of self-transcendence, of self-abnegation, directed toward the Church of all times and of all places: this is what Catholicism essentially is. That is what we aim at whenever we step out of the zone of what is ours to unite ourselves with the pope and thus enter into the Church of all nations.
