The essence of God the Trinity is love, so personal existence directed towards God can only be existence in communion. ‘By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother’ (1 John 3.10). In St Matthew’s overpowering portrayal of the Judgement, Christ says to those who are truly righteous: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me …’ And when the righteous are astonished, the Son of Man lets them into the great secret: ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25.34-40).
St John Chrysostom, commenting on this text with his usual realism, has spoken of the ‘sacrament of the brother’, above all of the ‘least’ of the brethren, the poor. This great Patriarch of Constantinople, who defended spiritual liberty and the rights of the poor against oppression, even to the extent of martyrdom, stated emphatically that the poor person is another Christ and the sacrament of the Eucharist must be continued by working for greater justice, an ‘alms’ which is concerned not with feelings of pity but with fair shares, or even with better town planning.
In the first Church at Jerusalem, the mother and the pattern of all the Churches, all things were had in common, and for Christians, throughout their rich history, this has remained the outstanding image, not of perfect economics which would resolve all difficulties, but of the triumph of the will over selfishness and meanness, so that all might be of one heart and mind. Several of the Fathers, such as Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom in the East, or Ambrose of Milan in the West, taught not only in word but in action that private property is relative in character. They fiercely disputed the right to inherit the means of production, and demonstrated that natural riches belong only to God and must be used for the good of all. At the same time, after the example of Paul who made tents, they restored the dignity of work, which was considered servile in the ancient world, but which for them was the exercise of human responsibility for the universe and the basis of a common life in which communion could grow.
In the conformism of the Constantinian period, when the Church membership was inflated with conventional believers, the parishes partly lost the power of agape and the common life. This necessitated a ‘sanctified rebellion’ in the form of monasteries, communities founded on apostolic love, where the witness of the first church at Jerusalem might be continued in a new historical setting. The monasteries being generally open to the public, people could see that all the monks worked with their hands, as has always been the custom in the East, and learn that self-sacrifice demands also the sacrifice of riches. And when, thanks, among other things, to their vast land clearances, they had great riches to dispose of, they used them in the true service of society, which was combined, in ‘barbaric’ regions, with a strong cultural influence.
We know now that the widespread following of holy poverty which shook Christendom in the Middle Ages and in early modern times owed much to the teaching of Chrysostom. These movements, and their cruel repression, mark one of the most ruinous schisms in the history of Christianity: the schism between the sacrament of the altar and the sacrament of the brother. The Church preserved the mystery and the mysticism of the Risen Lord, but in such a distorted fashion – as we see in the degeneration of monastic life and the growth of an individualistic pietism ill-adapted to creative ethics – that Christians tended to forget the crucified Christ of history, especially when the history was that of the industrial revolution. These distortions are clearly illustrated in the evolution of the diaconate; in the early Church, it was the deacon who extended the Eucharist into service of the community; in his person, representing the bishop, social service became sacramental. But today, the diaconal ministry has effectively disappeared in the West, despite a half-hearted attempt to revive it, and in the East has become purely liturgical.
Cut adrift from the Eucharist, which alone could give it life, however little, the sacrament of the brother was diverted into a desire, hopeful or violent, for Utopia, or an ardent millenarianist longing for the final catastrophe which will usher in the reign of the saints. This brings us to the beginning of modern socialism, which is a combination of evangelical fervour, humanism that has become atheistical and the resentment born of powerlessness.
We now feel that the time is clearly approaching for this schism to be healed. We must put an end to the common Christian schizophrenia whereby, on Sunday, we are caught up into heaven (in the East) or filled with good intentions (in the West) only to sink back during the week into the business of this world. It is not a matter of replacing the sacrament of the altar with that of the brother, as ‘progressive’ people do, which would mean leaving history to its own devices, admitting it to be, after all, no more than a dance of death; but rather of giving full weight to the ethical aspect of the Eucharist.
And that is the only formula: active, resourceful, dogged love, with no illusion that total and lasting success is to be had in history – that would be a strange misjudgement of the depth of evil- but inspired by a vision of whole humanity, or rather, of divine-humanity.
~Olivier Clement, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology
