“At its source, the Christian way of life is radically, in virtue of God’s very self, the abolute negation of any form of self-sufficiency, of any sort of self-absorbtion. The relationship to the other – this other who is first of all God, but God grasped within the unity between brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus – is intrinsic to the Christian way of life. It constitutes it. Where the communion of Jesus Christ is not present, the Christian way of being is absent. What we are speaking about is communion (1 Cor 1:9), not absorbtion, because freedom is at the very core of this process of salvation. But this relation to Christ is inseperable from the relation to others. The other implies others.”
J-.M-.R. Tillard, Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At the Source of the Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 3-4.
Comments are closed.