“FOR A SYNODAL EUCHARISTIC CHURCH” THEOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM ON FRATERNITY TO HEAL THE WORLD 53RD INTERNATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS
QUITO ECUADOR, 6 SEPTEMBER 2024(MOST REV.) ANTHONY FISHER O.P.
Excelencias, padres, hermanas y queridos amigos, en primer lugar, deseo felicitar a los organizadores del Simposio Teológico y del Congreso Eucarístico Internacional por la maravillosa serie de eventos y oportunidades que nos han brindado a todos. Lamentablemente, debo disculparme ya que mi discurso de hoy será en inglés y no en español. Aunque mi abuelo era español, ¡el nieto es bien ignorante de su idioma! Perdónenme.
I. Siblings divided, humanity wounded
It’s a common human story. In Emily Brontë’s great romance Wuthering Heights, an endless series of acts of tit-for-tat retribution between Heathcliff and members of the Earnshaw and Linton families are driven by childhood grievances. “Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies,”[1] Brontë observed. Failures of loving disfigure all those involved.
A more satirical, yet no less haunting, expression of this reality can be found in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In one scene Buck, the youngest son of the Grangerford family, explains to Huck why he wants to kill a rival in the Shepherdson family. “Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in—and by and by everybody’s killed off, and there ain’t no more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.”[2] We might think of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia for the sake of his conquest of Troy, the revenge killing by his wife Clytemnestra, the mortal revenge upon her by their son Orestes, and the merciless wrath of the Furies’ against him in the plays of Aeschylus. Or the feuds between the Montagues and Capulets in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and between the Corleones and Tattaglias in Mario Puzo’s Godfather. Or the bloodless feud between opposing convictions in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series…
These cautionary tales of division echo the wisdom of Sacred Scripture. The Torah, Prophets, and Proverbs all agree that we must shed no innocent blood. “Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways,” Solomon warns. “Put away violence and oppression, and execute justice and righteousness,” Ezekiel counsels. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus taught; show affection and mercy to your siblings of blood, adoption or spirit, to neighbors, even enemies; harbor no grudge, and engage in no violence, but rather be peacemakers, serving each other. And so, in their epistles, Paul and John sang of amity and peace, and deplored enmity and bloodshed.[3]
The Scriptures are attentive, then, to the rivalry, resentment, and violence in human hearts, as in the stories of Ishmael and Isaac, Joseph and his brothers, or Jacob and Esau even in the womb. In the origin story for these negative emotions and behaviors, Cain kills his brother Abel out of envy, and then denies any responsibility for him.[4] “What have you done?” God cries out. “Hear your brother’s blood crying out to me from the earth.”[5] In times of concord God whispers that we must indeed be our brother’s keeper; in times of rancor his deafening charge is: Where is your brother? What have you done to him?
Peace in our own times is strained, both globally and locally. We might think of the recent attempt on the life of ex-President Trump in the USA or the successful assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in this country. It’s as if the shared spaces we inhabit are fractured, and we can only see things through a hyper-tribal lens. Everything is “us versus them”, and complex issues are boiled down to which side you belong to.[6] Whenever a ‘hot-button’ topic arises, which is now very often, there is little room for persuasion, nuance, compromise, or respectful disagreement. Instead, we have slogans, binaries, vitriol, and cancel culture—attempting to exclude uncomfortable views and their advocates. The post-modern crisis of confidence in reasoned argument, the social media’s echo chambers and outrage soundbites, the culture wars and polarisation of politics—many factors contribute, and members of the Church are not immune. Behind it all are interests and ideologies that profit from disharmony.
If this weren’t enough, wars mar our globe. Armenia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gaza, Haiti, Israel, Libya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen… war is now so prevalent that Pope Francis can tag it “a veritable World War III”.[7] The grim realities of lives lost, bodies and minds damaged, livelihoods destroyed, and persons displaced disfigure all humanity.[8] Do Christians offer any antidote to all this animus? Can the Gospel speak into hearts ensnared by rivalry and hate?
In what follows, I suggest that a genuine reconciliation and lasting fraternity can only be achieved by a “Eucharistic” conversion to seeing ourselves “as one body” with our fellow Christians and all humanity, and living for the other not just ourselves. The Church at its best is the premonition of that unity that will only be fully achieved in the reconciliation of all things in Christ. The process of being and becoming that one body is served today by a synodal sensibility, the idea of journeying together, in communion and mission. This enables people to participate in the eucharistic love of the Father, the eucharistic sacrifice of the Son, and the eucharistic life of the Spirit.
II. That they might all be one
What did Jesus pray on the night of his Last Supper? The synoptic Gospels record his institution of the Eucharist and prayer for deliverance in Gethsemane, but the Gospel of John gives us greater insight into what was on Jesus’ mind that night. Troubled in spirit, aware that he was about to be deserted, betrayed and tortured, but ‘glorified’ in his Passion and Return, anxious about the effect of all this on his disciples, he gives them one last lesson by washing their feet and offering his Body and Blood. Along the way he instructs them about confidence in the Father, Son, and Spirit, about authority and service, truth and goodness, about suffering, self-sacrifice, and love. He pleads for their peace, joy, and eternal life. And he prays—five times in just a few verses—that the disciples might be united.[9]
Without this God-given unity, Jesus says, they cannot be “sanctified in truth” and “remain in God’s name”. God and the things of God may sometimes be paradoxical, even ineffable, but we cannot believe contradictory things about God and all be right. What’s more, unity is essential to witness: no message will persuade if its messengers disagree on its contents; disunity is a scandal. Yet the unity for which Christ prays is about more than being ‘on the same page’ for strategic purposes.
How should we think about this unity? The paradigm Jesus offers repeatedly to his disciples is that between the Father and Son: “That they may be one, Father, as we are one”. Christ’s call to be godlike[10] has many dimensions, but here we see a central one: to be united like the three persons of God are united. The persons of the Trinity are so identified that much of what we say of one can equally be said of the others; they pour out their love upon each other, sharing in the godhead, and giving each other identity and mission; they work together in creation and redemption. So, too, Christ’s disciples must be so identified in what they believe and do that we can speak of ‘Christians’ or ‘the Church’ as a single entity, and the things we say of all we mean of each. Only then, Jesus says, will his joy, love, or glory—what we call ‘grace’—be evident in them. Only then will they be able to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil. Fraternal bonds are more than a team building strategy to maximise effectiveness: they are the result of deep conversion and being conformed to the trinitarian God.
This is what happens to us in Baptism and the subsequent sacraments. A trinitarian harmony should then be evident in all our relationships, and be a mark of the Church universal, local and domestic. In the face of internal and external forces for disintegration, we must cultivate unity but also pray for it as a divine gift we could never manufacture for ourselves. St Augustine famously said “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You”; but we might also say of the Eucharistic Lord: You have made Yourself for us, O Lord, and our soul is restless until You rest in us.
III. Fraternity
For some, the term ‘fraternity’ evokes a secret society of college students. The more historically conscious see the banners of the French revolution, the Marxists and the freemasons coming. The more spiritually-minded think of the monks, friars, and consecrated women who are called ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. But for the Christian conception of fraternity, we naturally begin with the apostolic generation. At least four of the apostles were blood brothers: Simon and Andrew Bar-Jona, and James and John Bar-Zebedee.[11] Lazarus, Martha, and Mary were siblings and some of the holy women who accompanied Jesus may have been relatives. But the word ἀδελφὸς (adelfos, brother) was used loosely in the culture of the time to include relative or friend, fellow tribe member or officeholder.[12] In each case there was a certain solidarity or intimacy akin to that in a family.
But the apostles were also siblings in a spiritual sense: Jesus called them “the Brothers”.[13] Their relationship was founded upon being called and responding, gathered and witnessing together. They had experienced similar hopes, limitations, and emotions as they walked with Christ. In addition to his signs and teachings, they received the Last Supper and the post-Resurrection appearances. Jesus prioritised spiritual fraternity over biological,[14] and much of his teaching was about how such spiritual siblings should love.[15] They must avoid grudges and be reconciled.[16] They must do “for the least of these brothers [and sisters]” what they would do for Jesus.[17] They must love one another as he had loved them. And after his departure, the early Christians continued to honor this brotherhood.[18] They sought to demonstrate φιλαδελφία (philadelphia, brotherly love). They greeted each other with a fraternal kiss. They deplored division and failures of love.[19] They were a family.
The risk here was that Christians would be inward-looking, attending only to the needs of their physical or spiritual brethren, not expanding their tent to include others, and so incapable of healing our fractured world. So Jesus emphasised their mission to go out to all humanity, and make them their neighbors, friends, siblings, fellow disciples.[20] He specifically adverts to those “not yet” of his flock but whom he must “shepherd also”.[21] In his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, the Holy Father has invited us to reflect upon our common vulnerability and needs as human beings, our shared purposes and complementary gifts. Then, with the gift of faith, we might ask what it means to believe that our God is not only Creator but Father and Redeemer of all humanity, what it means to be created and restored to a ‘family resemblance’ with him and each other?[22] Christian love is not reserved for a small in-group of exclusive brethren but, as the Second Vatican Council and popes have taught,[23] it is intended for all, to heal the many fractures within and between human beings, and elevate them to be a communion of saints.
IV. The Eucharist as the source of unity and reconciliation
The maxim of Henri de Lubac SJ, that “the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church” influenced the Second Vatican Council and much subsequent theology.[24] It is found also in the Catechism as well as Pope John Paul II’s 2003 encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia.[25] De Lubac sought to retrieve a patristic understanding of the Church as the mystical body of Christ powered by his sacramental body.[26] “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus said, “there am I in the midst of them”[27]: the Church is most present when it gathers Christians together in worship, especially for the Eucharist. We might think of that forerunner of the Eucharist when Christ gathered a ‘diocese’ of 5,000 in the hills, divided them into ‘parishes’ of fifty or so, ‘miracled’ the loaves, and had them distributed. Or at his Last Supper when he did so much more for the Twelve and for us. The Church makes the Eucharist but the Eucharistic Lord first makes the Church. De Lubac quotes Cyril of Alexandria, “we are… molded into the one body of Christ, feeding on one flesh alone. One spirit singles us out for unity and, as Christ is one and divisible, we are no longer many but one in him.”[28] This supernatural unity, occasioned by the Eucharist, is the context for Paul’s teaching that “Just as there is one Bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one Bread.”[29] This makes the diverse People of God “one heart and mind” as the Acts of the Apostles put it, “devoted to the apostles’ teaching and the κοινωνίᾳ (koinonia, communion), to the Breaking of the Bread and the prayers.”[30]
Some years ago, the great English Dominican theologian, Herbert McCabe, was asked whether potato crisps and Coca-Cola might be more relevant for a youth Mass than bread and wine. He said he thought we should follow the Church’s rubrics in this matter: order matters in the liturgy, the tradition of using wheaten flour and grape wine goes back to Jesus, and it is for the Church to set the parameters of the sacraments. However, he then added another reason not to use chips and coke: because, he said, they are so lacking in nutrition as to be doubtfully food and drink at all! He was being humorous, of course, but there was an important point here about food for body and soul. Jesus deliberately chose the everyday staples of bread and wine to make himself sacramentally present to our everyday world.
But bread and wine are not neutral symbols for us: they bear all the ambiguity of human fabrication, with its mixture of blessing and curse. Bread, the simple food of peasants and kings, is made from that abundance of grain that covers our globe. Yet so many are without their daily bread, while others horde or gorge on it. The Russian blockade of Ukrainian wheat exports has caused shortages and starvation in some places, and price inflation everywhere. Trade wars parallel military ones, tariffs and cartels prop up prices, and grain is stockpiled and dumped rather than shared. Then there is wine, the drink that cheers hearts, and evokes toasts and parties. Yet we know alcohol is the source of so much pain and suffering in drunkenness and violence, destitution and road-deaths, in broken homes, bones, and lives.[31]
Into all this mess of human joys and sufferings, hopes and fears, the crowd on the hill hungry for food and signs, the gang of confused and betraying disciples in the cenacle, amidst the ambiguity of bread and wine, Jesus comes to us, again and again, in the Eucharist. Under these very ambiguous signs he makes himself really present, making sense of it all, humanising and divinising it, so that nothing human is alien to God except that which is anti-god and anti-man, ‘sin’. As from all eternity, now from the very middle of the human mess, God the Father sings the Word, the great love song that is the Son, who in turn unites the different voices of humanity in the harmony of a choir. He now charges the Church: “From now on, do this in memory of me.”
In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis highlighted the healing dimension of the Eucharist, by insisting that the Eucharist is “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment of the weak”.[32] In Jesus we encounter the divine physician, healing our physical and spiritual ills, and restoring us to friendship with God and each other. But the ‘who’ of our healing is corporate; I am made whole to the degree I am part of a healed and healing whole. As Pope Francis put it in Laudato Si, the “human person grows more, matures more, and is sanctified more, to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from him or herself to live in communion with God, with others, and with all creatures.”[33]
So in the Eucharist, along with its sacramental twin Confession, we celebrate our communion with God and each other, but also bring it about, healing the fractures between us. Coming together in ἀνάμνησις (anamnesis, in memory) and in εὐχαριστία (eucharistia, in thanksgiving) for all God has done for us, in salvation history and our personal histories, we are propelled to renew the bonds of human fraternity and κοινωνίᾳ (koinonia, communion), and to share the Evangelii Gaudium (the joy of the Gospel) with missionary zeal.[34] In and through the celebration of the Eucharist, we come to understand better that Christ’s sacrifice is “for all” and urges us “to be ‘bread broken’ for others [and] to commit themselves to a more just and fraternal world.”[35] To “do this in memory of me” is to recall and make present the most profound memory of love: that Christ gave his Body and Blood, the entirety of his life and self, so that we might live in him, and love all humanity as he did.[36]
V. Synodality and the Eucharist
Sixty years ago, the Second Vatican Council described the Church as a sacrament, a sign and instrument of union with God and humanity, and as a communion between God and humanity, and between human persons. Against the backdrop of this sacramental and communio ecclesiology, the Council then reflected upon the collegiality of the bishops including when gathered in synod. The idea of synodality has been a rich source of reflection on ecclesial sensibility in recent years. What it means to qualify an institution or activity as ‘synodal’ is sometimes unclear because the concept is still crystallising. But in a truly synodal Church, the pastors and faithful will:
- exercise their offices and ministries in hierarchical communion and with a sense of co-responsibility
- balance the universal and particular, the priesthood of the baptised with that of the ordained
- be conduits of the apostolic tradition but also open to new voices and pastoral strategies
- govern, teach, and sanctify in ways that encourage the faithful in their communion with God and the saints
- cultivate an ecclesial sensibility that is inclusive, fraternal, listening, discussing, praying, discerning and deciding, with all and for all, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and
- gather the faithful into Eucharistic communities, promoting devotion and outreach.
So Eucharistic worship has a horizontal aspect: the communion with those present, with the rest of the Church, and with all humanity. Yet, after the pattern of Christ’s death all Christian life is cruciform, and so the horizontal must intersect with the vertical, the communion on earth with that in heaven. Unlike secular political, bureaucratic, or corporate conceptions of the Church, Pope Francis insists that the Holy Spirit must be the great protagonist in the Church’s life and any genuine synodality. Without the Spirit, he says, we can hold an ecclesial U.N. meeting or diocesan parliament, “examining this question or that”, but it will not be a true synod, which is “the faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of truth’, in order to know what he ‘says to the Churches’.”[37] “There is no aspect of ecclesial life that does not find its summit and its source in the Liturgy,” the Pope said. “More than being the result of elaborate programs, a comprehensive, organic, and integrated pastoral practice is the consequence of placing the Sunday Eucharist, the foundation of communion, at the center of the life of the community.”[38]
This conception of synodality as a form of worship is unique to Pope Francis.[39] “The Synod is a process of spiritual discernment, of ecclesial discernment,” he says, “that unfolds in adoration, in prayer, and in dialogue with the word of God.”[40]A synodal Church will only be a space for the action of the Holy Spirit if participants engage in “trusting prayer… that is the action of the heart when it opens to the divine, when our humors are silenced in order to listen to the still quiet voice of God.”[41] In Eucharistic adoration, Christ stares at us and we stare back at him; we are stilled, listening deeply, exchanging. In the classic story of σύνοδος (synodos, walking together) on the way to Emmaus, the two climactic moments are Christ breaking open the Word and then Breaking the Bread. As Word-and-Bread-breakers, the pastors are essential to any genuinely synodal sensibility or process; and as Word-and-Bread receivers, the whole People of God must be actively receptive.
When we journey together eucharistically, we better understand God and each other. As the disciples walking together to Emmaus had their hearts and eyes opened to Christ burning in his word and present in his sacrament, we recall, give thanks, are conformed to Christ and become more truly his Body. The sacramental body makes the mystical body, and vice versa. This emboldens us to extend divine forgiveness and proclaim divine hope to our divided world. Only as a unified body animated by God’s love can the Church be a credible witness to the world, and lead humanity to a deeper communion. In imitating Christ, becoming his body broken for others, we trade in egoism and domination for self-giving and service.
Conclusion
After a century of proclamation that “God is dead” and the terrible fractures of French society by Revolutions and the Napoleonic era, French laywoman Émilie-Marie Tamisier organised the first Eucharistic Congress in 1881. The idea came to her when she witnessed two hundred French parliamentarians kneel before the Blessed Sacrament to rededicate their hearts and nation. Her straightforward belief was that “The Eucharist saves the world” and this served as the theme of that first congress. In her estimation, only the power of the Blessed Sacrament would win “the eldest daughter of the Church” back to the faith of her ancestors, and heal the divisions unfaith had wrought in her country.
But if the Eucharist could heal Émilie’s world, so it might ours also. We must, to use the language of St John Paul II, live out a “transfigured existence” committed to “transforming the world” by sharing in the sacred meal that makes the God-man present not only to those who consume him, but in and through them to all humanity.[42] In this way we live no longer in terms of “me and them” or even “us and them” but only “us”, for as Pope Francis says, we are all brothers and sisters taken from the world to the Table of the Lord, and from that Table back into the world, journeying together on our way to heaven.
[1] Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1993), 151.
[2] Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (London: Diamond Books, 1993), 120.
[3] Do not kill the innocent: Gen 9:5-6; Ex 20:13; 21:12-14; 23:7; Lev 24:17,21; Dt 5:17; 19:10; 27:25; Prov 6:16-17; Isa 26:21; 59:7-8; Jer 22:3; cf. Mt 5:21; Rom 13:9; Jas 2:11. “Do no wrong or violence to the alien, orphan or widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place” Jer 22:4-5. “Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways” Prov 3:31. “Put away violence and oppression and execute justice and righteousness” Ezek 45:9. Jesus on loving one another as he loved us: Jn 11:36; 13:34-35; 15:12-13. Jesus on affection and mercy for family, neighbours, enemies: Mt 5:7,38-48; 6:12; 9:13; 18:23-27; 19:19; 22:36-40; 23:34; Lk 6:35-38; 10:25-37; 17:4; cf. 1Cor 10:24; 2Cor 6:6; Rom 13:9-10; 15:2; Gal 5:22; 6:1,10; Eph 4:32; Jas 2:13; 1Pet 3:8; 4:8. Jesus against grudges and violence: Mt 5:21-26,38-39; 7:1-6; 19:18; Lk 6:37; 22:49-51. Jesus on being peacemakers and serving each other: Mt 5:9; 14:27; 16:33; 25:34-40; Jn 13:1-14. Paul and John on love and peace, and against hatred and violence: 1Cor ch. 13; Rom 8:6; 12:10,17-21; 14:19; Gal 5:22-23; 1Thess 5:12-15; Eph 1:5-6; 2:14-18; 3:16-19; 4:2-6; Col 3:12-15; Phil 4:6-7; 1Jn 2:3-11; 3:1,11-18; 4:7-21; 2Jn 5-6; cf. Heb 12:14; 13:1-2; Jas 1:27; 2:11; 3:17-18; 1Pet 3:8; 2Pet 1:2.
[4] Gen 4:1-12.
[5] Fratricide, as Claudius laments in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act3, scene 3, line 37), stinks to the heavens.
[6] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti: Encyclical on Fraternity and Social Friendship (2020), 13.
[7] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 25, 256.
[8] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 257-258.
[9] Jn 17:11-23.
[10] Mt 5:48; Lk 6:36,40; Jn 10:34; 15:12; cf. Ps 82:6; Rom 8:29; 12:1-21; 1Cor 11:1; 15:49; 2Cor 2:14-15; 3:18; 7:1; Gal 2:20; 3:27; Eph 1:4; 4:24; 5:1-23; Phil 1:6; 2:5; 3:10-11; Col 3:9-10; 1Pet 2:21; 1Jn 2:6; 3:2,16.
[11] Simon and Andrew: Mt 4:18; 10:2; Mk 1:16; Lk 6:14; Jn 1:40-41; 6:8. James and John: Mt 4:21; 10:2; 17:1; 20:24; Mk 1:19; 3:17; 6:3; Lk 5:10; Acts 12:2. Philip and Bartholomew/Nathanael are so often paired in the Gospel lists and so might have been relatives or friends: Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Jn 1:43-51. The other pairings—of Thomas the Twin and Matthew the tax-collector, of James Bar-Alphaeus and Thaddaeus/Jude Bar-James, and of Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot are less likely to represent a blood relationship: Mt 10:3-4; Jn 11:6; 20:24; 21:2; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:14-16.
[12] ‘Brother’ as used to describe a near relation such as a cousin: e.g. Gen 13:8; 14:14,16; 29:12; Sol 4:9. (It is generally supposed that ‘the brothers of the Lord’ were step-brothers or cousins: Mt 1:25; 12:46-47; 13:55; Mk 3:31-32; 6:3; Lk 8:19-20; Jn 2:12; 7:3-5,10; Acts 1:14; Gal 1:19; 1Cor 9:5.) ‘Brother as used to describe a companion or friend: 2Sam 1:26; 1Kings 13:20; 20:33; Job 5:15; 6:15; Acts 6:3; 1Thess 5:1. ‘Brother’ as used to describe a neighbour, fellow tribe-member, fellow country-man: e.g. Gen 19:7; Ex 2:11; Dt 23:7; Num 8:26; 18:2; 32:6; Jud 21:6; 2Sam 19:12-13; Jer 34:9; Neh 5:7; Obad 1:10; Mt 5:47; Acts 2:37; 3:22; 7:2; Heb 7:5. ‘Brother’ as used to describe a fellow office-holder: 1Kings 9:13; Ezra 3:2; 1Cor 1:1; 2Cor 1:1. ‘Brother’ as used to describe a fellow believer: e.g. Amos 1:9; Acts 13:15,26,38; 22:1-3; 23:1,5-6; 28:17,21.
[13] ‘Brothers’ as used to describe the apostles: Mt 28:10; Lk 22:32; Jn 20:7. ‘Brothers’ as used to describe all the disciples: Mt 5:22-24; 12:48-50; 18:35; Mk 3:33-35; Lk 8:21.
[14] Mt 10:37; 12:25,46-50; 19:29; Mk 3:24-25; 10:29-30; Lk 8:20-21; 11:17; 12:52-53; 14:26; 18:29-30.
[15] E.g. Mt 5:43-46; 6:24; 18:35; 19:19; 22:37-39; Mk 12:30-33; Lk 6:27-35; 7:47; 10:27; Jn 3:16; 8:42; 10:7; 11;3-5,36; 13:1,23,34-36; 14:15-31; 15:9-19; 16:27; 17:23-26; 20:2; 21:7,15-17,20; Acts 7:26; Rom 14:10.
[16] Mt 5:22-24.
[17] Mt 25:37-40.
[18] ‘Brothers’ as used to describe the apostles: Acts 21:17,20; 1Cor 9:5. ‘Brothers’ as used to describe all the disciples: Acts 9:17,30; 11:12,29; 14:2; 15:1,7,13,22-23; 16:40; 21:17; 22:5,13; 1Pet 1:22. The word ‘brothers’ is used 88 times for the Christian disciples in the Pauline literature alone.
[19] The early Christians honoured their brotherhood: 1Pet 2:17; 5:9. They sought to demonstrate brotherly love: Rom 12:10; 1Thess 4:9; Heb 13:1; 1Pet 1:22; 2Pet 1:7. They greeted each other with a fraternal kiss: Rom 16:16; 1Cor 16:20; 2Cor 13:12; 1Thess 5:26; 1Pet 5:14. In the Pauline epistles we find intimations of division over questions such as: wisdom and authority in the Church (1Cor 3:18-19, 4:9-13; 2Cor 5:20; chs 10 & 11; 12:11-13; Gal 1:11-2:21; Eph 3:1-13; Col 1:24-29), evil and suffering (Rom 8:16-39; 2Cor 4:8-12; 6:3-10; 11:23-33; 12:7-10; Col 1:24-29), the resurrection (Rom 6:5; 1Cor ch. 15; 2Cor 5:1-10; Phil 3:10-11), orderly worship (1Cor 10:16-22; 11:2-34; 14:26-39), the charismatic gifts (Rom 12:1-13; 1Cor chs 2, 12 & 14), the necessity of love (Rom 5:5; 12:9-10; 13:8-10; 14:15; 1Cor 8:1; 13:1-14:1; 16:14; 2Cor 6:6; 8:8,26; 9:7; Gal 5:13-14,22; Eph 1:4,15; 4:2,15-16; 5:2; 6:23; Phil 2:2; Col 1:4; 2:2; 3:14; 1Thess 3:6,12; 4:9-12; 5:8; 1Tim 1:5; 2:15; 4:12; 6:11; 2Tim 1:7; 2:22; Tit 2:2; Philem 1:5-9), marriage, divorce and celibacy (1Cor ch. 7; 2Cor 6:14-7:1; Eph 4:21-33; 1Tim 4:1-5), sexual morality (Rom 1:18-2:11, 1Cor 5:1-5; 6:12-20; 14:26-40; 2Cor 12:21; Gal 5:13-26; Eph 4:17-24; 5:3-5; Col 3:5; 1Thess 4:1-8), associating with the immoral (1Cor 5:11-13; 6:9-1; Eph 5:5-14; 1Tim 1:8-11; 2Tim 3:1-9), relationships to civil authority and civil courts (Rom 13:1-7; 1Cor 6:1-8; cf. 1Pet 2:13; 5:5; 2Pet 2:10), women (1Cor 11:2-16; 14:33-36; Gal 3:28; 1Tim 2:8-15; Eph 5:21-33; Col 3:18; cf. 1Pet 3:1-6), arrogance and ambition (Rom 11:20; 1Cor 4:14-21; 5:2,6; 12:31; 13:4; Phil 1:17; 2:3;1Tim 6:4-10; cf. Jas 3:14-16; 4:16), and Church collections, money and work (Acts 24:17; Rom 15:25-27; 1Cor 9:6-18; 11:17-34; 16:1-4; 2Cor 8:1-15; 9:6-15; Gal 2:10; Phil 4:10-20; 1Thess 4:9-12; 5:12-22; 2Thess 3:6-15; cf. Jas 2:1-13). Paul deplores jealousy, querulousness, gossip and slander, factionalism or anything or anyone that causes divisions in the community; he calls on his communities to be places of harmony, patience, forgiveness and charity: Rom 1:29; 9:1; 12:9; 13:13; 14:1,15; 16:17-18; 1Cor 1:10-13; 3:3-9; 11:18-34; 2Cor 6:6; 8:24; 12:20; Gal 1:6-9; 5:20; Eph 2:11-22; 4:1-16;Col 2:4-23; 2Thess 2:16; 1Tim 6:3-5; 2Tim 2:14,22-26; 3:3-7; 4:1-5; Tit 1:9-2:15; 3:2,9-10. Amongst other New Testament writers: 1Pet 1:22; 1Jn 2:10-11,15-17; 3:10-24; 4:7-21; Jude 1:11-12,17-23; Rev 2:4.
[20] Mt 22:1-14; 28:19-20; Mk 16:15-16; Lk 3:37-38; 10:25-37; Jn 3:16; 4:9,19-26; 17:18-21; Acts 1:8; ch. 17; cf. Gen 12:1-3; 1Chr 16:24; Ps 22:27; Ezek 11:17-20; Rom 10:13-15; Eph 1:9-10; Rev 7:9-10.
[21] Jn 10:16; 17:20.
[22] Gen 1:26-27; Dt 14:1-2; Ps 103:13; Isa 63:16-17; 64:8-9; Jer 31:20; Mt 6:8,26; Lk ch 15; Jn 8:37-59; 10:16; 11:51; 20:17; Gal 4:6-7; Eph 3:14; 4:5-6; Jas 3:9.
[23] See Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (1965), 91; Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (1965), 5; St St Paul VI, Populorum Progressio: Encyclical on the Development of People (1967), 44,79, 85; St John Paul II, Letter to Children in the Year of the Family, 13 December 1994; Familiaris Consortio: Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (1981), 48; Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate: Encyclical on Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth (2009), 11, 34, 59; Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 9, 271- 277, 279, 285.
[24] See Owen Vyner, “‘Love has made in us a sort of death’—The Eucharistic ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac,” Adoremus July 2023; Gabriel Flynn and Paul Murray, Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in the Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford University Press, 2012); Fergus Kerr, Twentieth Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism (Blackwell, 2007).
[25] CCC, 1396 cf. Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia: Encyclical on Eucharist in its Relationship to the Church, 17 April 2003, no.26
[26] See for example Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Book V, chap 2; Clement of Alexandria, Paedgogus Book 1, chap 6; Basil of Caesaria, Letter 93,
[27] Mt 18:20.
[28] Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (trans. L.C. Sheppard and E. Englund, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 91.
[29] 1Cor 10:17.
[30] Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-35.
[31] Geoffrey Preston, God’s Way to Be Man: Meditations on following Christ through Scripture and Sacrament (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1978), 85-86.
[32] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World (2013), 47.
[33] Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: Encyclical on Care for Our Common Home (2015), 240.
[34] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 1,4,10,13,23,83,84 etc.; Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Catholicism and the communion of saints,” Communio 15 (Summer, 1988): 163-168, at 164.
[35] Pope Benedict XVI, “The Eucharist as the way to holiness” in Heart of the Christian Life: Thoughts on the Holy Mass (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 37, citing Mt 26:28.
[36] Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congress, Fraternity to Heal the World: Basic text for the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress in Quito Ecuador 2024, 48.
[37] Pope Francis, Address for the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015, citing Jn 14:17 and Rev 2:7.
[38] Pope Francis, Desiderio Desideravi: Apostolic Letter on the Liturgical Formation of the People of God, 37.
[39] E.g. Pope Francis, Address to the Faithful of the Diocese of Rome, 18 September 2021.
[40] Pope Francis, Homily for Mass Opening the Synodal Path, 4 October 2023.
[41] Pope Francis, Introductory Remarks for the Synod on the Family, 5 October 2015.
[42] John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 20.