By the way, I just wanted to add that after Christ rose from the dead and Ascended to the Father (our Father) … the Community of Believers (first called The Way) … met together for the breaking of Bread … which we know is the Eucharist … and the reason this was central to the Christian Community was for the very reason that Christ Himself who is risen from the dead IS PRESENT in the consecrated Bread and Wine. They met to "be with the Lord … to receive the Lord in the Bread and Wine.
Yes, the Eucharist was central to the gathering of the Community of Believers … but it was the Risen Lord that made them celibrate the Eucharist.
He is Risen !!!
You practice a very light version of Christianity,I do not say it is invalid or inferior but it is as though you and many other people here feel that unless you keep affirming slogans like ‘God is good’ , ‘Jesus lives’ and exclaim the virtues of Catholic symbolic procedure,it will further the message of the Christian community instead of that less than meaningful exercise that it actually is.The Arians can say the same thing and even think of better expressions even if they use it with bad intent. Most people simply want to know if you have to move to a desert , become an ascetic to experience the Christian Way, give up wealth or do or stop doing something but none of these things really matter.In early Christianity,the outwardly successful , wealthy and brilliant minds were just as likely to be Christians as those with simple concerns however what is detestable and especially today is the mediocre Christian who looks only to his own narrow concerns.
The Christian Way is a very real adventure that has a definite beginning and I assure you it has little to do with symbols or wonderful declarations of affection.You call it mysticism thereby separating it from your packaged deal of denominational Christianity whereas the more encompassing and eternal precepts of the genuine Christian Way reflect a more dynamic life than the symbolic form of representing Christ on Earth.This era has the most hostile background atmosphere for the emergence of the Way ,mostly due to the insistence on moral authority allied with symbolic procedures as the only things.
Each Christian makes his own pilgrimage to the Spiritual Jerusalem,not in the cunning theological arguments , obeying procedural imperatives of clinging to symbolic representations but by picking up that cross everyday and dealing with life from within and without.That is what once made saints and even though we may be cut off from each other as Paul was cut off from Jesus in his temporal existence,the language and experience is the same -
“The soul,” laid in fetters, loses all control over itself, and all power of thinking of anything but the absurdities he puts before it, which, being more or less unsubstantial, inconsistent, anddisconnected, serve only to stifle the soul, so that it has no power over itself; and accordingly—so it seems to me—the devils make a football of it, and the soul is unable to escape out of their hands. It is impossible to describe the sufferings of the soul in this state. It goes about in quest of relief, and God suffers it to find none. The light of reason, in the freedom of its will, remains, but it is not clear; it seems to me as if its eyes were covered with a veil. . . . Temptations seem to press it down, and make it dull, so that its knowledge of God becomes to it as that of something which it hears of far away.If it seeks relief from the fire by spiritual reading, it cannot find any, just as if it could not read at all. On one occasion it occurred to me to read the life of a saint, that I might forget myself and be refreshed with the recital of what he had suffered. Four or five times, I read as many lines, and though they were written in Spanish, I understood them less at the end than I did when I began: so I gave it up. It so happened to me on more occasions than one.” St Theresa
Let you affirm your faith when it almost borders on disbelief and then you may understand the Risen Jesus for that was made perfect on the cross by Jesus,in his followers,some more and some less - to love where you know you are not loved is the cleanest and greatest love of all.
Why would anyone endure such pain and torture - for days - for some stupid ideology? Why would Jesus answer Pilate parabolically? Why wouldn’t any sentient person say, “This is ridiculous, I’m not participating in it any more. I want out!”?