The Church is not a multitude; it is a body.
It is not simply a gathering of persons; it is a communion of life.
In the Church, as Saint Justin Popovich used to say, “each one lives in all and for all, and all live in each and for each.”
That is why responsibility becomes love, and love becomes a cruciform concern;
one lifts the other up and all together lift each one up.
And this is not theory, but therapy.
For the Church is a spiritual clinic, where the wounds of the soul find healing not with chemical medicines, but with the medicines of Grace, which, as Saint John Chrysostom assures us, “whoever applies them to his wounds will quickly regain his health.”
The Church is not a place for the perfect, but a place for those who suffer and repent,
who know that “the proud, the adulterer, and generally the sinful,” when he follows the therapeutic treatment of the Church, is completely healed.
But whoever “cuts himself off from the assembly and distances himself from the teaching of the Fathers, will very soon fall ill…”
Stay, therefore, brother, united with the Body of Christ.
Stay in the infirmary of the Church.
For here, in the communion of persons, hope is born, repentance blossoms and
The light of the Kingdom shines.
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