Main news for 5 April 2018

As we see, the breaking of bread of the first Christians distinguished itself rather considerably from those of its forms, that we know today. In those days it included the community meal, that if we meet in the Christian meetings today, then rather rarely. But as we see, the first Christians still kept the custom of the Jewish ritual meals, for example, for the meal of the Sabbath or Seder, which began with the prayer and the blessing of the bread and wine, and then flowed seamlessly in this cheerful banked, without which no Jewish feast is conceivable. And, as we see, some of the new converts, who were again very recently heathen, did not really understand the sense of the breaking of bread as a sacred assembly of the Church.

For them it was just a cheerful assembly of the coreligionists, and the reality of the risen Christ, present in this assembly and His presence sanctifying the breaking of bread, as we see, was for them rather an abstraction. They of course understood for whom they gathered, but, one can think that they perceived it rather as a symbol or an allegory, than as a genuine reality. Maybe, they thought that the words of the Savior during the Last Supper, meant not this memory, which updates eternally, but the one who causes in the consciousness something that happened in past, but not existing already now. And having remember the Master, having blessed His memory, they began to have fun with the sense of duty accomplished.

They probably did not think at all about the fact the risen Christ really sits now with them on the same table, that the Church is not an organization created by Him, but His spiritual body, His own continuation in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed. And that is why, according to the word of the apostle, they were sickly and sleep. Of course, not the sacred meal that kills them, as certain commentators sometimes interpreted the words of Paul. Killed, above all, the separation from the Church as the body of Christ, this source of life, next to which they were, but did not drink.

Of course, God leaves nobody, even those who do not believe too much in Him. Every living lives by His power. But after the baptism God brings the new convert to a new source, which has to become for him the basis of his entire further life. The former way of spiritual life and life in general is not any more for him. And if the new convert neglects (consciously or simply by thoughtlessness) this new source, in his spiritual life, and in his life in general, can occur an irreversible degradation. Such, of which one can get sick, and die.