The Christian community of worshippers

An ever increasing number of Maltese Catholics are under the false impression that being a Christian is private business. This sad state of affairs comes out strongly with such heartbreaking comments as: "I am a good Christian. I harmed no one. I don't need the Church. I can pray just as well at home. Why should I go to Church then? Is not God present everywhere?"

The Christian God is a Trinitarian one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In Jesus' words and deeds the Father wanted to reconcile the whole world to himself by gathering together different people from various tribes and nations into one People, namely the People his Son earned by his passion, death and resurrection, the Church. Christianity is essentially a communitarian faith. Vertically it is sustained from a communitarian God through the powerful intercession of the communion of saints. Horizontally, it finds its expression in the community of love and peace in the Holy Spirit, the Church. Hence, the Church is a foretaste of what we shall be in heaven, as Cardinal Newman said: "The Church is a Trinity in exile and the Trinity is the Church at home".

The Johannine Jesus says: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (Jn 6, 53). Besides its Eucharistic undertones this text means, in Ronald Rolheiser's words: "You cannot deal with a perfect, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-understanding God in heaven, if you cannot deal with a less-than-perfect, less-than-forgiving, and less-than-understanding community here on earth."

Saint John empowers this belief by saying: "If any one says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 Jn 4, 20).

Speaking within a Church context, the Matthean Jesus says: "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matt 18, 20). Can we afford to worship God in the comfort of our homes when we mercilessly reject Him by not joining other believers to worship him, the Church, the Godly designed worshipping community? Is this not a classic pervading lie?