Riesgos climáticos: almacenamientos superficiales de agua

The orthodox liturgical life still has its own vision of humanity that seems to match the needs of modern humanity. From their centuries-old theological tradition, contemporary persons have inherited the anguish of its dichotomy between body and soul, mind and matter, and the dilemma of choosing between the two, because the purely spiritual is incomprehensible. in contrast, the orthodox liturgical life pays very close attention to the body and its needs — to the point that the bread and the wine are identified with the lord himself, that wood and colours become icons of saints, and that the relics of the saints also express a sanctifying personal presence. in this tradition, humans participate as a whole and not by closing their eyes — the Western model of piety in which one encounters God in an allegedly immaterial relationship (which is at base merely a psychological relationship). Yet how does such a denial of the unity of the human creature correspond at all with the thought of those who have ceased (and who can blame them?) to think according to the anthropological categories of aristotle and Plato? rather than protecting human integrity, this psycholo-gized eucharist is yet another factor leading to a fundamental crisis of conscience and life.

We emphasized earlier — and we have always emphasized — that the holy eucharist is not the place in which each one encounters God in a merely ‘vertical’ relationship. no, the eucharist is essentially social and ecclesial and has been preserved — more or less lived — as such in the east. There is perhaps no other event of ecclesial existence in which christians cease to be individuals and become church. in the eucharist, prayer, faith, love and charity (that is to say all that the

faithful practise individually) cease to be ‘mine’ and become ‘ours’ and the entire relationship of humanity with God becomes the relationship of God with his people, with his church. The eucharist is not only communion between each person and christ, it is also communion among the faithful themselves and unity in the body of christ, ‘not many bodies, but one body’, according to saint John chrysostom’s faithful interpretation. Thus, the biblical truth that sums up the path to God and implies a true path towards the neighbour is especially alive in the eucharist, which is the most anti-individualistic act of the church.

in this way, the human ceases to be an individual and becomes a person, that is to say, a reality which is not a fragment, the appendix of a machine or of an organization directed at its own goal — even if it be the most sacred (collectivism). The person is not a means towards an end; the person him- or herself is the goal, the image and likeness of God that finds its fulfilment in communion with God and with other persons — and only thus.

contemporary humans live every day under the weight of the opposition between the individual and the collective. Their social life is not communio but societas. and because there is no other choice, their violent reaction against collectivism leads to individualism and vice versa:

for, paradoxically, the one presupposes the other. our christian tradition generally has not provided contemporary humans with an anthropology that would substantiate them as persons because, even in the church, humans were sometimes seen through the lenses of dualism and collect-ivism. in contrast, the liturgy presupposes — and at the same time leads towards — an anthropology that understands humanity to be ‘a new creation in christ’. The liturgy is not theology, it does not specify, it shows and reveals. To the question: ‘What is humanity?’, it responds by showing christ as the human par excellence, that is to say as the human united to God, deified. in the communion ‘of holy things’ offered ‘to the holy ones’, the compass is magnetized immediately towards the one — praised in the Great doxology: ‘Thou only art holy, Thou only art the lord, o Jesus christ’ — in whom humanity, through holy communion, becomes what it truly is: catholic humanity.

4. The Eucharist as Ethics

such is the experience of those participating in the liturgy. But what happens when they ‘go in peace’ and return to the world? We used to say that humanity drew upon divine — supernatural — powers through the sacrament of the eucharist, which would help in the struggle against sin. regardless of this transfusion of power, the eucharist, as action and as community, gives the full and concrete meaning of the moral life.

our theological tradition has transformed ethics into a system of rules and an independent field of theology. Thus certain forms of conduct have become disembodied and absolute dogmas — related neither to diverse historical contexts nor to human diversity — that repeatedly judge and morally condemn the world. under this influence the relationship between man and God became a legal relationship, in accordance with an old temptation of the West.

in contrast with this tradition, the eucharistic vision of the world and society neither permits nor admits an autonomy of ethics or its reduction to absolute legal rules. rather, it holds that the moral life follows from the transformation and renewal of humanity in christ, so that every moral commandment appears and is understood only as a consequence of this sacramental transformation. in such a vision of ethics — for example, that found in saint Paul’s epistle to the colossians — moral conduct is understood as a continuation of the liturgical experience: ‘so if you have been raised with christ… Put to death whatever in you is earthly… You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourself with the new self, which is being renewed…’ (col 3:1-5, 9-10; note that the terms ‘to strip off’

and ‘to put on’ are here liturgical terms and that they especially, but also all the terminology of this passage, link it to the experience of baptism). it is for this reason that the liturgy recognizes only one kind of moral terminology: the sanctification of souls and bodies so that — in communion with ‘the Blessed Virgin… and all of the saints’ — we entrust ‘ourselves, each other and all our life to christ our God’.

in this way, the eucharist does not offer the world a system of moral rules, but a transfigured and sanctified society, a leaven that will lead the entire creation by a sanctifying presence, and not by the compulsion of moral commandments. This witnessing presence does not forge intol-erable chains, but invites them to the freedom of the children of God, to a communion with God that will bring rebirth.

contemporary humans seem to reject, utterly and indignantly, the moral rules imposed for centuries by a christian civilization. Putting to one side the causes of this situation, let us merely note that the structure that we have built with our good moral values with so much zeal is now seen as a human prison that threatens to ruin its very foundations.

Why the moral decadence in secular society? Why does our christian voice resound as if in a vacuum? We have turned to moral preaching and to statements of moral principles to convince the world, and we have failed; no one hears us. We offered the Logos and the world did not accept it. We forget that the Logos is not our words, but a Person, not a voice, but a living Presence and that this personal presence is embodied in the eucharist, which is above all communion and assembly.

This society, which was transfigured in order to transfigure, no longer exists. it was dissolved by our pious individualism, which believed that, in order to work in the world, it had no need for the parish, for the eucharistic community, and it replaced them with an ‘instructive logocracy’, believing that it would be sufficient to tell the world to change. The presence of our church in the world has become a pulpit without a sanctuary and a group of christians with neither unity nor community. We do not draw our moral attitudes from the new life that we enjoy at the eucharistic assembly, and society thereby has lost the leaven of the divine communion that, alone, can spark an authentic revival.