Paul says that Jews and Gentiles (Pagans) are made one by Christ, who destroyed through his body, through his death “the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility”. Through this death both people became “one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace”; this means that through taking Christ’s peace, a person becomes one with the other.
Here, conciliation was fulfilled. He who died for everyone killed on the Cross the hostility with his soul. Hostility has no more effect on the hearts of the faithful. There isn’t any basis left for Aristotle’s phrase: “he who is not Greek is Barbarian”. You are all one in Jesus Christ.
If the Holy Spirit was one in you, He shall let you reach God together. No one is a stranger anymore. If an Orthodox Christian settled down in your town and you didn’t share with him Church issues and you didn’t take his opinion in these issues, you would be considering him a strange man and not your brother in Baptism and in the Lord’s body.
You are guests in one house, the owners of the house and citizens with God’s people. After the Church has become you homeland, what separates you? You are God’s one house and you were built on the basis of the Apostles and Prophets (We acknowledge prophets as we acknowledge the twelve apostles).
The cornerstone of this house is Jesus Christ himself. In Lebanese Architecture, this stone is the closing stone of the vault. This is how you build: You put a wooden cage and you put over it stones that are not attached by lime or any other substance. It is enough to have a stone on the top of the ceiling that is put in a way that the four walls are coherent through it. It is the coherence between all the stones of the building or hall.
Paul compares Christ to this closure stone to show that He is the only bond between believers. This is what Paul calls “building joining”. This one house, the Church, “rises to become a holy temple in the Lord”, and moreover “you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit”.
This means that you are one Church; man doesn’t live alone, independent from others. You, in your sins and spiritual beauties are one, but this unity must appear in your meeting on Sunday. None of you should dispense the others. One shouldn’t stay alone with his family on a Sunday morning. This way you are separated and cannot appear as Christ’s body.
He said: “In Him (in Christ) you are built together to become a dwelling by His Spirit”. The Holy Spirit makes you one with Christ. If you were resting in your home with the Lord, then you are not one in spirit with the brothers. The Holy Spirit makes us embraced to each others in all prayers but especially in communion of the Lord’s body. Therefore we say after communion that “we have received the Heavenly Spirit”.
If you knew that the Church is the unity and the place for encountering God, you forgive people’s trespasses and you see the Holy Spirit descending on them and you do not judge them as the Lord separates the weed from the wheat on the final day.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “المسيح هو السلام” –Raiati 48- 27.11.2011
