Why Church?

 Father Pothin’s Reflection for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity

The Gospel.  St. Luke xiv.16.

Many people today, especially younger generations, say that they do believe in God and in fact that they are on a spiritual quest. But they do not need an organized religion nor church to help them.

This Sunday’s readings will make the question especially poignant. To say it in another way, why would Anglican Catholics go each week to be given a flat wafer called a “host,” along with a small sip of wine? It seems like a lot of trouble, and appears to have little to do with the “spiritual quest.”

Our answer is that the host is no longer “bread” but has undergone “transubstantiation.” In simpler words, even though it has the appearance of a piece of bread, its substance has been transformed from that of bread to that of Christ’s body. Ditto for the wine.

Non-church believers might reply, God and spirituality are something interior, something private. Isn’t it the point that we should help each other? Why can’t we do it without all the paraphernalia, without all this ‘body and blood’ business” nonsense? Yes, we human beings have a spiritual “insides” and it is very important, but we have an outside too. We are not built to just stay within ourselves but instead to let our spirits walk, play, and even suffer out in the material world. The Spirit’s presence at the depths of our being makes us desire to discover Jesus with our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and hands.

And that is why we go to Church: To find the answer to our Spiritual quest in the fleshly presence of Christ. At Mass, which is a ritual, we find the presence of God given to our senses in Communion, and our Spiritual and physical yearning fulfilled in both. Are you hungry for God? Come and eat.

—Fr Pothin