A living or a dead body? Why you cannot believe in Christ without His Church
A conversation about why the Church is not a prosecutor’s office building, but an ICU where blood is flowing.
We are painfully tired of organizations. We have learned not to trust structures. Trade unions do not protect. Parties promise and forget. In corporations, a person is accepted as a function, not as a person. Often, when we look at the Church, we see the same thing: administrative failures, scandals, men in cassocks who say one thing and live another.
A question is born: why do I need these intermediaries? Why do I need a priest who may be worse than I am? Why do I need an institution that is mired in politics? Can I not speak to God directly, at home, reading the Gospel and praying in silence?
It is an honest question. And it has an answer.
But first we have to understand one thing: the Church is not an organization. It is an organism.
An anatomical theater: dissecting the body
The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians: “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body – so also is Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12). Not “so also is the Church,” but “so also is Christ.”
The Church is not a union of people who agreed to gather on Sundays. It is a living body.
It has a Head – Christ. It has members – us. It has blood – the Eucharist. It has breath – the Holy Spirit.
A severed finger does not become free – it becomes dead. It may keep its shape for a time, but blood no longer flows in it, oxygen no longer reaches it, and necrosis begins.
We think: I can be a Christian without the Church, because I believe in Christ, I read Scripture, I pray. But it is an illusion. It is like thinking that a severed arm can live on its own because it still has fingers and skin.
Totus Christus: a head without a body
Blessed Augustine introduced the concept of Totus Christus – the Whole Christ. Christ is the Head, and the Church is the Body. They are inseparable.
To say, “I believe in Christ, but not in the Church,” is like saying, “I love your head, but I hate your body.” It is absurd. It is a horrifying spectacle – a head without a body.
Christ did not become incarnate to found a philosophical school. He came to unite man with God. And that union is not intellectual agreement with correct ideas. It is the knitting-together of living tissue.
The Church is called the Body not because it is a beautiful metaphor, but because it is reality. When we receive Communion, we literally enter Christ’s bloodstream. His Blood flows in our veins. His Flesh becomes our flesh.
The hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky) wrote in his work Christianity or the Church?: “Christianity without the Church is simply philosophy or moralism. Salvation is possible only in the Church, because salvation is deification, and it takes place in the Mysteries.”
You cannot connect to Christ’s bloodstream by wi-fi, sitting at home. You must be grafted onto the Body – even if the neighboring finger has arthritis, the liver is not working as it should, and the lungs are wheezing.
Sick members: heal or cut off?
This is where we stumble. We look at a priest who is rude or greedy. We look at a bishop mired in politics. We look at parishioners who gossip and judge. And we think: this is not the Body of Christ – it is a swamp. And we want to leave.
The Apostle Paul asks: “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body?” (1 Cor. 12:15). No. It simply dies. Gangrene sets in.
But the question remains: what do you do if the organism has cancer? If it has an ulcer? If the members of the body are sick? The answer is: you heal the organism.
In the fourth century, almost all episcopal sees were captured by Arians. Saint Basil the Great compared the Church to a ship in a nighttime storm where sailors cut one another down. Did he leave the Church? No. He stayed – and treated her from within.
In the seventh century, all the patriarchs accepted Monothelitism. Saint Maximus the Confessor said: “Even if the whole universe communes with you, I alone will not commune.” But he did not create his own church. He remained in the Truth, insisting that the Church is where Truth is – not where administrative power is. He waited for healing. He did not cut himself off. He fought for the health of the whole organism.
The Eucharistic argument: blood does not run through wires
We become the Body not through a line in a parish register, not through membership in a religious organization. We become the Body through the Chalice.
The Eucharist is not a symbolic act of remembrance. It is a blood transfusion. Christ says: “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56).
Abides. Not “agrees with My ideas,” not “respects My commandments.” Abides – lives, breathes, exists in one organism.
A severed finger does not receive blood. It can say as much as it wants: “I believe in the heart that pumps blood, I believe in the lungs that give oxygen.” But if it is severed, the blood will not reach it.
The hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage said: “He who does not have the Church as Mother cannot have God as Father.” This was not said to frighten. It was said as a medical diagnosis. A mother is the one who gives birth. The Church gives birth to us into eternal life through Baptism and feeds us through the Eucharist.
Can you live without a mother? Yes – if you are already grown. But can you be born without her? No.
The problem of “me on my own”: the oncology of the soul
A cancer cell lives for itself. It ignores the signals of the organism and consumes resources without restraint. It says, “I don’t need your rules. I know how to live.” It kills the body – and itself along with it.
“Faith in my soul” looks like oncology. “I’m on my own. Nobody tells me what to do. I decide for myself how to believe and when to pray.” It sounds like freedom. In reality, it is a death sentence.
A cell cannot live alone. In a Petri dish it lives only as long as there is nutrient medium. Then it dies. In an organism, cells are specialized. A liver cell cannot do the work of a neuron or an erythrocyte. But it can live because it is part of the whole.
We cannot be saved one by one. Salvation is not an individual operation to improve one’s moral condition. Salvation is deification – union with God. And God unites with us not as isolated atoms, but as a Body.
The Church is “we”
When we say “the Church,” we often mean bishops, priests, administration. We think: the Church is them. And I am me. No.
The Church is us. In Christ. All together. Head, hands, feet, liver, lungs. Healthy cells and sick ones. Those who pray and those who are barely holding on. Those who serve and those who sin.
The Apostle Paul writes: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor. 12:26).
Am I ashamed of that bishop? Yes. Because he is part of the same body as I am. When my tooth aches, do I say, “That’s not me, that’s the tooth by itself”? No. I say, “My tooth hurts.” Because it is my body.
The Church is a hospital. Saint John Chrysostom said: the Church is not an assembly of saints, but a crowd of repentant sinners. There are diseases there. There is pus and bandages there. But there, too, immunity against the sin of the world is formed – holiness.
If I leave the hospital because there are too many sick people, I do not become healthy. I simply die alone.
A coal dies out in isolation
Ephrem the Syrian said: “To separate yourself from the assembly of brothers is to separate yourself from the fire. A coal goes out in isolation.”
We think we can keep faith inside ourselves like a file on a hard drive.
But faith is not information. It is fire. It burns when there are other coals nearby. It goes out when you are alone.
Yes, the coal beside you may be dim, may smoke. But as long as you are close, your fire will not die. And if you roll out of the hearth, convinced you are better than the rest – you will cool.
Christ says: “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5). A branch broken off from the vine dries up; it cannot bear fruit. It cannot say, “I don’t need this vine; I will grow on my own.” It simply dies.
What do we do with this pain?
It hurts to look at a priest who lies. It hurts to see a bishop sunk in intrigue. It hurts to stand next to a parishioner who condemns everyone around him.
But the sins of priests are not a reason to leave the Church – just as dislike for a surgeon is not a reason to refuse a life-saving operation.
You did not come to the priest. You came to Christ. The priest is only a conduit. Yes, he can be a poor conduit. But Christ’s Blood flows not through his personal holiness, but through the Mystery.
If you see sickness in the body – treat it. Pray for the priest. Speak the truth when it is needed. Be a healthy cell that helps the organism fight infection. Do not cut yourself off. A severed arm does not heal the body; it simply decays.
The Church is not an ideal structure. It is a living body. There are wounds in it, ulcers, diseases. But Christ’s Blood flows in it. And as long as you are in the Body, that Blood flows in you as well.
