The church creates the bread, and the bread creates the church, like a wonderful and mutual admiration society. They mutually recognize and honor God in one another. This is good theology and a very effective ritual. I see Jesus as absolutely uncompromising about all this, and it is amazing that any believer would want to water it down: “My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats and drinks lives in me and I in them” (Jn 6:55–56). “Examine yourself to make sure you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you? If not, you have failed the test” (2 Cor 13:5). The criterion of real faith is very simple—mutual indwelling—and already now, in the flesh, not just later.
In this, I am quite Catholic and quite orthodox because that is where all the power for transformation is held, in holding to the incarnation at every level.
—from the book From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality
by Richard Rohr
