Fr. Alexander Schmemann on the Assembly as the Church

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

But then the assembling as the Church is above all the sacrament of love. We go to church for love, for the new love of Christ himself, which is granted to us in our unity. We go to church so that this divine love will again and again be “poured into our hearts,” so that again and again we may “put on love”, so that, constituting the body of Christ, we can abide in Christ’s love and manifest it in the world. But that is why our contemporary, utterly “individualized” piety, in which we egotistically separate ourselves from the gathering, is so grievous, so contradictory to the age-old experience of the Church. Even while standing in the church, we continue to sense some people as “neighbors” and others as “strangers” -a faceless mass that “has no relevance” to us and to our prayer and disturbs our “spiritual concentration.” How often do seemingly “spiritually” attuned and “devout” people openly declare their distaste for crowded gatherings, which disturb them from praying, and seek empty and quiet chapels, secluded corners, separate from the  “crowds.” In fact, such “self-absorption”  would hardly be possible in the church assembly-precisely because this is not the purpose in the assembly and our participation in it. Concerning this individual prayer the gospels say: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray…” (Mt 6:6). Does not this mean that the assembling as the Church has another purpose, already contained in the very word “assembly”? Through it the Church fulfills herself, accomplishes our communion with Christ and with his love, so that in participating in it, we comprise “out of many, one body.”

*Taken from The Eucharist, pg. 138.