“Where is her head?”

Recently, our neighbor’s old Golden Retriever died. My girls had grown quite fond of “Maggie,” and her passing was difficult for them. The night of her passing, we prayed for her family and for her. After prayers, my wife remarked that they were able to bury her at the family farm outside of town, so that they could “visit her whenever they wanted to.” My three year old remarked, “So, she’s alive now???” My wife said, “No; her body is buried at the farm.”

After several seconds of contemplation, my three year old asked, “Then where is her head?”

It never occurred to me that one might envisage the dog “Maggie” in this way. When we speak of “her body,” we naturally think of the whole “Maggie.” But, to my 3-year-old, such a conception was quite flexible.

It occurred to me later on, though, how her mis-thinking about this is actually very common among many of us adults when it comes to our Christian life.

I have met many Christians who much enjoy their relationship with Christ, but feel little need for the Church.

I have met others who much enjoy the liturgy of the Church — the candles, processions, mysticism, etc., — but who would be quite happy to leave off all the emphasis on Christ as the only way to the Father (as He seems to have claimed for Himself).

The connection with Maggie the dog? Well, in historical Christian thought, Christ is the Head, and the Church is His Body. Much like my three year old, many Christians have no problem seeing the body as separated from the head, or vice versa. But, if we listen to the voices of our Faith’s history, such a conception is inaccurate.

In St. Paul’s thought, we are “one with Christ” precisely because we are His Body. It is why Orthodoxy says that the Church is Christ. We cannot encounter Christ fully apart from the Church, and we cannot fully experience life in the Church apart from Christ, Her Head.

Fr. Thomas Hopko once remarked even that Christ cannot Himself function properly apart from His body, the Church:

“The head cannot say to the feet, “I have no need of you.” — 1 Cor. 12.21 (paraphrased)

There is no such thing as a functioning head apart from the body, nor the body apart from the head. As much as it may offend our sensibilities about God’s “sovereignty,” our Faith is that God has chosen not to function for mankind’s salvation apart from the Church, i.e., apart from people as intermediaries. And, as much as it may offend our sensibilities about our own prowess and freedom, the body cannot function adequately or viably without Christ, Who is our Head and source of Life.

I do well to remember this whenever I grow tired of the pettiness I may observe in others around me in the Church (and which I am most sure is observed by them in myself), or when I become overly infatuated with the services of the Church, to the point of losing sight of the Christ.

Remember, the head is not apart from the body. The whole organism, thriving with life, is both head and body. We live in Christ only inasmuch as we live with each other. And we truly live with each other only insofar as we have Christ living in us.

Added note: This unavoidable connection between the Head and Body — Christ and the Church — is also why the Fathers said that “outside the Church there is no salvation.”  Such was not just an ecclesiologically exclusive claim; it was a christological claim.  That is, it was, in effect, saying that “Apart from Christ there is no salvation.”  To be found in Christ is to be found in Him, and that means in His Body, the Church, which is the “fullness of him who filleth all in all” (St. Paul).