Jesus the Unknown

"Joy" is the main thing here.

Rejoice always, πάντοτε χαίρετε. (Ι Thess. 5:16.)

Oh, of course, here, in the first community, just as in the Upper Room, the memory of death, of sacrifice, of blood is present: His body, the living, is broken here too; His blood is poured out. Jesus eats and drinks for the last time on earth; tomorrow he will be in the tomb: this he knows, and the disciples also know; perhaps they will forget it at once, but at this moment they remember. There will be separation, but the joy of eternal rendezvous is so great that the sorrow of separation – death – wins.

Death is consumed by victory. (Isaiah 25:8).

Joy will abide in you, and your joy will be complete. (John 15:11).

There, in the Eucharist of Paul-Mark-Matthew, the shadows of Golgotha are still motionless, but here, in Luke's, they have already moved, running before the rising sun of the Resurrection.

XVI

… All had something in common, κοινά.

And they sold their possessions and all their possessions, and divided each one equally according to need. (D. A. 2, 44-45).

It is, in our language, dead, flat and godless, "communism". Begun there, on the Mountain of Bread, —

they all ate, and were satisfied" (Mark 6:42),

here, in the Eucharist, it's finished, fulfilled. "All had in common" – not in slavery and hatred, eternal death, as we would like, but in freedom and love, in eternal life. That is why there is such "joy": the kingdom has already come.

Or, to put it in our language, again dead and flat, godless, but, alas, more comprehensible to us than the living language of the Gospel, the Eucharist of Luke is revolutionary-eschatological-social. This is what is so terribly forgotten, lost in our Church Eucharist.

Only when the Lord Himself, according to the wondrous word in the Eucharistic prayer of the Apostles, gathers all the churches, scattered "like bread in the mountains" (every believer is an ear of bread), into one Universal Church – His Kingdom, only then will this "social-revolutionary-eschatological" Eucharist be accomplished, no longer of the Second Testament, but of the Third, not only of the Son, but of the Father, the Son and the Spirit – the unknown Eucharist of Jesus the Unknown.