When the Son of Man Comes, Will He Find Faith on Earth?

Dear Family in Christ, 

I wanted to share with you an abridged excerpt of a sermon from Francis Chan, a popular American evangelical preacher who made headlines in the Catholic world with a sermon that just seemed very… Catholic. In this Sunday’s homily, I’ll refer to Francis’ sermon in relation to Christian unity, what Jesus left us with and commanded us to do, and the haunting question from today's Gospel: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”

God love you, 

Father Corso

“I'm not making any, like, grand statements, I'm just saying, some of this stuff I didn't know. I didn't know that for the first 1,500 years of church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ, and it wasn't till 500 years ago that someone popularized a thought that it's just a symbol, and nothing more.

I didn't know that… it was at that same time that for the first time, someone put a pulpit in the front of the gathering, because before that, it was always the body and blood of Christ that was central to their gatherings. For 1,500 years, it was never one guy and his pulpit being the center of the church.

It was the body and blood of Christ, and even the leaders just saw themselves as partakers, and oh man, we're not worthy, we're not worthy, we're not worthy. I say that because the church is more divided than any time in history. What does this book tell us clearly? That he does not want any divisions in his church, and for a thousand years, there was just one church.

Did you know that? We're so used to growing up in a time when literally there are over 30,000 Christian denominations right now, but for the first thousand years, it was just one. What was interesting is communion was at the center of the room every time they gathered, and it wasn't a pulpit where a guy preached after studying in his office by himself for 20 hours. See, right now, we've got guys like me that go in a room, study… Meanwhile, other guys went into their rooms and studied, and then we started all giving different messages, so many contradicting each other, and everyone's following different guys. I believe there was something about taking communion out of the center of the church and replacing it with a gifted speaker…

You guys, I've been dreaming about this, I've been praying about this, going, man, I would love it if one day people understood the body of Christ, that they were just a part of it, and they got excited to gather and partake of the body and blood of Christ, and they celebrated together, and that's why we gathered. We have an opportunity. Man, life is short, and I want to give myself to this.

-Francis Chan, 'The Body of Christ and Communion'.