What is More Important than The Holy Eucharist?

 – Tom Varkey

I do compliment Skylark for his arguments to convince the readers of this blog that the Mar Thoma Cross is not in any way greater than the Holy Eucharist. After reading his article which is commendable, I am sure in the minds of many readers, this question must have come up: “Is there anything more important than the Holy Eucharist and if there is, what?”

Also, I saw the following question from one of the readers which I feel is a sincere one and therefore I thought I should address it. The question: “Pippiladan at least saw some trees. What about you? Did you see anything?” Therefore, the objective of this article is to answer these two questions.
First Question: Is there anything more important than the Holy Eucharist and if there is, what is it? In my humble opinion according to what the LORD has revealed to me, the answer is “Yes” and the answer to “what?” is: “You and Me”. Let me explain what I mean. In one sentence, the Holy Eucharist is our food which is given by Jesus to you and me to grow spiritually. I am sure you will agree with me that one who eats the food is definitely more important than the food itself. In Jn. 6:55-57 Jesus tells us: “My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” Without any further explanation, I am sure it is very clear here that the Holy Eucharist is the food and drink that Jesus has given to us to grown in Him.

Now even though we are the ones to whom Jesus has given His flesh to eat and blood to drink, there is another dimension as to who we are to fully understand why we are more valuable than the Holy Eucharist. In Jn. 14:23 Jesus said: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” From this verse it is clear that if we obey Jesus Christ, God the Father and Jesus will both come to live within us. In Acts 5:32 we read: “God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him.” Here it is clear that if we obey God (Jesus), the Holy Spirit also will come to live within us. Thus when we obey Jesus, all three persons of the Holy Trinity will come to live within us. Understanding this secret in a deep sense is what I call seeing the forest instead of only the trees that I talked about in my previous article.

Now I am sure it is easy to see why you and I are more important than the Holy Eucharist. But there is a very important condition for this to be true. We have to pledge total obedience to the Word of God and we have to constantly try to be filled with the Spirit. Only then we will fully become children of God in the true sense of the word. I am not saying we should be perfect. But at least we should be on the road to becoming perfect. Jesus said in Mt. 5:48: “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Most of us think that it is impossible to do this and give up on this challenge given to us by Jesus right away dismissing it as impossible. But the reality is that it is possible if we are fully committed to this cause. We cannot be sinless because in Rom. 3:10 we read: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.”

But we can be blameless which is what God wants us from us. This is the purpose for which God has created us according to Eph. 1:4 where we read: “He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” In 1 Jn. 1:7 we read: “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” If we completely surrender to Jesus Christ to obey Him with all our heart and soul and strength, then whenever we fall short in our spiritual life due to our weaknesses, Jesus will purify us from the sin resulting from our weaknesses. Thus in the sight of God, we will always be blameless. This is what God wants us from us 24 hours/day 7 days/week. This is our secret to being perfect as our heavenly father is perfect which is perfectly possible. Put it in another way, spiritually speaking what happens to us when we live this way can be compared to a blood transfusion.
In a blood transfusion, the impurities in the blood of the patient is purified by passing the blood through a machine that absorbs all the impurities and then sent back into the body. After a couple of hours, the impure blood is purified to a point where the blood is almost pure. Thus the patient can live for another day or two with the purified blood. The blood of the patient does not become 100% pure. But it becomes almost pure, say 95%. In the case of the blood transfusion given by Christ described above in 1 Jn. 1:7, we become 100% pure as it says “purifies us from all sin”. Such a transfusion happens when we eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ which has been given by Jesus Christ for feeding us spiritually. But certainly we are more important than the food and drink because we have God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all living within us if we live a blameless life as described above.

Second Question: Pippiladan at least saw some trees. What about you? Did you see anything? The answer to this question from one of the readers is also “Yes.” Let me explain myself. As I referred to in my article, seeing trees and seeing the forest which is a total picture of all the trees combined are two different things. In Mk. 4:11 Jesus said: “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that “they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding.” There are two ways of understanding the Word of God: one in a superficial way which is sort of disconnected and in a way that does not give the one who reads the Word of God its deep meaning and its relevance to the total picture of salvation. The second way is described in 1 Ths. 1:5: “… the Gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” It is absolutely necessary for one to receive the Word of God with these three elements to see the relevance of each and every word in the Word of God to one’s salvation. The three elements are: the Power of God, the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. Without these three elements accompanying, the Word of God cannot take root in the heart and mind of the hearer. For this to happen Jesus has to reveal who the Father is as we read in Mt. 11:27: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” In order for Jesus to reveal to a Christian with a deep understanding who the Father is, the pre-condition is that he must pledge total obedience to Jesus Christ in everything that the Word of God asks him to do. Unfortunately for someone who has pledged allegiance to the Mar Thoma Cross, this is impossible. Therefore he will never see the forest until he renounces the claver cross to totally surrender to Jesus Christ by obeying His command contained in Jn. 3:14.