Therefore, if we do not read Christ in every (meaningful – V.A.) word of the Bible, then we read nothing. The Bible is a vector, a directional sign on the road, pointing to ‘the Way,’ pointing to Christ. The Bible is a roadmap for returning from ‘a distant country of pig pods’ (see the parable of the prodigal son – V.A.) to the Father’s house. Thus, the Bible is not valuable in itself, but only in relation to Christ. The Bible (and all Scripture – V.A.) relates to Christ as the name of an object to the object itself, as a map and a route indicator to the route itself, the road and the final destination point, like instructions for using medicine and the medicine itself. You can learn the map perfectly, memorize the instructions by heart and read a pile of reviews, explanations, recommendations, warnings, praises (Writings of the Holy Fathers – V.A.), and thus never set out on the path (‘Christ is the Way, the Road, the Path’). The mystery of baptism is the beginning of Christianity. ‘The beginning of the path is not yet the path, the beginning of building a house is not yet a house, the beginning of time is not yet time,’ – says St. Basil. Therefore, the beginning of Christianity – the Mystery of Baptism, – is not yet Christianity, it is just the edge between the Old and New Testaments, the starting point, the opportunity to realize one’s life as Love in communion with God. And there are so many formally baptized in the name of Jesus Christ or the Holy Trinity, who against their will were placed on this edge and they define their own life toward the Old Testament (under the Old Testament – V.A.) and live by the desire of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life – a pitiful spectacle, a disgrace, a mockery of Satan… Christianity begins where the baptized and chrismated, reborn in water and spirit in the mystery of the Eucharist, the mystery of communion with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, take their first steps on the Path to the Kingdom of God. And all this is done with compliance with the conditions of the effectiveness of the sacraments (about which we wrote in previous chapters – V.A.), and never to consume the Medicine, about which we know so much (‘The Eucharist is the Medicine of Immortality,’ – says St. Ignatius. Here, of course, there’s a metaphor: the Eucharist is not a pill that works subconsciously, the Eucharist is Christ, a Personality, which is ‘consumed’ and ‘assimilated’ only and exclusively by a personality, hypostatically and consciously; otherwise, it turns out that God saves us without us, against our will, contrary to our freedom, but this is not possible – V.A.).
Protestants took, when they left the Church, the Instruction (Bible – V.A.) for using the Medicine, written in divine symbolic language, which can be read and understood (in this case, we are talking about the most primitive level of rational knowledge – V.A.) only under the guidance of auxiliary literature, decoders (Holy Fathers and the Conciliar voice of the Church – V.A.), but forgot to take the Medicine itself – the Eucharist, the Living Jesus Christ. Poor things, after so many years they have ‘learned’ this Instruction by heart and ‘mindlessly’… The sick begin to deliriously imagine that after reading the instructions they feel better, and soon will recover completely… Catholics have the Instruction, additional literature, symbol decoders, and the Medicine itself, but having lost spiritual sight, they cannot read and, not understanding what the Eucharist is, what the Hypostasis, the Personal, Hypostatic existence is, they fantasize, losing the real experience of the Kingdom of God, Life in the Holy Spirit. The Medicine (Christ – V.A.) is ‘assimilated’ by the Holy Spirit, and Catholics have distorted it with human speculation, fantasies, philosophy of teaching about the Holy Spirit, which is an indicator of their (Catholics’ – V.A.) loss of the catholic experience of the Church – the knowledge of God. There is no fundamental teaching that Catholics have not distorted – the experience is not Churchly, not Eucharistic, if we can still talk about some experience, and not just about chatter for the sake of chatter, ideology for the sake of ideology. ‘Our teaching is consistent (identical – V.A.) with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist confirms our teaching,’ say the Holy Fathers (Irenaeus of Lyon, in particular – V.A.). The Eucharist is a source of knowledge, knowing, theology, teaching. ‘A spring does not pour forth both salt and fresh water,’ ‘a bramble cannot bear figs.’ The Medicine does not work in Catholicism, is not assimilated… it’s not enough to just swallow it… spiritual life, which assimilates Christ, is broken. And how many among the nominally Orthodox are Catholics, Protestants, even shameful to say – pagans, ‘who do not know God,’ and, frightening to think, worse than pagans. We are not talking about people, but about the setting of the spirit… Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, pagan – these are states of the spirit, settings of the mind, ways of survival, not a person who is the image of God, a unique personality, who has identified themselves in God to some degree, and the end is infinite – deification, god-likeness…