ABSTRACT
From the church a fellowship was created which crossed social, tribal, ethnic, and later national boundaries. The sacrament of communion which made humans become one with the body of Christ was equally a means of making human beings one with each other—the sacramental act symbolizing the unity of the double injunction at the core of the Christian religion—love the lord thy God with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself. Christian ascetic renunciation finds its grounding in the directive of right love: the asceticism of Christ, his apostles and the evangelists stems from the compulsion of creating a body of love. The Christian focus and orientation is on the communion of powers that is achieved through making love the supreme power and alerting us to the obstacles that impede love and hence the communion. The law of love and its Christian interpretation involves the reconfiguration of meaning of blood ritual and the flesh of the offering.
