A New Way of Living
Sunday, June 14, 2026
Father Richard Rohr reflects on the origin of the Christian church as “the Way”:
Christianity first emerged not as a new religion, but as a reform and sect of Judaism within Judea and the Mediterranean. Wherever Paul, Peter, and other early missionaries traveled, they formed small communities of believers in “the Way,” a movement that emphasized Jesus’s teachings, death, and resurrection as the path to transformation. Gradually the movement grew and took on a life of its own, welcoming non-Jews as well as Jews, becoming more inclusive and grace-oriented, until it eventually called itself “catholic” or universal. By 80 CE, there were Christians as far away as India and France.
The early church period (the five hundred or so years following Jesus’s resurrection) was a time of dramatic change in culture, politics, and economy. All these changes affected the development of the fledgling religion, shaping liturgy, rituals, and theology. Historian Diana Butler Bass writes, “For all the complexity of primitive Christianity, a startling idea runs through early records of faith: Christianity seems to have succeeded because it transformed the lives of people in a chaotic world.” [1] During this time, Christianity was not so much about doctrines or eternal salvation, but about how to live a better life here and now, within the “reign of God.”
From the perspective of occupying Roman powers, the Christian sect was radical because it encouraged alternative behaviors that were both attractive to those at the bottom and threatening to the worldview of empire. Rather than acquiring wealth, this new sect shared possessions equally. Followers of the Way lived together with people of different ethnicities and social classes rather than following classist and cultural norms. [2]
Much of what Jesus taught seems to have been followed closely during the first several hundred years after his death and resurrection. As long as Jesus’s followers were on the bottom and the edge of empire, as long as they shared the rejected and betrayed status of Jesus, they could grasp his teaching more readily. Values like nonparticipation in war, simple living, inclusivity, and love of enemies could be more easily understood when Christians were gathering secretly in the catacombs.
Several writings illustrate this early commitment to Jesus’s teachings on simplicity and generosity. For example, the Didache, compiled around 90 CE, says: “Share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own. For if you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more in things which perish!” [3] At the time, Christianity was still pure, simple, and loving, relatively untouched by empire, rationalization, and compromise.
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Being the Body of Christ
Monday, June 15, 2026
Father Richard describes the influence of the apostle Paul on the formation of the first Christian churches:
The apostle Paul knew that the gospel message must have concrete embodiment, so he set about founding what he called “churches.” Jesus’s first vision of church is so simple we could miss it: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). This is surely why Jesus insists that the message be communicated not by a lone evangelist but by sending the disciples out “two by two” (Mark 6:7). The individual alone is not a fitting communicator of the core message.
During Paul’s lifetime, the Christian church was not yet an institution or a centrally organized set of common practices and beliefs. It was a living organism that communicated the gospel primarily through relationships. Paul’s brilliant metaphor for this living, organic, concrete embodiment is “the body of Christ”: “Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit, because all those parts make up a single body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the whole community, although each in different ways, is “the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
This Spirit is itself the foundational energy of the universe, the Ground of All Being, described in the first lines of the Bible (Genesis 1:2). Union is not just pious rambling, but the very concrete work of God. It’s how God makes love to what God created. Paul writes that it is precisely “in your togetherness that you are Christ’s Body” (1 Corinthians 12:27). By remaining—against all trials and resistance—inside this luminous web of relationship, this vibrational state of love, we experience a very honest and healthy notion of communal salvation.
The churches or communities Paul founded are his audiovisual aids that he can point to inside of a debauched empire (where human dignity was never upheld as inherent) to give credibility to his message. To people who asked, “Why should we believe there’s a new or different life possible?” Paul could say, “Look at these people. They’re different. This is a different social order.” In Christ, “there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is not just a religious idea, but a socioeconomic message that began to change the world—and still can.
For Jesus, teachings such as forgiveness, healing, and justice work are the real evidence of a new and shared life. If we do not see this happening in churches and spiritual communities, religion is “all in the head” and largely an illusion. Peacemaking, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not some kind of ticket to heaven later. They are the price of peoplehood—the signature of heaven—now.
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Individual Reflection
Where in your life right now are you most aware of being held inside a web of relationship larger than yourself?
Group Discussion — choose one:
- What does it cost you to remain inside community “against all trials and resistance”?
- Where have you experienced togetherness itself as the saving thing — not belief, not doctrine, but the web?
- What would it mean to treat your belonging to this body as the spiritual practice, not a support for some other practice?
I must also freely admit: writing the previous sentence makes me a bit uncomfortable.
When Dr. Gregory Miller, President of Malone, informed me of his intention to initiate the process that was required to award me the doctorate, I was immediately overwhelmed. I am aware of others who have received this type of honor but have never paid much attention to it. But this had my attention. And not, as it turns out, just because it had to do with me. Rather, that it had to do with community.One of the first thoughts that came to my mind upon hearing from Dr. Miller was, “Why me and not someone else?” I know of many other Malone graduates who are just as, if not more, deserving given what they have done to make the world a better place. But this thought of comparison was immediately followed with the awareness that I was, in so thinking it, simply protecting myself and my shy temperament from this attention. And not just attention from one person (Dr. Miller), but from an entire institution. Which revealed something more.
Furthermore, it was in belonging at Malone University (although I would not have known it at the time) that set the course for what it means for me to belong to the communities to which I am now a part and are forming me. People who love me and with whom we are all doing the hard work of being known.To whom do you belong who are forming you into who you are becoming?You don’t have to receive an honorary doctorate to know that these are important questions. But the moment you begin to practice gratitude, you will soon be drawn to and hopefully discover their answers. Godspeed, my friend, as your heart of gratitude expands, and you find yourself belonging—through no small amount of work—to those by whom you are deeply known and in whose presence you will become who God is preparing us for readiness to live in his heaven on earth when it arrives in its fullness. 
