Page 325 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

C H U R C H A N D S O C I E T Y
sion—is not a threat to unity but a condition for it. At the same
time, unity cannot be reduced to mere coexistence or frag-
mentation. It must be a communion.
For this reason, every form of division that absolutizes
identity—whether national, racial, or social—stands in con-
tradiction to the eschatological vision. In the Kingdom, such
distinctions do not disappear, but they cease to divide. Any
attempt to organize life around exclusion or superiority is a
denial of the communion to which all are called.
This does not mean that the Church withdraws from soci-
ety. On the contrary, she remains deeply present within it. But
her presence is not that of a power seeking control, nor of an
institution imposing moral order from above. It is the pres-
ence of a community that lives from the future, that antici-
pates another way of being together.
In this sense, the Church offers to society not a program,
but a vision. She reveals that history is not closed, that the
future is not determined by the past, and that human life is
called into communion. She reminds the world that unity and
freedom, love and truth, belong together.
Even when this vision is obscured—whether by moralism,
by spiritualism, or by political confusion—it continues to live
within the liturgical life of the Church. The Eucharist remains
what it has always been: a joyful gathering around the risen
Christ, a communion that embraces not only human beings
but the whole of creation, a foretaste of the Kingdom that is to
come.
It is from this source that the Church must continually re-
discover her place in society. Not as one voice among many
competing for influence, nor as a guardian of the past, but as
a living sign of the future—of the Kingdom that comes, and
that even now begins to transform the world.
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