Centrality of the Church for salvation

If, then, because of the opportunity for charity that lame person gained healing when he was placed before the gate of the temple, then how much healing and blessing and grace and all good things will we gain both bodily and spiritually, pertaining both to the healing of our visible illnesses and the healing of our sins, while we strive to run to the Lord, to the church, so that we might pray, and to partake of his body and his blood.

And if one has committed these deeds and repented for them, and if he does not return to doing them, God will forgive him for the things that have transpired. But whoever does them after he has heard these words will give an account to God for his transgression.

For each one's house is not the baptistery, nor is it the place for receiving the mystery. Because of the manner that the Lord spoke to his disciples, “Go into the city to a certain man, and a man carrying a gallon of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters, and say to the master of the house, ‘It is the teacher who says to you, “Where is my dwelling place, where I will eat the Passover meal with my disciples?”’” the place into which the Lord will go with his disciples is, rather, the church. And the disciples themselves did not break bread anywhere except the temple and the house in which they gathered.

On the contrary, how distant is the church from the house of the man? All the ecclesiastical places have become full; all the monastic places have become full, they (monks) gather in them and carry out the holy mystery by the hands of the priests appointed for them, complying with the canons of the Church in everything, with this one faith, this one spirit, this one baptism, this one God, and this one Lord, the father of everyone, he who is over everyone. And […]