Asceticism and eucharist

The meaning of asceticism consists in the fact that the less one makes one’s hypostasis rely on nature, on the substance, the more one is hypostasized as a person. In this way asceticism does not deny “nature” but frees it from the ontological necessity of the biological hypostasis; and it enables it to be in an authentic manner. It is superfluous to stress that this does not suffice to bring about the transcendence of the biological hypostasis if nature is not “hypostasized” simultaneously in the eucharistic community. Other, non-Christian soteriological systems also exhibit asceticism as a transcendence of the biological hypostasis. But only the Church offers a positive side of this transcendence … with reference to the eucharist. (From the point of view of the historical phenomenology of religions it must some day be understood that only the eucharist in its correct sense is the specific differentiating factor of Christianity.) Without the ascetic dimension, the person is inconceivable. But in the end the context of the manifestation of the person is not the monastery: it is eucharist. Being as Communion, John Zizioulas