| A more
convenient and comprehensive .pdf version of this
document will be e-mailed on request. contact vinexley@tpgi.com.au MY SUNDAY EUCHARIST At the last Supper, on the
night He was handed over, Our Lord instituted the
Eucharistic Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, to
perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages
until He should come, and thus entrust to the Church, His
beloved spouse, the memorial of His death and
resurrection; a sacrament of devotion, a sign of unity, a
bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is
received, the soul is filled with grace and there is
given to us the pledge of future glory. The statement above and others in similar vein
outlined for me my understanding of what the Church
taught on the Eucharist, and although I didn’t find
such teaching very moving, I was able for 67 years to
look upon the host at the time of consecration and say
"My Lord and my God." Then Fr. Frank Andersen msc
visted us at Proserpine and my understanding of Eucharist
went through a Copernican revolution. He asked the
question "What did Jesus, a Jew, believe he was
doing at the Last Supper?" I still believe in all
that the Church teaches, but now I have an outlook on my
Sunday Eucharist that totally enthralls me. I will get back to Fr. Frank Andersen later, but
first, I have read a great deal more since that wonderful
occasion 3 years ago and I want to relate some of that. Bernard Cooke
says that sacraments are specially significant realities
that are meant to transform the reality of "the
human" by somehow bringing persons into closer
contact with the saving action of Jesus Christ If
Christian sacraments are to be transformative, that is,
if Christians are to perform sacraments more effectively,
they must become involved in these actions with a higher
level of awareness. On this point the Constitution on the
Sacred liturgy from Vatican II leaves no room for doubt.
"... Christ's faithful, when present at this mystery
of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent
spectators. On the contrary, through a proper
appreciation of the rites and prayers they should
participate knowingly, devoutly, and actively." All this demands a greater awareness of just what it
means to be human. Instead of living at a low level of
consciousness, people must give more direct attention to
many things that they now take for granted. To put it
bluntly, using the language Saint Paul used centuries ago
we Christians must wake up, we must find out what is
really going on. Because we are knowers, we can extend
the range of our human existing in almost infinite
fashion; without ceasing we can enrich the world of
conscious existence we move in. We can quite literally
bring the richness of the universe that surrounds us into
ourselves; and we can even add to the wonder and beauty
of that world by our own creative imagining--by our music
and art and poetry. By far the most important part of our "going
out" to the world around us is our reaching out to
people, to men and women and children who share with us
this capacity for consciousness. We are not only able to
know that these people are there; we are able to touch
them in friendship and concern and shared interests. We
are able to form human community with them. We are able,
that is, to love. Human friendship, has always defied
clear explanation or definition. Throughout history women
and men have tried, not too successfully, to grasp the
essence of this experience that is such a fundamental and
important and rewarding part of human life. We still do
not know exactly how to explain friendship; we do know
that it is precious. In our better moments we recognize that human love and
friendship are a gift and treasure without compare, that
no material riches can outweigh it or compensate for it
if it does not exist in our lives. With friends our lives
have meaning; without some persons who truly care for us
and whom we in turn love, our human existence is drab and
lonely and oppressive and shallow. From a religious point
of view the very essence of human sin is the deliberate
refusal to love. To live this way--alert, aware, concerned and loving
and open to others, free and self-determining-does not
come easily. It is a challenge, a task to be undertaken,
a price we have to pay for being truly human. Actually,
our Christian faith tells us that this goal would be
beyond us if it were not for the personal help of God Unless one lives reflectively, or at least is trying
to become more self-aware, one is incapable of
celebrating sacraments in anything but the most
superficial fashion. Sacraments are moments of
reflection, shared with one another in celebration, that
bring together and deepen all our other reflections about
life. They are key experiences that provide new insight
into our other experiences and so deepen them. Discipleship in earliest Christianity became something
quite distinctive in the history of religions. It
involved more than the cherished memory of a beloved
master they were still devoted to. It was not just the
careful retention of the master's teaching and continuing
dedication to the task of spreading the message that he
brought. It was all this, but more basically it was a
personal attachment to one who was still present to them
in that new way of human existence they called
"resurrection." Jesus' earthly career was seen
by these first Christians as uniquely significant;
indeed, they realized as never before the profound
meaning of that career. But they viewed his risen
existence as yet more significant, for its meaning gave
ultimate meaning to everything that was human. Christian
discipleship, from its inception, is more than devotion
to a memory or to a message; it is devotion to a living
person. The institution of the church, its emergence out of
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, made it
possible for the new meaning of "human," which
came with Jesus, to continue in history. Christian
communities could be seen and heard. For those who came
to believe in Jesus as the Christ, the experience of
being a member of such a community included the
experience of the presence the risen Lord. The experience
of Christian discipleship was sacramental of
Christ’s presence. If one was a Christian, one
could, along with the other members of the community,
"sense" the presence of the risen Lord whenever
the community assembled (for example, for the
"breaking of the bread"), and this awareness
could then extend to the whole of life. St. Paul describes the Christian community as the body
of the risen one; Christ is the head of that body, the
church the Christians who make up the church are in some
real way the body of Christ. . What do our bodies do for
us as personal beings? Without claiming that the list is
complete, we can point to three indispensable functions
that our present bodiliness provides for us.
Our bodies locate us, they identify us, they are
indispensable elements in our becoming part of our World
and our human society. Without this bodiliness, no one of
us could be part of history or have any impact on it. When we use "body" in this functional way,
we can see the implications of calling the Christian
community "the body of Christ;" we can see the
appropriateness of Paul using this comparison as a way of
explaining Christ's continuing presence to human history.
First, having once passed into the new Spirit-life of
resurrection, Jesus' existence no longer fits the
limitations of our space/time continuum. This immediately
raises the question: How, then, does he contact and
relate to those who are in that continuum? The answer is
that the people who, at any given point of history, are
the Christian community act as "body" to locate
the risen Christ in space and time. This makes it
possible for people throughout history to come into
contact with him. Secondly, this community
of disciples, accepting as it does his values and goals,
implements in the concrete circumstances of human life
the vision and purposes of the risen Christ. The church
is, as it were, the instrument through which Christ
continues to carry out his saving activity. Christ’s
ministry did not end with his death, in reality, it
increased in intensity and breadth of coverage and
effectiveness with his death and resurrection. But it
could do so only because the communities of women and men
who formed the church were the means of his saving power
reaching the lives of people. Thirdly, the Christian
people are meant to act as "the face of
Christ," as the perceptible manifestation of what
and who Jesus is as risen Lord. As our bodies symbolize
our personal identity, so the Christian communities
manifest the presence of the risen Christ in their midst.
Or to say all this in another way, Christians exist in
community as the sacrament of the risen Christ. Andrew M Greeley asks Is it
possible to have friends? (Is Jesus really
present in the Eucharist?) In our search for community
with others we are often at odds with our fellow humans.
We want the warmth and support of friendship but we
frequently find ourselves fighting with those who are our
friends. We search for community, we long for communion,
and yet we are usually unfulfilled, often ending up in
pain and suffering. Still we do experience friendship often enough to know
that it is possible among humans. Indeed, in those
moments of communion, we suspect that self-giving
affection is the only authentically human way to live. In
friendship, particularly in married friendship, we find
that we are taken out of ourselves and united with the
other. The experience is not usually as intense as the
mystical interlude, but it is very strong nevertheless.
In the highest moments of human friendship we forget
about ourselves and. we leave behind our fears, our
inhibitions, our restraints; we remain fully who we are.
Indeed we are more fully ourselves at those times than at
most other times, and yet we exist for and through and in
the other person. We are concerned about them in a way
that we normally reserve for ourselves, and we are able
to be ourselves for them in a way that is impossible in
other circumstances. Despite the emotional intensity of
such friendship, we do not grow weary from it. On the
contrary, such communion relaxes and invigorates us.
Instead of producing nervousness, uncertainty, and
anxiety, interludes with our friends make us serene and
self-confident The followers of Jesus experienced him as their
friend. He said explicitly, "I do not call you
servants, I call you friends." In spite of their
competitions and rivalries, they still found that being
part of his band of brothers was the most exciting and
challenging experience of their lives. Their hearts beat
within them, as the two disciples who met Jesus on the
road to Emmaus said. When they were with Jesus the
apostles found that they were more free to be themselves
than in any other circumstances. In the warmth of the
attractiveness which flowed from Jesus it was not
necessary–and a waste of time–to pretend, to
defend, to hide. Jesus seemed capable of complete
dedication to them, and in their own narrow and
unperceptive fashion, they responded with dedication of
their own. The high points of their years together were their
community meals. Reclining around a table as the light
faded after the labors of the day, they became conscious
of their union with one another and with Jesus and his
work, whatever that work might be. It was especially in such common meals that they were
aware of the gift Jesus had made of himself to them.
Indeed, in their last supper together Jesus went so far
as to perform the task of a slave and wash their feet. In
their Easter experience of the risen Lord they perceived
what these common meals had meant. Not only had Jesus
given himself to them, Jesus was a gift from God; he was
God's self-revelation. In the life of Jesus, and
especially in those interludes of intense friendship at
the common meal, God had given himself to them. In the
evening meals with Jesus, there had been communion
between God and man. Now they understood what Jesus had
meant when at the last of these meals together he had
taken ordinary bread and ordinary wine and had identified
himself with them. Now they realized what Jesus meant
when he instructed them to continue these dinners in
memory of him. The communion between God and man would
continue at their common meals, because even though he
was no longer visible to them Jesus would still be with
them when they came together for the breaking of the
bread and the drinking of the wine. So the common meals
continued and became the central activity of the early
Christian community. When they gathered to break bread
together, they celebrated their communion with one
another, and Jesus was present once again in their midst. Humans have always had rituals in their religion. The
idea was that when they came together to "celebrate
the mysteries" they united themselves with the great
saving events of the past from which their religion came.
In their rituals they found communion with the deity who
had revealed himself in these events, and they continued
them and applied their power to their own lives. So there
was nothing unique about the Christian notion that they
could have communion with God, reenact his saving deeds,
and continue his work through ritual. The difference in the Christian ritual supper was not
its form or its style but the events it remembered and
continued and also the God whose presence was celebrated
and with whom holy communion was kept. The events
remembered and continued were the life, death, and
resurrection of the same Jesus who had once reclined
around the table with them (and in the earliest days, it
was doubtless around the very same table). The God with
whom they communed was the passionately loving, eagerly
forgiving, gracious God who had given himself to them
through his gift of Jesus. The Christians celebrated at
the "Lord's supper" the gift of Jesus who was
now present among them again though in an unseen way.
They rejoiced at the incredibly good news which Jesus had
brought them, that our fleeting hints about the
graciousness which seems to animate the universe were
true beyond our wildest dreams. They commemorated and
reenacted the great events of their lives together with
Jesus, they ratified and reinforced their communion with
one another through Jesus; and then they went forth to
their difficult and dangerous lives, strengthened,
encouraged, and invigorated for the work that was still
to be done. They had taken both physical and spiritual
nourishment from their meal together, and for it all they
gave thanks, explicitly at the end of the meal but also
and more importantly through the fact of the meal itself.
Very early the meal of the Lord's supper became known
also by another name which emphasized its thanksgiving
aspect–the Eucharist (from the Greek work meaning
"thanksgiving"). All of this was natural and unselfconscious. They
continued a custom which had begun with Jesus; they kept
alive a tradition of ritual meals which had come down
from their ancestors and which other strains of the
heterogeneous religious pluralism of Second Temple
Judaism also practiced. They gave thanks, they celebrated
their unity with one another. Elaborate ceremony and even
more elaborate religious reflection and theologizing
would come later. Neither the ceremony nor the theology
is necessarily bad, and both of them are certainly
inevitable developments; but they become pernicious
accretions when they destroy the simple fact that the
Eucharist is a friendship supper eaten together by a
group of human beings who share a common cause and have
received a common gift, the self-disclosure of God in
Jesus. The Eucharist is a common meal eaten by those who
are united through Jesus in love for one another. The
Eucharist is a ritual commitment to the possibility of
unity in friendship among human beings. The secret of keeping the community together after
Jesus had gone would be to continue this generous,
self-giving service which, in Jesus, reflected the love
of the heavenly Father for all his creatures. If God had
served unselfishly, so must they. That is the secret of
sustaining friendship. One keeps an intimate relationship
going by calculating, not ways of getting but ways of
giving. One sustains affection, not by being served but
by serving. One keeps the fires of love burning hot and
bright, not by thinking about oneself but by being
concerned with the good of the other. Paradoxically, one
gets the most for oneself by being the most unselfish.
Only he who gives himself generously to another can
expect any generosity in return. The aim of love is not
to possess the other but to be possessed by the other. This is what the Christian Eucharist was supposed to
be. Having received the gift of God in Jesus, Christians
give themselves to one another. The warmth and generosity
of the Christian ritual meal was supposed to spill out
and transform all the other common meals in which a
Christian participated–particularly those with the
ones he loved the most. The Last Supper was connected (there is some debate
about how) with the Jewish Passover. A purified spring
fertility rite, the Passover celebrated the liberating
and life- giving love of Yahweh for his people in the
past. Holy Communion (or the Mass) is a paschal banquet,
an Easter dinner. It is Easter every day of the year; for
it celebrates, commemorates, and re-presents the Christ
event which the followers of Jesus experienced on the
first day of the week. It is the Easter experience all
over again. The Eucharist, then, is the center of the Christian
life because it is the ritual that contains in one
package all the mysteries we have so far
described–God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, cross and
resurrection, salvation, and grace. If one wants to know
what Christians believe about the nature and purpose of
our existence, one need only consider the Eucharist. Life
is about love–joyous, intense, generous, self-giving
love–which seeks not to be served but to serve
others. God invites us to love by giving himself to us,
and we respond by giving ourselves to him in the loving
service of others. Holy Communion is not merely the
reception of the host, it is a whole style of living. It
is, like the rest of Christianity, not the performance of
certain actions but rather a style of performing all
actions, a style of generous, celebrating joy. The Sunday Holy Communion of Christians may not always
look very joyous or very generous or very loving. But
then Jesus never expected perfection from his followers
(a good thing, because he never got it). He does expect
effort, effort at making the Eucharist a joyous, generous
event, and effort at transferring the joy and generosity
to all our common meals and to all the intimate
relationships which are commemorated, and hopefully
strengthened, in such meals. THEOLOGICAL NOTE
Jesus identified himself with bread and wine.
Christians have never doubted that Jesus was really
present in the Eucharist, although some of the
explanations they gave for the "how" of this
presence have been deemed unacceptable as means of
safeguarding the "fact" of the presence. In the
first thousand years the explanations were mostly drawn
from Platonic philosophy. Jesus was present in the
Eucharist, St. Augustine told us (in words which would
have doubtless got him into trouble in a later age if
people were not careful to grasp his meaning properly) per modum symboli–in
the manner of a symbol. He meant, of course, that Jesus
was present in the Eucharist the way a platonic
"idea" was present in a concrete particular. In
a later and more Aristotelian era, the word
"transubstantiation" (change of substance) was
used to convey the same or a similar idea. At the Council
of Trent the word "transubstantiation" was used
to defend the real presence of Jesus against some of the
reformers who seemed not to sufficiently safeguard the
fact of that reality to the Council fathers. (Whether
they misunderstood what the reformers were about is
another matter, and is not appropriate for this book.)
However, the Council certainly did not intend to define
the Aristotelian philosophy or physics on which the word
was based. Contemporary theologians are struggling for a
new set of philosophical terms which can explain the
"how" of the real presence in words which our
own era can grasp. Their efforts have not yet been so
successful as to permit us to include them in these short
notes. However, it would be a mistake for a Christian to
become so obsessed with the "how" of the real
presence as to forget about the
"fact"–especially the challenging
implications and demands of that fact–and to ignore
in his own life the "why." LITURGICAL NOTE
The purpose of the reforms in the liturgy of the
Second Vatican Council was to make much clearer to the
Christian people the richness of the mystery of the Holy
Eucharist. It had looked much like an obscure (not to say
on occasion a bizarre) performance which they attended as
an on looking audience. Now it is much more clearly a
common commemorative action in which the people
participate as full-fledged partners are. The reforms
have been accepted with approval by some seven-eighths of
the Catholic population; but, it still must be said that
Mass in a large church with a great number of people does
not look much like a common meal at the end of the day
with a tiny band of friends. Some of the
"house" liturgies which have become common,
however, seem to convey this core symbolism much more
adequately. The Eucharist, is always the ritual activity
of the local church, even if on occasion it is
celebrated by people from many different localities. It
is rooted in the ground of a particular place, as every
meal must necessarily be. You do not eat dinner in the
whole world, you eat it in your home and then go forth
into the world. Ingrid H. Shafer, Prof.
of Philosophy, Religion, & Interdisciplinary Studies
at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, asks is the Eucharist a symbol? OF
COURSE, the Eucharist is a symbol! That's what St.
Augustine called it in the 4th century of the Christian
era: Jesus is present in the Eucharist "per modum
symboli"! The priest is not a mere magician and
bread and wine don't physically become flesh and
blood (until they do it in us, after we have partaken of
them in a spirit of communion and love). The problem is
linguistic and has to do with the contemporary popular
understanding of the term symbol. As soon as you say it
is "only" a symbol you give the impression that
a symbol is less than physical reality, when in
fact it is more! The best way to try to recover
some of the Augustinan meaning of the term symbol is to
imagine how it would make you feel if someone were to
come into your house and cut up a picture of someone you
love, a parent, child, spouse. On the one hand, this is
"only" a piece of paper with pigment, and no
more valuable than junk mail you throw out. On the other
hand, quite non-rationally, there is a surplus of meaning
here, something intangible, a presence of the one who is
portrayed and who is evoked in the image. This is the way
Jesus is symbolically, sacramentally present in the
consecrated bread and the wine, only much more so! And
just as the same picture has special meaning for you but
means nothing at all to some stranger, so the Eucharist
has a special significance for believers but is simply
ordinary bread and wine for those outside the Christian
community. A symbol is not a poor substitute for something which
is absent. A symbol discloses and manifests what is PRESENT!
A symbol reveals that which is hidden, concealed. A
symbol allows us to see beneath the surface, beyond the
horizon. A symbol is active, it evokes and--like a
familiar smell that calls forth memories--touches an
entire spectrum of consciousness beyond/beneath the
merely rational. As David Tracy noted, the symbolic or
analogical imagination is a special Catholic gift,
something the intensity of which distinguishes Catholics
from members of other denominations and religions. The Eucharist is not a
sign of the physical Jesus but of the Risen Christ.
It calls us to allow death to give birth to life and
despair to turn into hope. It calls us to be lovers of
others as we are loved. In us, as we metabolize the bread
and the wine and turn human cells into thought and
action, Divinity takes on flesh (as It manifests Itself
throughout the cosmos) in a very special way, and allows
us to take part in God's saving activity. SHAFER’S
EXPLANATION for the Eucharistic mystery is
that it is activated in and through the love and faith of
the recipient and that consequently there may indeed be a
difference in which communion is experienced by the
Catholic or Orthodox Christian, the Protestant Christian,
and the non-Christian. Consecration does not transform
the bread and wine for anyone except the believer. If a
bird eats crumbs of a communion wafer or brings them to
her young, God, I am sure delights in providing
nourishment, but the birds are not taking communion. Eucharist is agape, love, connectedness, laughter,
celebration, remembrance, shared bread and wine, shared
humanity, shared divinity. Eucharist is not exclusive, it
unites and connects, though, as I said before, it will
not be experienced in the same way by all who partake. So, the notion of sharing or communing
is basic to genuine Eucharistic celebration. If one
scans, even quickly, the sequence of actions that make up
my Eucharist, one can see that "communing" is
intrinsic to all of them.
Now let us turn to the question Fr, Frank Andersen put
to us "What did Jesus
believe he was doing at the Last Supper?" The Hebrew people emerged from enslavement in Egypt to
fashion for themselves a vision of what their community
could become. This was their greatness, their genius: out
of suffering they emerge with hope: a hope to which they
gave practical shape. Its specific name is "Covenant" The way the story tells it, God calls to Moses and
invites him to climb the mountain. There, on the
mountain, Moses speaks and listens to God's demands.
Moses then returns to the people waiting on the plains
below and informs them of God's commands. The people
respond and Moses conveys their acceptance back to the
mountaintop God. In such a portrayal, God is imagined almost in human
form and as relating to Moses--and the less worthy people
below-in ways familiar to us from human interaction. In
this use of the story form, God is presented as a person
who comes to the mountain, who calls, who speaks, who
bargains, and who waits to hear the outcome. An introductory piece sets the scene for this great
liturgy of the people: Moses
put all Yahweh's words into writing, and early next
morning he built an altar at the foot of
the mountain, with twelve standing-stones
for the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he
sent certain young Israelites to offer burnt offerings
and sacrifice bullocks to Yahweh as communion
sacrifices. (Exodus 24:4-5) Two comments are immediately apparent. Firstly, Moses is
attempting to communicate with the total nation: the
twelve standing-stones. Secondly,
Moses is attempting to express something important about
what it means to come into communion with God: the
setting is a communion sacrifice. Moses is probing what it meant for the nation to be in
communion with God. Unlike ourselves, for whom Holy
Communion has become an individual
experience, the essence of Hebrew tradition is that
communion with God is something communal.
Their culture (unlike ours) possessed an innate grasp of
what the Greek language would later call liturgy: that
is, a ritual by means of which a community—or, in
their case, a whole nation--could express for itself the
sort of community it wished to be." For this primitive people--and I use the word in its
best sense-the power of this liturgical activity is
majestic. What Moses is attempting to say is far beyond
human words, so he does what all of us do when words fail
our need to communicate at depth and with urgency: he
acts out a symbolism. The genius of all liturgy is
precisely this, that symbols provide a language when
language itself can no longer function. Moses' symbol is graphic: he makes use of blood. The
very sight of blood (or its smell, or even its mention)
immediately conjures up two related but opposing images:
life and death. Deep in the recesses of the human psyche,
blood is about life and death. Moses is trying to say
something of great moment to his people, something about
issues of life and death. To do so, he needs blood (hence
the killing of the bullocks). As the liturgy of Moses continues, let me present the
first component of their celebration. Having killed some
bullocks to collect their blood, what does Moses now do
with it? Firstly: Moses
then took half the blood and put it into basins, and the
other half he sprinkled on the altar. (Exodus 24:6) He collects half of the blood and puts it to the side
for the moment. The other half he sprinkles over
"the altar" that stands in the center of
"the twelve tribes. Not a word is spoken. It is all done in silence. In a
culture close to the earth and still fluent in the
language of symbol, words are not needed. Blood on the altar. Sacred life. God's life. The only
life we associate with altars. God's blood. The onlookers
sense the awesomeness of what Moses is struggling to
articulate. How he focuses their attention, this masterly
communicator! Attuned to the meanings of blood, they are
totally attentive to the dimensions of his powerful
gesture. Moses pauses ... Then,
taking the Book of the Covenant, he read it to the
listening people, who then said, "We shall do
everything that Yahweh has said; we shall obey."
(Exodus 24:7) In the pause, Moses takes up the book that outlines
the relationships of justice they would live: he
proclaims to the listening people this newly crafted
constitution for a society never before seen on earth. He
challenges them with the detail of their commitment,
confronts them verbally with the insights of their own
wisdom, the implications of their own hard-won
compassion: Will they become this sort of nation ? They listen. They take to heart this confronting
proclamation. They rise as one to this dangerous
perspective of living more nobly and in one voice
declare: "We shall do everything that Yahweh has
said; we shall obey. Now the liturgy can continue ... For it is only then, once the people have given their
assent to the vision portrayed in the proclamation of the
covenant, once they have thereby agreed to what its
embodiment will cost them---only then--does Moses
complete the symbolic gesture: he sprinkles the people
with the same blood, the same life,
as was previously spread over the altar, on God. Moses
then took the blood (saved in the basins)
and sprinkled it over the people, saying, "This
is the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has
made with you, entailing: all these stipulutions."
(Exodus 24:8) The symbolism is brilliant: God's life = their life.
But only if they obey the vision, only if
they agree to embody the covenant. It is important to
notice the centrality of God's Word in all this: it is
their commitment to the Word that makes them a community,
so much so that without the Word of God there
is no commonality with God This text is lucid: the life that anoints God (the
altar) is the same life anointing them (the people)--but
only to the degree that they Obey! In case there is the slightest doubt about the
symbolic meaning of "the blood" in this
celebration, Moses exclaims as he casts it over the
people: "This is the blood of the
covenant which Yahweh has made with you, entailing all
these stipulations". Notice that this liturgy speaks not merely of
"communion with God." Clearly implied in
communion with God is the deliberate intention to express
together God's justice: human community is
integral to divine communion. There is no sense here of
individually receiving God's presence. Communion with
God--in Hebrew tradition--is achieved in the shared task
of fashioning just human community. This insight into the meaning of communion with God
may come as a shock to those of us brought up on Holy
Communion as one's private, personal experience of
intimacy with Jesus. But this very individualism is
itself the difficulty. The genius of our Hebrew ancestors
was to recognise that God's face is shown forth in
compassionate community--a tradition inherited and lived
by Jesus. In the covenant liturgy of Exodus, the meaning of
"the blood" is stark and persuasive. Nor can we
dismiss this meaning as something merely of our older
Hebrew roots. For there is one line in the above liturgy
that the Church has lifted out and placed squarely in the
core of every Eucharistic celebration we attend. I refer
to the words of Moses as he sprinkles the people:
"This is the blood of the covenant ... "
(Exodus 24:8) The Church has planted this startling text right into
the account of the Last Supper, putting these same words
onto the lips of Jesus. These words are repeated at every
Eucharist, in the moment that we call the consecration.
They are the exact same words, slightly altered in form
but enormously altered in meaning: "This is the cup
of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting
covenant." The Gospel accounts of the Last Supper,
each in their own way, stress the connection of that
night of Jesus' life with the Passover feast. They are
making a deliberate connection with the covenant of
Exodus. The Church makes the same connection to this Exodus
liturgy in every Eucharistic celebration: by lifting the
crucial image of blood out of that original covenant
ritual to confront every Catholic community with its
meaning. It is this image of blood that we have struggled
to preserve by insisting on describing the Mass as a
sacrifice. We must recover the full meanings of blood;
just as urgently we must find ways to persuade all
participants to participate fully in the eucharistic
gesture by drinking from the cup of the blood of Christ. What primitive meanings of blood lie underneath the
rituals of communion used by Moses in the covenant
liturgy? Blood, the word or the reality, immediately
confronts us with twinned realizations: life and death.
Beyond the power of words and with intensity, the
confrontation blood triggers is profound. When faced with the challenge of the covenant
agreement, the people of Israel listened to the
word of God and courageously gave their assent to
work with one another toward its embodiment: they would
collaborate in the creation of God's just society, Once
they had declared their obedience to that
proclaimed word, Moses could sprinkle them with the
blood. It is no different for us in the eucharistic
liturgy today. When gathered for the Eucharist, the first major
movement of the celebration is when the
people—including the presider and ministers-listen
to the Word of God. The readings depict for us the
demands of God (as did the reading of the commandments at
Sinai). In our case, however, the demands of God were
.lived by a person, Jesus, the new commandment. So
Eucharist begins as we listen to stories of how God's
justice actually took shape in Jesus’
life (the Lectionary readings). In the time of Moses, the
listening community committed itself to shape something
still hoped for; but we (in the time since Jesus) gather
each Sunday to remember a shaping that has already
been demonstrated in his living. Then, having listened to the Word of God (the living
shape that Jesus gave to the covenant), we too dedicate
ourselves to embodying that covenant in our own day and
circumstance, like the Hebrews in the wilderness, we
commit ourselves to the same vision--except that our name
for that vision is Jesus. And the contemporary world is
as urgently in need of communities that embody "the
saving face of God'' as ever were needed in the time of
Moses. We listen to the gospel with attention. We then
commit ourselves as one community to live what we have
heard: we will obey! And immediately, on proclaiming our obedience, we too
can be ''sprinkled with the blood." The life of God
(the blood of Jesus named at the consecration) is now
"sprinkled over" us: and the condition is still
obedience to the Word. However, there is one difference: unlike the Hebrews
at Sinai, we are not merely sprinkled "on the
outside," as it were. For us, the washing with blood
is "on the inside," it is our inner being, our
spirit, that is committed. Like Ezekiel, we name
ourselves as a people of new heart, as communities
distinguished by compassion (cf. Ezekiel 36:26). And so we drink the blood. We take it within
ourselves. In an action of profound inner commitment we
drink into ourselves the Word of God we have just
listened to in the gospel portrayal of Jesus. We drink
the story into ourselves; we drink
ourselves into the Story. As in the original covenant, we thereby commit
ourselves to one another in the noble, collaborative task
of creating on earth a community that embodies the
justice of the gospel. We drink-together-from the one cup
of the blood of the covenant. I watch you drink the
commitment. You watch me drink that same commitment. We
both are washed in the blood; we stand together. In
sharing from the one cup (as in sharing of the one loaf
of bread) something is happening between us. What that
"something" is will only be discovered in the
doing. When we participate in a Eucharist today, it is still
the Passover that we are attempting. We face today--and
just as urgently--the same question that faced the Hebrew
people as they came struggling out of Egypt: How do
human beings pass-over into God? There is no
greater religious quest than this. Just as it is the same question, so it is the same
liberating insight: we pass-over into God when we
consciously agree to become the community
that takes on the task of crafting for ourselves and
presenting to the world God's fidelity and tender mercy.
The drinking of the blood of Christ seals that communal
commitment to live together the pattern of his lifestyle
and to fashion our community on the vision that filled
him. Hence, the two dimensions of Holy
Communion: not only is it our quest to come into
communion with God the Hebrew insight was
that communion with one another is just as
important and lifegiving. The privilege--and the
dangerous challenge---is to live in a holy communion of
God's people. In our truest traditions the act of
approaching Holy Communion is a declaration of one's
total commitment to this struggling, courageous community
and to its consciously proclaimed task of living the
covenant that was Jesus. For us, Jesus is the covenant in
full bloom. There is no other. HE alone is the blood of
God. The Jesus we meet in the Gospels is not a complicated
person. He was born into a Hebrew tradition that he
apparently lived to the fullest. The core of that
tradition was the covenant made at Sinai as they left
Egypt. The God who had proved loyal to them would be
honoured by a corresponding loyalty on their part: Hebrew
social life--the Ten Commandments-would embody God's
mercy and tenderness. In his baptism, Jesus committed himself to that
ennobling vision. He would live the tenderness of God
amongst those very people who were feeling its absence so
deeply. The startling element in his lifestyle was that
he even ate with them, inviting himself into their
companionship. It was the manner of this gracious
companionship that so changed his disciples. Burning with
true justice for those lost, hungry crowds, Jesus would
give nothing less than everything--even if it cost him
his life. He saw himself as given for them, and in living
faithfully that conviction, came to know the full
dimensions of what it meant to live in God. In this lay
his unique self-sacrifice a loving service to his people
that would end on the Cross. For Jesus, to pass over into
God was no mere Sabbath ideal but rather the
down-to-earth realism of a life dangerously focused by
faith in the covenant. To be attentive to this demanding
conjunction of life and faith is the task for us
all--indeed, the point of all religion. It implies an
attentive posture before life, a posture that the
tradition calls obedience. This meal, which anchors the total faith perspective
of Jewish participants, is a complex blend of poetry,
story, ritual, and symbol. For contemporary readers like
ourselves, the Last Supper ritual is even more intricate:
its rituals of bread and wine actually take their meaning
from two distinct stories in the book of Exodus:
For Jewish people, bread breaking and wine sharing
(the common table) symbolized our communion with God
through communion with one another The uniqueness of
Jesus is that he extended that tradition of covenant
living beyond the boundaries of one nation. John's
account of the Last Supper catches that outward
broadening--yet the symbolism is still the same: a
genuine hospitality toward one another (deliberate
community) expresses our communion with Jesus. Unless our
worshipping communities portray such evident hospitality,
we run the real risk of having "nothing in
common" with Jesus. There is simply no other way
"to pass over into God." When we celebrate the Eucharist together, Christ is so
rendered present as to be truly, really and
substantially experienced. Indeed, his presence
has such realism that it is totally involving of our own
lives and provides a context for life so meaningful that
it can only be described as "through him, with him,
and in him." One would not call such a presence
physical, but it is well described as real.
His total reality--and ours--is contained in the bread
and wine. One could say that all those realities that
constitute the person of Jesus are in the Eucharistic
celebration-earthed amongst us forever.
When I am in the presence of the Eucharist, I am immersed
in everything that I have come to know by the name of
Jesus. This is nothing less than a living engagement with
the person of Jesus. What Body and Whose Blood? When our communities now gather for the Eucharist,
what do we imagine is going on when the priest speaks the
words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper (the words of
Consecration)? In whose place is the priest standing as
he speaks those crucial words over bread, then over wine?
Is the priest simply representing Jesus, so that when the
priest speaks those words--"This is my body ... This
is the cup of my blood"--it is Jesus again speaking
them in front of us? Are we, as a congregation, merely
watching Jesus offering himself again--through the
priest-to the Father as he once did on that night of the
supper? Or are we involved? Do we participate? The whole urgency of the renewal of liturgy undertaken
by Vatican II was for the congregation to participate in
what was happening. What the council meant by that was
more than finding ways for some of the congregation to
read, for others to distribute the Eucharist, to be
ushers, musicians, or commentators. The vision of the
council was that the whole congregation would come to
participate in the crucial meaning of what the Eucharist
is really all about. The congregation-all who are
assembled-are intimately involved in what is occurring at
the Consecration: so it is our gesture, not simply the
gesture of Jesus. It becomes clear then how the priest who presides is
speaking on behalf of all who are present and gathered.
When the presider speaks, it is the voice and speaking of
the whole assembly. These spoken words over the bread and
wine are the words of the people over the bread and wine:
the people who have been baptized into the mind and
consciousness of Christ. These are our
words: This is my body
which will be given up for you. This is the cup of my
blood ... It will be shed for you
and for all ... Several important issues must be addressed here. In
the Eucharist it is our body that is given, our blood
that will be poured out. In his memory we offer ourselves
as we become part of what he did and who he
is. Today, there is no one else to offer to God if not
ourselves: for Jesus of Nazareth is not here on Sunday,
we are. He made his offering once and for all. Our
privilege is to now make our own offering,
made in the same spirit, the same generosity, using the
very same words over the very same symbols of bread and
wine. The Eucharist is about ourselves and not, in a
sense, about Jesus. We dare to make the offering through
him, with him and in him, but the person offered today is
ourselves. God has invested us with the reality of Jesus;
this is our ennoblement and our calling. To whom are we
speaking these words of Jesus? In our mind's eye, toward
whom are we Looking as we say, "My body is given for
you"? To whose lives are we committing ourselves as
we dare to say, "My blood will be shed for you and
for all"? To whom is the congregation speaking? With
whom is the assembly "making covenant"? What is
the point of it all? With what immense mystery are we
here involved? SUMMARY In the above extracts from different documents, I have
tried to express what I understand of the great mystery
of the Eucharist. But words can never express the
extraordinary, deep, overwhelming experience I find my
Sunday Eucharistic experience to be. When I first moved to Airlie Beach, and became a
member of St. Thomas’s Church, I was struck by two
aspects of Church I hadn’t really experienced
before:
As I have said earlier Fr. Frank Andersen’s
lectures caused a Copernican revolution in me, with
regard to the way I viewed Eucharist. I still held the
theology of real presence but I now saw that the
Eucharist was a real `mystery,’ and was able to
absorb a great many other `symbolic’ aspects. Now at the consecration when the priest says
"this is my body" I offer up my body, in
solidarity with those present, for together we form the
presence of Jesus Christ, here on earth, here and now.
When I look upon the host I have three convictions:
So, when the priest raises the host, all of this
passes through my mind! When the priest raises the cup, the actions of the
people in Sinai flash through my mind. The blood
represents life, my inmost being, and I intend, with
God’s help, to dedicate my whole inner being to
living as Jesus lived. Yes Lord, I will live this vision
you have presented! Having offered myself I am then privileged as a member
of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, to be able to go out
and live, in a practical and real manner, the covenant I
have just made. |