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| The Eucharist, source of mission and proclamation in the Church |
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2005-07-16- Birmingham, Eucharistic Congress |
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“BEHOLD THE LAMB”
I was asked to speak on “the Eucharist as the source of communion and mission in the Church”. At first I had chosen to develop the theme of communion but as I went deeper into the matter the theme of mission imposed itself to my attention. With full approval of the organising committee this is therefore what I am going to speak about: “The Eucharist, source of mission and proclamation in the Church”.
1. What we must proclaim
The Eucharist is not the source of the Church’s proclamation and mission in the sense that it tells us how we are to proclaim the message: what methods and strategies, what language to use (pastoral theology is meant to deal with all this); it is the source of the proclamation in the sense that it reminds us, each day, of what we are to proclaim. And it does this, not discursively, with words, as Scripture, theology or the Catechism of the Church do, but sacramentally, through efficacious signs that make it possible for us to experience and to receive that which we are to proclaim.
When it comes to proclaiming the faith, the same maxim holds true which the ancients applied to oratorical skills: “Rem tene, verba sequentur” (Cato), in other words: make sure that you grasp in yourself the thing you want to communicate to others; the words with which to do so will follow easily. The Eucharist makes it possible for us to hold within us “the thing” we are to proclaim, in fact, to hold the very author of the message and its content also: Jesus Christ.
If Christian preaching, as Kierkegaard rightly said, is a communication of life rather than of doctrine, of reality even more than of truth, then it is easy to understand how important the celebration of the Eucharist is to the Christian proclamation, because here, in each celebration, one receives the full reality of faith.
The Eucharistic celebration is therefore a mission project in the sense that it reminds us what we are to proclaim, and makes the content of the message sacramentally present. There is no need for us to arbitrarily extract and sum up that content ourselves; the liturgy itself does this at the most solemn moment of the celebration, in the acclamation: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”. This translates (perhaps less effectively than the original) the formula of the Latin missal: “Mortem tuam annuntiamus, Domine, et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias”: We proclaim your death, Lord, we celebrate your resurrection and we wait for your coming”.
What I propose to attempt in this talk is to show how the celebration of the Eucharist can, not only theoretically but also in practice, become a privileged opportunity to rethink the essential contents of the faith and put them forward in such a way that they become meaningful for the people of our day.
2. We proclaim your death
The Eucharist as “memorial of the Lord’s death” is the characteristic feature of the Pauline tradition: “Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord’s death ” (1 Cor 11, 26) and “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5, 7).
The death of Christ is proclaimed in the Eucharist, not only in the words of institution (“Qui pridie quam pateretur, The day before He suffered…”), but also, in line with the nature of the sacraments, in the language of signs. The sign, in this case, is the separate presence on the altar of the body and blood of Christ, and the importance attached to the blood.
But this is precisely where the difficulty arises for people today. Why this “celebration” of death? Why the blood? Are we to think that the sacrifice of Christ -- and, therefore, the Eucharist that renews it sacramentally – only confirms the affirmation that “violence is the heart, the secret soul of the sacred”? The tragic events of last week in London make this question all the more burning. Terrible to say, this blood was shed in the name of God and your Prime Minister rightly saw in the terrorist attack an expression of the cult of death.
Today we are able to shed a new and liberating light on the Eucharist, by following the very same path that led the French thinker René Girard to move from the assertion that violence is intrinsic to the sacred, to the conviction that Christ’s paschal mystery has unmasked the alliance between violence and the sacred, and has broken it for ever.
Freud had explained the origin of religion in terms of the killing of the primordial father by his sons, who then sublimate the slain one, making him Father-God. Girard also thinks that at the origin of the sacred there is violence and blood, but the explanation he gives is very different. It is not just a question of the desire to have access to the mother and the women of the clan, which the father prevents, but of human desire in general. This is, by its very nature, mimetic; in other words, it imitates another’s desire. The human being discovers what is desirable by looking at what others desire. The classic example is a child who is determined to have a toy only because another child is interested in it, even if he has many others at his disposal, or a man loving a woman because someone else loves her.
Rivalry and violence are born from the tendency to desire the same objects (which can be things or persons, but also recognition or predominance). From this, Hobbes derived the “war of all against all” that characterizes human nature and from which we are saved, he says, by jointly agreeing (social contract theory) to establish a higher power, which is the State (“Leviathan”), capable of controlling violence by enforcing the law.
For Girard, the crisis of violence is resolved in another way: by transforming the aggression of all against all into “the aggression of all against one”-- the well-known mechanism of the scapegoat. One element -- usually the weakest and most vulnerable -- is chosen and singled out in times of crisis as responsible for the evil that afflicts the community. Enemies are strangely reconciled in their common aggression toward the victim. The latter can be a member of the community or an external enemy. Typical is the case of schoolchildren where rivals become friends, singling out someone weak or “different” against whom to launch out.
Here, too, Girard continues, as in the case of the Freudian slaying of the father, the victim -- the scapegoat -- is sublimated and elevated to a divine state. Myth, worship, religion, and the sacred are born. It was at this point of his research that Girard, in 1972, enunciated the thesis: “Violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred.”
But before that date an illness had driven the scholar to approach Christianity once more and to go back to the Bible. At Easter 1959 he declared himself a believer and returned to the Church after 26 years of estrangement. This allowed him to go beyond merely analyzing the mechanism of violence and to point to a way out.
From his reading of the Old Testament, especially the songs of the Servant of Yahweh, Girard had already discovered the existence of a different kind of religion: a religion whose God is not an accomplice of violence, but who is on the side of the victim. But, above all, it is the historical fact of the death and resurrection of Christ that is the new element, and reveals “the things hidden since the foundation of the world.”
By his doctrine and life, Jesus exposed and destroyed the mechanism of the scapegoat that canonizes violence, making himself, the innocent one, the victim of all violence. Emblematic is the fact that His death brought together “Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel” (Acts 4, 27); the one-time enemies became friends (Lk 23,12), as always happens in a crisis where a scapegoat is involved.
Christ defeated violence not by opposing it with greater violence, but by undergoing it and exposing all its injustice and uselessness. (If nothing else, Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of Christ” has had the merit of reminding us of the extremes of violence that were inflicted on Jesus). Christ inaugurated a new kind of victory, which St. Augustine summarized in three words: “Victor quia victima”: victor because victim.
The process that leads to the birth of religion is reversed; in Christ, it is God who makes himself a victim, and not the victim who is subsequently elevated to divine dignity. Christ did not come with another’s blood, but with his own. He did not lay his own sins on others’ backs – men or animals; he laid the sins of others on his own back: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pt 2, 24).
These analysis Girard has made from a strictly anthropological point of view can be of great help in presenting the mystery of redemption in a way that responds to modern sensitivities. They need however to be completed from a theological point of view. The most important “integration” refers to the type of solution that Christ gives to the problem of violence and of evil in general. Salvation does not come only from having revealed the unconscious mechanism that generates violence; in other words, it is not of a mere psychological and cognitive (gnostic!) nature, but also mystical. There is “something more” in Christ’s death, which the Bible and theology express with the terms “expiation” and “vicarious substitution.” In Jesus’ death, evil and violence are not only denounced, but also destroyed. “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus, come in glory”, as we say in an alternative acclamation after the consecration.
Can one still continue to speak of sacrifice, in reference to the death of Christ and consequently the Mass? For a long time Girard refuted this concept, considering it too marked by the idea of violence, but he eventually admitted the possibility, on condition of seeing Christ’s death as an entirely new kind of sacrifice, and of seeing in this change of meaning “the central event in the religious history of humanity.”
We know what caused the notion of sacrifice to be applied so forcefully to the death of Christ, without the due distinctions being made, just as we are familiar with the disturbing question (still awaiting a satisfactory answer): “To whom was the price of the ransom paid?” All this has given rise to the idea of the “implacable” Father, and, consequently, the instinctive rejection by many of a Father-God, to the point of proclaiming, with a sigh of relief, “God is dead.”
Looking at it more deeply, we see that the Father does not appear so much as the one who receives the ransom, as the one who pays it. In fact, he pays the highest price of all, because he has given his only Son. “How far beyond all reckoning your loving-kindness towards us”, exclaims the liturgy in the Easter vigil addressing the Father, “to ransom the slave, you gave up your Son!”. To say that the Father “did not spare his own Son” (Rom 8,32), is the same as saying that “he has not spared himself.”
The modern debate on violence and the sacred thus helps us to take in a new dimension of the Eucharist. Thanks to it, God’s absolute “no” to violence, delivered on the cross, is kept alive through the centuries. The Eucharist is the sacrament of non-violence! At the same time, it appears to us, positively, as God’s “yes” to innocent victims, the place where every day the blood that is spilt on earth is united to that of Christ which cries out to God “with a voice more eloquent than that of Abel” (Heb 12, 24). From this one understands also what is removed from the Mass (and the world!), if this dramatic character, expressed in the catholic theology with the word “sacrifice”, is taken away from them.
The symbol that best sums up this vision of the sacrifice of Christ is that of the Lamb of God. The New Testament prefers it to “scapegoat” precisely because it expresses perfectly the meekness of the victim. A lamb can only receive evil, it can never inflict it.
The cry “Behold the Lamb!”, which resounds at every Mass and has been chosen as the title of this Congress, is therefore an invitation addressed to all believers in Christ not to let themselves be contaminated by the violence of our world, but to respond to it with the meekness and the strength of love. It is a constant reminder of the words of Jesus: “Look, I am sending you out like lambs among wolves” (Mt 10,16).
3. Christ is risen!
These modern analyses can help us to better understand the meaning of Christ’s death, but of themselves they are insufficient to remove the repugnance that human beings feel in the face of death and violence. One thing alone can do this: the resurrection of Christ. And it is precisely this that the liturgy makes us proclaim, in a single breath, together with his death: “We proclaim your death, Lord, we celebrate your resurrection”.
In the Eucharist the resurrection of Christ is not only proclaimed with words, it is also made present. In the Mass Jesus is at once the victim and the High Priest and if as victim he renders present his death, as the High Priest he renders present his resurrection. In fact, the one who speaks and says: “Take, this is my body,” cannot be dead, but a living person, the risen Jesus.
There is a profound similarity between that which occurred in the resurrection and that which occurs in the Eucharist: there, the Father, through his Spirit, gave life to Christ’s body lying in the sepulchre; here, with the same Spirit, he gives life to the bread and transforms it into his Son’s body.
The resurrection of Christ is for the spiritual universe what the Big bang, according to a recent theory, was for the physical cosmos: a cataclysmic explosion of energy starting the whole movement of expansion of the universe that is still going on after billions of years. In fact, everything that exists and moves in the Church Cthe sacraments, doctrine, institutions draws its strength from Christ's resurrection. It is the new creation as the liturgy inculcates by choosing the story of creation, in Genesis 1, as the first reading for the Easter vigil. It is the new Afiat lux! ,@ let there be light!, said by God.
Peter's first Letter associates especially the resurrection with hope telling us that by the great mercy of God the Father Awe have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:3).
The Church is born of hope. It was hope in its nascent state that made them reunite again and joyfully cry out to one another: AHe has risen, he is alive, we have seen him!It was hope that made the disconsolate disciples of Emmaus retrace their steps back to Jerusalem. It is necessary to rekindle hope today if we want to give a new impetus to faith and make it able to conquer the world again.
A miracle takes place each time a seed of hope blossoms in a person's heart; everything seems different even if nothing has actually changed. Even a local Church, a parish, a religious order revives and begins to attract new vocations if hope blossoms in them again. There is no form of propaganda that can do what hope manages to do. It is hope that attracts the young. To give hope to someone is the most beautiful gift that can be offered. Just as once the faithful passed the holy water from hand to hand as they were leaving church, so Christians must pass divine hope from hand to hand, from father to son.
The ultimate object of Christian hope is that AHe who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also@ (2 Cor 4:14). But there are two different resurrections: there is resurrection of the body and a resurrection of the heart. The resurrection of the body will take place on the Alast day, that of the heart must take place everyday.
Sunday Mass is a unique occasion to experience this kind of resurrection. If every Mass proclaims the Lord’s death (1 Cor 11, 26), because of the day of the week on which it is celebrated and the atmosphere that reigns there, Sunday Mass should proclaim above all the Lord’s resurrection.
The rediscovery of the paschal character of Sunday was prepared by the liturgical movement, recommended in Vatican Council II’s Constitution on the liturgy, and found its most mature expression in John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Dies Domini, of May 31, 1998. To implement this renewed vision of Sunday was one of the main concerns of John Paul II in proclaiming this year of the Eucharist. So far, something has been done, but it is still too little.
No Christian should return home from Sunday Mass without feeling that he or she has been “born anew to a living hope” through forgiveness of his or her sins and assurance of God’s grace. Little is needed to obtain this and to place the whole Sunday celebration under the paschal sign of the resurrection: a few, vibrant words at the moment of the initial greeting, the choice of an appropriate formula of final dismissal, such as “May the joy of the Lord be our strength: go in peace,” or: “Go and bring to all the joy of the risen Lord.”
4. Christ will come again
“Christ will come again!”. This exclamation expresses the eschatological dimension which has accompanied the Eucharist from its beginning: “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes” (1 Cor 11. 26).
Christian eschatology has developed two points of view: that of the “consequent” eschatology of the synoptics and of St. Paul, which places the fulfilment in the future, at the second coming of Christ, and strongly stresses the dimension of expectancy and hope, and that of the “realized” eschatology of St. John, who places the essential fulfilment in the past, in the coming of Christ in the Incarnation, and sees the experience of eternal life already initiated in.
The Eucharist reflects both these perspectives. It reflects the “consequent” eschatology, in as much as it makes us live “in the expectation of his coming,” it impels us to constantly look forward and to perceive ourselves as “wayfarers” in this world --- pilgrims journeying toward the homeland. It reflects the “realized” eschatology, in as much as it allows us to taste, already now, the first fruits of eternal life; it is an open window through which eternity enters into time and creatures begin their “return to God.”
Let us consider the Eucharist under this last aspect which has more practical consequences for our life on earth. The whole of human activity and creation itself return to God, thanks to the Eucharist. In the bread and wine, “fruits of the earth and work of human hands,” is the material itself – sun, earth, water –, which is presented to God on the altar and reaches its final end of proclaiming the Creator’s glory. In the process that leads from the seed to the bread and from the grapevine to the wine in the chalice, not only agriculture but also industry, trade, transport and a myriad other human activities intervene.
In this way the Eucharist extends its action to the whole cosmos. Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “When He (Christ) says through the priest ‘This is my body,’ his words go well beyond the piece of bread over which they are pronounced: they effect the birth of the whole Mystical Body. Beyond the transubstantiated Host, the priestly action extends to the cosmos itself.” Every Eucharist is a “Mass on the world.”
This vision is not completely new in Christianity. St. Irenaeus in the II century had already affirmed that the Eucharist, celebrated with bread and wine, elements of this world, attests to the goodness of creation and in some way sanctifies it. John Paul II himself reflects this vision when he writes, in an autobiographical vein in Ecclesia de Eucharistia:
“I have been able to celebrate Holy Mass in chapels built along mountain paths, on lakeshores and seacoasts; I have celebrated it on altars built in stadiums and in city squares... This varied scenario of celebrations of the Eucharist has given me a powerful experience of its universal and, so to speak, cosmic character. Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation.”
The Eucharist therefore recapitulates and unifies everything. It reconciles matter and spirit, nature and grace, the sacred and the profane. It is the most sacred and, at the same time, the most secular of the sacraments. It is not only the sacrament of believers, but of all. It is the true “canticle of creatures.”
By the very fact that the Eucharist reminds us where we are going, what our final glorious destiny is, and enables us in some sense a “foretaste” of that future glory, it is the source where a Christian’s hope and joy are daily renewed. Jesus indicated this festive and joyous meaning of the Eucharist in the sign of wine.
Why did Jesus hide his blood in the sign of wine? Was it just the affinity of the colour? What does wine represent to people? “Wine represents the poetry alongside the prose ... It is like dancing compared with walking. It is playing compared with working” . Wine does not represent so much what is useful, like bread, but what is delightful. In the desert Jesus multiplied the loaves for the people’s need, but at Cana he multiplied the wine for the guests’ delight. Scripture says that “wine gladdens the heart of man and bread strengthens man’s heart” (Psalm 104, 15).
If Jesus had chosen bread and water for the Eucharist, he would have indicated only the sanctification of suffering (“bread and water” are in fact synonymous with fasting, austerity and penance). By choosing bread and wine, he wished to indicate also the sanctification of joy.
But how is it possible that the same sign represents suffering and sacrifice in the blood, and celebratory joy in the wine? Is this not a paradox? No, not if we think of the sacrifice as borne out of love, as was that of Christ. The wine recalls the mysterious relationship that exists, in human experience, between love and sacrifice. How many sacrifices are entailed, for young married couples, by the arrival of the first child, but also what joy! The Eucharistic wine symbolizes the joy of sacrifice!
We find it very natural to turn to God in sorrow. In fact, many of us do not turn to God except when we experience misfortune and realize our need of him. But joys, on the contrary, we prefer to experience on our own, hidden, almost without God knowing. And yet, how wonderful it would be if we also learned to live the joys of life eucharistically, namely, with gratitude to God. God’s presence and gaze do not diminish our honest joys; on the contrary, they enlarge them. With God, little joys become an incentive to aspire to eternal happiness when, as the last stanza of the hymn Adoro te devote says, “we shall be blest in the vision of his glory” (“visu sim beatus tuae gloriae”).
I do not know if with my reflections I have been faithful to the theme of my talk: “The Eucharist, source of mission and proclamation in the Church”. I hope to have at least suggested some new reasons why, when the celebrant exclaims: “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith!”, we should answer with renewed enthusiasm and conviction: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”. |
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