E is for Eucharist, S is for sacrifice, M is for meal (Main Forum)

by PeterR , Wednesday, May 20, 2009, 15:00 (1491 days ago) @ Marvemlb
edited by unknown, Wednesday, May 20, 2009, 15:30

Greetings, Marvemlb,

I suspect that long time members of this community are waiting for me to state my mantra: Eucharist is a verb, not a noun.

In Vatican II's "The Contitution on the Sacred Liturgy", we read:

" 7. ... From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree."

A further introductory point: at the Synod of the Bishops on Eucharist a few years ago, Pope Benedict XVI intervened in the episcopal discussions to teach the bishops that there is no conflict betwween the Eucharist as sacrifice and the Eucharist as meal.

Some bishops would appear not to have listened.

I wish to consider the matters I have raised above in the context of sacrifice. As I see it, sacrifice is derived from "sacrum facere" which means "to make holy". The question then becomes: how do we make holy our lives?

St Paul taught the Corinthians:

"Whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do at all, do it for the glory of God. Never do anything offensive to anyone - to Jews or Greeks or to the Church of God; just as I try to be helpful to everyone at all times, not anxious for my own advantage but for the advantage of everybody else, so that they may be saved. Take me for your model as I take Christ." (1 Cor. 10:31-32)

I describe what Paul advocates as living the Death and Resurrection of Christ in every moment of our lives: dying to sin, dying to self to rise and live for others which is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Let me elaborate:

Above, under the heading "homophobic bullying", Leo Jack has raised the question of homosexuality.

Consider human relationships in terms of living the Death and Resurrectionof Christ.

I approach a homosexual relationhip as I approach everything else: start from the human experience.

In my experience, the majority of a given population is heterosexual: a significant minority is homosexual.

That's the way they are born; that's normal.

One's sexuality is involved in all one's relationships: I am male in relationship to every other person; one's genital expression is reserved for an intimate relationship.

Starting from my experience again, I see a human being as a
person-in-relation-to-others. It is in and through their relationships that people become who they are.This is well described in a poster that used to be displayed frequently:

If A Child Lives With. . .
by Dorothy Law Nolte

If a child lives with criticism. . . . . . . .he learns to condemn.

If a child lives with hostility. . . . . . . . he learns to fight.

If a child lives with fear. . . . . . . .he learns to be apprehensive.

If a child lives with jealousy. . . . . . . .he learns to feel guilt.

If a child lives with tolerance. . . . . . . .he learns to be patient.

If a child lives with encouragement . . . . . . . .he learns to be confident.

If a child lives with praise. . . . . . . .he learns to be appreciative.

If a child lives with acceptance. . . . . . . .he learns to love.

If a child lives with approval. . . . . . . .he learns to like himself.

If a child lives with recognition . . . . . . . .he learns that it is good to have a goal.

If a child lives with honesty. . . . . . . .he learns what truth is.

If a child lives with fairness. . . . . . . .he learns justice.

If a child lives with security. . . . . . . .he learns to trust in himself and others .

If a child lives with friendliness. . . . . . . .he learns the world is a nice place in which to live.

I think that statement is true for people throughout their lives.

Again, my experience is that the sacred dwells in the secular: God is present and is experienced by each individual in this life-long process of becoming.

If my experience includes my experience of faith, I progress in my thinking from:

A human being is a person-in-relation-to-others,
to
A human being is a person-in-a-death-resurrection-relationship-to- others.

In faith, dying to self to live for others is a always a lived experience of living of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

The sacred is present in the secular: God is present in his creation which includes me and every other human being. I believe in the Incarnation: God in a human - in every human. I believe in the redemption which is experienced by humans in and through our sharing the quality of life revealed in Death and Resurrection by Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

Having been created by God as a heterosexual male, I live out the death to self and new life in Christ in my intimate relationship with my wife for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health until death do us part. Some heterosexual relationships last like that.

My failure to do so (by selfishness or self-centredness) I call sin. What we do in bed I don't call sin unless I were to be selfish and unloving. No fear of that these days: bed is for sleeping.

A homosexual person will live out his/her intimate relationship with one of the same sex. S/he lives out the death to self and new life in Christ in her/his intimate relationship with her/his partner for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health until death do them part. Some homosexual relationships last like that.

A homosexual person's failure to live for the other (by selfishness or self-centredness) I call sin. What they do in bed I don't call sin unless it were to be selfish and unloving.

Sexuality is a gift of creation from the Creator by which an existential "I" and an existential "Thou" experience being an existential "We" as they are lost in the intimacy of sexual love: The celebration of their "We-ness" sexually both expresses and deepens their love and their living of the Death and Resurrection of Christ in their daily living. It is this dimension of living they celebrate in Eucharist when the "I" and the "Thou" and the "We" become one with Christ in the additional "We-ness" through "Him", with "Him" and in "Him" to the glory of the Father "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

That's what I have learnt from reflecting on experience, experience of relationships. Some old sage, probably with a beard, who talked about body and a soul and who had all the answers because natural law said this bit fits into that bit and, on odd occasions, makes a new being, told me otherwise. But I don't get what he's talking about. That sounds like ideals - ideals built from ideas, not experience. Genitalia don't think: they experiences.

Finally, changing tack. Every person who is different from the majority has to put up with being different until society accepts the difference. Think of the censures of the petty in the catholic community in the past: Catholics who married christian non-catholics; the first women not to cover their heads in church; people who didn't go to mass on Sunday (lovely expression "go to Mass" - that's why they don't go any more); the drunkard; the divorced; the divorced and remarried, even with an annulment; Notre Dame's President inviting the US President to speak at that Uni. "Judge not and you shall not be judged" - that's an ideal which hasn't been lived up to in my experience. I suspect those people whom God created to be homosexual will have to have the courage to be themselves in public and ignore the petty.

Let me take another example - work.

I guess I am not the only old person here who is fed up with so many people still in the work force who don't take pains with their work. I like the expression "taking pains" for it immediately brings up the concept of redemption through Christ's sacrifice (making holy) in his Death and Resurrection.

How many of us, for example, have been less than satisfied with the car mechanic who charged us for the service of a car when all he did was change the oil and kick the tyres.

For the person for whom the Death and Resurrection of Christ are the dynamic in his/her living, the work is done in the spirit of his/her constantly having to die to laziness and selfishness (to take pains) to excess profit ... to live for the persons served through the work done. Near enough is not good enough for work done out of love for the person we serve.

For a Christian, Death and Resurrection are a quality of human life when that life is lived, inspired by the Holy Spirit to incorcorate the Death and Resurrection constituent:

"... always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too, may always be seen in our body. Indeed, while we are still alive, we are consigned to our death every day, for the sake of Jesus, so that in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus, too, may be openly shown." (2 Cor.10-11)

Eucharist is a celebration of life when that every day life is filled with the quality of the Death to sin and Resurrection in Christ. Life is a verb: it is about living and, for a Christian, living the whole of life informed by the Death and Resurrection of Christ. (Great word: "informed".)

When we celebrate the Eucharist we have something to offer - ourselves. At each Eucharist, hopefuly we have grown since the last Eucharist: we have new life to offer, new growth from living the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

"I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me." (Gal 2:20ff)

Hence, we are taught in Vatican II's "Sacred Constituion on the liturgy":

"They (the laity) should be instructed by God's word, and be nourished at the table of the Lord's body; they should give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves; through Christ the Mediator, they should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and with each other, so that finally God may be all in all." (No. 48)

How is this expressed and celebrated at the Eucharist?

We take gifts to offer to God, bread and wine, which are symbols. A symbol is something which points to and makes present something other than itself. The prayers over the gifts remind us that everything we have, we have from God: "fruits of the earth", but also we have worked with those gifts - "the work of human hands" - to make them an offering of something of ourselves. Recall what I wrote above about our work embodying our living of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. The bread and wine - symbols - point to and make present something other than themselves. viz., us and our living of our life lived in Christ working with the Gifts of God for which we are grateful.

Notice that we are dealing with verbs; work, how we work, how we live, how we love ...

Then comes the Eucharistic prayer. I can't discuss all of it. However, we are reminded that this is a memorial meal. A memorial in scripture is bringing up to the present the saving power of a past event. At the Last Supper, Jesus of Nazareth first celebrated the Paschal Meal of the Old Testament to unite Himself with the saving power of the Passover from Egypt to the Promised Land of the Israelite people; not just the journey, but all the human/divine growth of the people of Israel in union with God. He then celebrated our Passover Meal (or Paschal Meal) in which he incorporated the saving power of His Death and Resurrection which was to follow. Eucharist is a memorial meal which embodies action (verbs). It is a symbolic meal: it both contains and points to something else the Sacrifice ("sacrum facere" ) of the Death and Resurrection of Christ, Head and members.

In the Eucharist, the saving power of Christ's Death and Resurrection are made present to us in this meal which we eat. What is the food for this meal? It is the bread and wine which - as we saw - are symbols of ourselves, of our living the Death and Resurrection at work, in bed, in work and in every moment of our lives.

In the consecration these symbols are transymbolised: they become symbols also of the Dead and Risen Christ. They point to and make present something other than themselves. Feel the union with Christ so that at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer we shout together: Through Him, with Him, in Him, in union with the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.

And we roar our excitement in the great Amen: In union with Christ, dead and risen, we want to glorify God the Father.

How can we do more to be one with Christ? Eat him: he is present in the symbols bread and wine. Symbols point to and make present something other than themselves.

The bread and wine have changed. We who eat and drink the bread and wine are changed by growth in the Christ life: we are privileged to live by living the Death to sin and Risen life of Christ as we return to our normal living situation.

"Life to me is Christ" (Phil 1:21)

To separate communion from the rest of the Eucharistic celebration turns it into a paltry noun instead of its being the peak experience of our living, striving, bursting with life - life in Christ. Living is a verb. Eucharist is a verb. Communion is an inseparable part of that verb."

No nouns, please, we're Catholic.

As always, IMHO.

Peter