Finding "communion with God" in the mountains…

Usually I dedicate Friday to a study of and a writing for Catholica Australia; I fell behind as I motored through the Sierra Nevada Mountains with our house guests from Coleraine, North Ireland, Sean and Patricia O'Conaill. Sierra means high and Neva means snow; we enjoyed a plentiful share of the sacramental footprints of the Creator, ice age carved massive granite buttes and beautiful vistas such as jewelled Emerald Bay, an adjunct of Lake Tahoe, along with the grandeur of Yosemite. We experienced an October snow storm hunkering down in our warm Donner Summit chalet.

What is the meaning in "this is the cup of my blood"?

I sense a communion with God when I am in the mountains. We ended our tour with a eucharistic reunion of six members of our original 1980's Community of Jesus Our Brother — adults with whom we have not had a formal Eucharist in ten years. Alice made home made pizza for our breaking of the bread. Straightaway (learned from my Irish visitors) I will attempt explanation of different usage of the complex words TAKE THIS CUP; on my chalice are the words Hic est calix sanquinis mei (this is the cup of my blood). "this" and "cup" appear to have different usage between the Fathers of the Church (circa late 200's) and the Roman Liturgy of the 5th/6th century. Our Latin uses "hic" in the Eucharistic canon, giving the notion that the cup (calix) is literally the very one Jesus used and we are to drink its content (blood), whereas more ancient texts use "hunc preclarum calicem" (this precious chalice), with an intended figurative sense (think MacBeth and "a poisoned chalice", referring to a murder plot).

Various meanings in the key words of Jesus…

The ambiguity of English cup, Latin calix, and Greek "motnpiov" is revealed in each language in expressions meaning "drink from a cup" and "drink a cup" with emphasis in all cases on the content, not an actual cup; there can be interpretations of the "cup of Jesus' suffering", the "cup of salvation", an "overflowing cup of joy". Hunc praeclarum is a reference to LXX Psalm (a cry of distress), missing in Ambrose's Eucharistic canon (died 397 ce) and probably the first Roman use found in Gaul around the 5th century. Here I will offer no more as I personally peruse this study found in a recent Worship magazine. I had no seminary course on the history or theology of the Eucharist, as well as enduring miserable training in scripture. I now see there are various interpretations of the key words of Jesus and what do I do about this discovery?

I have long puzzled over a Jew commanding his followers literally to drink his blood; I can see now after 53 years of ministry that sharing the peoples' suffering might be an appropriate understanding; as a Jesus follower I have drunk deeply of his cup. As I watched Eucharistic ministers offer cup and wafer last Sunday I thought of the innocence and ignorance of the laity who less than 40 years ago would dare not think they would be drinking Jesus' blood. In 1960 I was called back to the hospital to remove a host that I had put into the mouth of an aged man, his false teeth having fallen and the soggy host clinging to his upper roof; 1950's seminary counsel warned that laity could never touch the host with the one exception that it fell at the communion rail into cleavage.

Ritual — a meaningful method of transferring tradition…

By the way the word California may come from the words calix = cup and fornia = hot, the entire State being a hot container, literally a dry desert. (The 1700's Mission system turned it lush and green … come visit us and share a cup of Starbuck's latte). Ritual is a meaningful method of transferring tradition; the Council of Trent (circa 1542) paired down 140 sacraments of all shapes and form to the major seven we know today, we still having many sacramentals (little sacraments, holy water, medals, ashes, crucifixes etc.). Trent made a horrible mistake in saying each of the seven were instituted by Christ, such as bypassing the community of Apostle James as the source of Anointing the Sick and using the wedding of Cana (a story of the hoped for unity of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah) as the beginning of the sacrament (outward sign) of marriage. (in reality the institutional church usually backed the Roman practice of CONSORTIUM for ordinary people up until the Industrial Revolution. Consortium is an agreement between a man and the father of a woman for the use of her body to bear children. Public marriage was for the privileged, including clergy, politicos, and royal blood, especially to prove legitimacy in ownership and succession).

In reference to eucharist/Eucharist I have already questioned in previous papers what was passed down from Jesus (tradition, tradere is the latin word to trade or pass down). A few years ago The Tablet had an article on the addition of reading scriptures at Mass, starting in the 1700's. Except in the monastery I can't imagine three scriptural readings for illiterate rural peasants of the 12th century and Mass in Latin. You may all know about the conservative man who said: "If a Latin Mass was good enough for Jesus it is good enough for me"! Whoever coined "hocus pocus" knew of the Latin "Hoc est enim corpus meum" (for this is my body) and surely was questioning a theology. By going to Mass as a child I fixed on the questionable tradition of DaVinci's Last Supper.

We have an ignorance of the real "traditions"…

	Fr Edward Schillebeeckx OP

As RC's we have a frightful ignorance of what is traditional. Let me, with the knowledge I have of the past, piece together what I see as genuine age old tradition. Edward Schillebeeckx says that hard facts are difficult to come by in the early days of Christianity. Tad Guize, former Jesuit and theologian taught me about a five minute early Christian faith gathering in which the breaking of bread entailed the renewal of their baptismal commitment (are you a member of the body of Christ?). Young teen Tarsisus is killed refusing to talk about a hunk of the unity loaf he is bringing to Christians in prison. From the wonderful Benedictine historian and liturgist Godfrey Dieckman I learned how the early rural Christians gathered on Sunday only to give thanks to their God, bringing in from the fields potatoes, cabbage, chickens and bread which the presiding officer (normally a family man — married priest) placed on the altar in thanksgiving to a generous God; today we have the levabo, ritual washing of hands at Mass as a remnant of early liturgy. I weep when I see the roman-robed cleric silently offering the peoples' two Jewish harvest prayers as he holds up the wine and bread and the choir sings a song that has nothing to do with community offering.

On Sunday the O'Conaills and I attended a children's liturgy in the parish I founded 27 years ago; parents were thrilled while the audience (remember how it was said the people heard Mass while the priest said Mass before Vatican Two) was unable to hear the tiny voices. The word liturgy means the response of the people. That early 6th century presider-priest watched over the division of the people's offerings into three sections, one for the poor, the other for community use at the love feast, and the third for the cleric's family; the collection that was taken up Sunday goes straight to the Chancery office and Rome gets its cut. When I was pastor in 1979 the poor got their share. I left the business of church institution long before they expelled me for marrying. Keep in mind the community priest in the first Millenium was a family man and Mass was communitarian. Now how did Jesus get into that monstrance? And how did Jesus get stored in a tabernacle?

Mass was never intended to be a private devotion…

Dieckman teaches that money offerings took the place of the sack of potatoes as the priests began to say Mass daily for those who died away from home (war etc.) and some priests were saying as many as 40 Masses a day — could the priest eat all that bread? — so he stored it. The people were confronted with a dilemma; which Mass could get a person out of purgatory faster, the monk or the married cleric. The Council of Trent forbade a priest saying more than two Masses a day, allowing only one stipend daily; Mass was never intended to be a private devotion.

The old pastor I served with in 1960, who died with one million and a half bucks, usually took ten or eleven (or as many as he could get) stipends for a given Sunday; I fought the exploitive racket of Mass stipends since 1962, with very little success among ignorant people and a clergy dependent on stipends to have a better way of life.

Jesus in the bread became an object to look at and talk to, their God held captive in a wafer and the people bowed their heads, unworthy, as the priest held the host high, the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. What kind of God do you have who demands the death of his son to atone for the sins of human kind? …. Read Australian Michael Morewood … I see the practice as idolatry…… "behold your Generalisimo!" I saw a flyer about the religious order of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.

When first ordained in 1954 I experienced few approaching the communion rail; after Vatican Two with the relaxation of fasting laws and adult education the flood gates opened and the people stood close to the altar, passing out holy bread to one another. Rome in a desperate move to spotlight the priest and to claim the male ordained alone has the power to bring Jesus into the host tells the people to stand one step below the priest at the altar and the priest is to receive communion before all others How many go to Eucharist without the slightest concern for their neighbour while the genuine breaking of bread demands a social outreach to the world and all our neighbours?

Justice and Eucharist are interlinked…

Eucharist is not a private devotion; sharing the bread is a commitment to the mind of Jesus Christ. While attending a funeral our son Tommy, then 6, took the wafer and handed it to me, saying out loud "Dad, this is not the Jesus bread!" A man once said to me "Let's get back to real religion; I have had enough of your god damn Jew Jesus." We have powerful archetypes. I see the Eucharist as essential to the vitality of Christianity; infant baptism must cease and education in the way of Jesus must be done by example, Francis of Assisi often saying "preach always, and sometimes use words". Adult education is a monumentous need and this includes realistic education of the ordained clergy, especially the bishops appointed by JP2; Christianity is not for kids and empty meaningless rituals need be bypassed.

In America confirmation is known among the teens as the exit sacrament. A new set of sacraments for the age of technology need be researched and the two flaps on the back of the bishop's mitre, remnants of the rain coat that covered the horse rear end, need be put into moth balls and museum….. in fact the mitre — a 12th century land owner's hat should go there too. John the 23rd knew what he was talking about when he called for opening the windows of a stuffy church.

John's vision was of church communities breaking the bread of world wide friendship and not just within its own membership. I am so amused and annoyed at a priest's funeral when all the robed clerics pass around communion to each other while it appears the people get a few crumbs from the table of plenty after the all boys club has ceremoniously feasted. Normally I may accept the host at a funeral as a sign of my Christian family unity; once I quietly stayed back when the pastor had the attending bishop read the prayers of the faithful. As the Trentan priesthood dies the hierarchy becomes desperate. Do I see the host as sacred? Of course I do, wanting to see more of a loaf to be broken and a genuine community of faith present; the bread is made sacred (special-a holy sign) by the people, especially by their great AMEN, as the Greek Orthodox would teach. Let us look at the connection of weekly or daily Mass and ritual purity/celibacy in next week's final paper on eucharist/Eucharist.

Tom McMahon 13/10/07, relishing communion — common union — with my Creator from the great table of nature and awaiting the immanent birth of our second grandchild. San Jose, Ca. USA

NEXT WEEK: The connection of weekly or daily Mass and ritual purity/celibacy.

[Index of Commentaries by Tom McMahon]