(From the bulletin of St. Barbara Parish, Santa Barbara, California)
Dear Parish Family,
Peace and all good!
This weekend we celebrate Corpus Christi—the Feast of the Body and Blood
of Christ. We take the time now — on the cusp of summer and vacations—to
reflect upon the extraordinary mystery of God’s Love expressed in the Eucharist
we share. Not coincidentally, our
meditation hearkens to the celebration of the First Eucharist at the Last
Supper on Holy Thursday. Our Holy Week
liturgies are so intense and imbued with meaning and emotion, however, that we
really need to take a moment to unpack the significance of the
Eucharistic event separately.
“There is something almost sacred about people coming
together to share a meal.” The summer issue of my college alumni magazine was
all about food, and the opening line of the lead article began with this
casual comment. “
Almost
sacred?” I thought to myself. Hmm. I’d propose that the sharing of a meal is
always sacred--
always contains some element of the transcendent, thank you very
much. Especially when we as a family of
faith come together to share the banquet in which Jesus is both our host and
Host—quite literally—in this most extraordinary outpouring of His Love and Life
(Body and Blood). What more can be said—
the mystery is so ineffable, so precious, so absolutely central to our identity
as Catholic Christians that we would cease to exist as a community without it.
The words, motions (and emotions) of the Liturgy of the
Eucharist both retrace and re-echo the forms of the traditional Jewish
berakah, the prayer of blessing before
meals intended to sanctify the physical act of nourishment: “Blessed are You,
Lord Our God, who brings forth bread from the earth…. Who creates the fruit of
the vine.” But then, in the words of
Consecration, we are moved into a realm of experience and contemplation in
which prayer becomes the springboard to sacred mystery,
the Sacred Mystery of Christ’s being and becoming really and truly
present in the breaking of the bread.
St. Paul’s description of Eucharist (1 Corinthians 11) is both solid and succinct. In this first
scriptural account of the sacrament, nothing is wasted in the melding of word
and gesture: take, break, thank. Words and gestures amplified in Luke’s
account of the feeding of the five thousand, which unequivocally foreshadow Jesus’
self-giving in the Eucharist. However,
there is an unavoidable and even bothersome hook to this account: “Give them some food yourselves,” Jesus tells
His disciples--and us. (Chapter 9: 13).
Notice, however, He is the one who performs the miracle; they (we) are
the ones to distribute his bounty and blessing.
The implications for our shared ministry are clear: Christ gives Himself to us, Body and Blood,
so that we might share the One we have received with others—becoming food for others
just as He has made himself food for us.
So, every meal, every sharing becomes a share in the
Eucharist we have received and are to become.
Don’t ask me how it happens, but it does. You know as well as I do that
something is changed—no,
we are
changed in the breaking of the Bread.
Changed and
charged. Strengthened and sent. To bring, be, and become Christ for
others: Go ahead: “Give them some food
yourselves.”//
Note: St. Barbara Parish
(Old Mission), Santa Barbara, California, where I am currently serving as
Pastor. It has been quite a while since
I’ve written a blog entry. Someone asked
me the other day—“Why don’t you start again?” and I thought: “Well, why not?”
So here I am and here it is. PS: "Monstrance" image from book cover Poems by Sarah Klassen –ct
