Pointing outwards

Today’s readings: Deut 8, 2-3.14-16; 1 Cor. 10, 16-17; John 6, 51-58.

Like the Jews at the time of Jesus, we also seem divided on the real meaning and implications of the Eucharist in public life. The natural setting for the institution of the Eucharist is always taken to be the Last Supper, offering the context of a communal meal. But the real theological context is given today by John and it connects more explicitly the Eucharist and engagement with the world.

The two approaches stand respectively for two ways of seeing the Church, one closed in on itself, concerned with ritual as if this was an end in itself, the other more committed to mend the world’s divisions and shortcomings. In Israelite prophecy the abyss between these two approaches was already filled. For the prophets, one cannot think of God and be indifferent to the suffering and hunger of others.

In his book The Prophetic Imagination Walter Brueggemann writes: “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us”. Augustine’s project in the City of God is a reimagination of the political; it is about the Church community as an alternative city.

In today’s second reading from Corinthians 1, Paul speaks of one loaf and one body of those who share in this one loaf. Theologically speaking, as Paul says, this is what we call ‘communion’, that spirit of the Risen Jesus which heals the broken body of humanity, wounded as it is at this juncture of history.

The issues at stake today are alternative definitions of the polis, the social, the wholeness of being human. These issues cannot be considered alien to our understanding of the Eucharist. Otherwise, we Christians would be in a world of our own, a world of aliens.

Just like at the time of Jesus, many today find it hard to believe not just the truth of doctrine about the real presence in the Eucharist, but what meaning all this talk about presence has in the world as we are experiencing it. How can we make up for the fragmentation that characterises life today, and that disfigures humanity and the Church alike?

As Moses warns in Deuteronomy, we also seem to be forgetful of whatever up to recently formed the core of our belief and gave shape to our identity. We tend to lose the prophecy and the power to be leaven, light and salt of the earth.

The Eucharist in the life of the Church and of the individual Christian, is the source of that prophecy and power. We cannot reduce the Eucharist to the Masses we celebrate, at times mechanically and melanchonically. The Eucharist does not belong to the temple. It always points outwards and towards our responsibility for a more just and humane society. This particularly at a point in time when we appear to be so shaky and doubtful in our engagement with the public square.

Speaking about giving himself up for people to have true life, Jesus was not addressing those who prefer to play with the liturgy and remain perpetual altar boys or girls. It is sad that with all that we have on our plate today we continue to sell anachronisms and repeat mediocre liturgies.

The liturgy is the heart and life of the Church. The Church has no other source of nourishment. Jesus’ major concern was the life of the world, that people may have life and life in abundance. At times, concerned as we are with rubrics and exteriors, we end up making of our liturgies more “a festival of self-affirmation”, as Joseph Ratzinger writes in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy.

Early Christians considered the breaking of bread the proper way to recall Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and to affirm their hope of his return. Since then, there have been distortions of this. The Eucharist is not a gift we receive while remaining unaltered. As Jean Luc Marion writes, our failure to recognise the gift, which is love, lies precisely in our failure to love. Love cannot be contained within the self, but must flow through the body in works of love.