From Where I Sit Judith Lynch (Melbourne) Judith's previous articles Judith's website
I
have no memory of my first Communion, but my certificate tells me that I
received it when I was seven. In the years since I must have prepared hundreds
of children and quite a few adults for their first Communion and I am still awed
by the mystery that is the Body and Blood of Jesus. Even though my head is able
to put the theology of Eucharist into an understandable package, deep down I
touch into mystery where words and explanations are powerless.
We
expect mystery novels to have a solution in the final pages. Not so the things
of God – Trinity, Incarnation, are mysterious. The institutional Church can be
quite a mystery. Its leadership can vouch to speak for God, but trips up
constantly on just being human and making mistakes. When I read of parishes being
thrown into turmoil and threats of excommunication being whispered, I wonder how
important specific translations of words, or correct vestments are when what is
at stake is a yearning to capture some of God’s mystery and make it relevant
to who we are and when and where we are living.
This
mystery of bread and wine houses the sacred in common earthen gifts, proclaiming
that the ordinary is a mask of the holy. The last meal Jesus had with his disciples was so simple, yet Jesus’
words and actions invested the bread and wine with God’s power and mystery.
Body was not a biological term to the Jews, but a personal one. A person was
their body. When Jesus said: “This is my body” he meant,
“This is me, my person.” Blood
meant life. It had much the same sense to them that the word “heart” has for
us today. His words, “This is my blood ….” were saying, “I love you with
all my blood”, while we could say “I love you with my whole heart.”
The
early Christians celebrated the Lord's
Supper in ordinary homes, breaking
the bread and sharing the wine in
vessels used in their households.
Those who presided were dressed like everyone else. They grasped that Christ's
words, "Do this in commemoration of me", implied also a commemoration of God becoming incarnate in
ordinary everyday life, transforming
the profane world by turning it upside
down, ignoring temples because people
themselves had become God's Temple.
Three
hundred years later