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The Eucharist and the Christian Life Part III Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, the preacher to the papal household, continues his teaching on how the Eucharist relates to our Christian life
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Communion says St Cyril of Jerusalem, makes us "one in body and of one blood with Christ ". This relationship works in both directions: we share in the reality of the body of Christ and Christ shares in the reality of our body. Let me explain this point. For Jesus we are as Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity has said, "a kind of elongation of his humanity" During his earthly life, Jesus was able to live only his own limited human experience. He experienced life as a man and so did not experience what it was to be a woman. He did not experience sickness or old age. He did not know what it was to live as a married man, to have children of his own. But now thanks to the Eucharist, he is able to experience all of these situations. He comes to dwell in each one of us just as we are. I can review every facet of my life, down to the smallest detail, from the darkest to the most glorious ones: my most hidden desires, my weaknesses, my sins, everything. He did not live in his own flesh through all of these things, but in this Eucharist he becomes wholly one with me, he places himself in my inmost being and shares with me every detail of my whole existence. In a woman he lives the experience of a woman, in a sick person the experience of a sick person; in a father or a mother he knows what it is to have children of his own; in an old person he experiences what it is to be old. For him we are, as Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity has said, "a kind of elongation of his own humanity. " But this is the beginning of our communion with Jesus, not its final point. Our body is unable to receive in itself the gift of divine life. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God " (1 Cor 15.50); our soul and our spirit can. Body and blood are means, channels through which Jesus lets his Spirit pass in us. Anyone who unites himself to another human creature (man or woman) becomes one flesh with him or her, but anyone who is joined to the Lord is one Spirit with him (see 1 Cor 6.16-17). The Eucharist is the surest place to ask for the baptism of the Spirit and the place to renew it. The Eucharist ends in communion because this gives us the Holy Spirit who is the final point of everything. The best fruit of the eucharistic table is what the ancient Fathers called "the sober intoxication of the Spirit ". We notice a perfect correspondence between event and sacrament. In history, first at the incarnation, the Holy Spirit gave us Jesus (who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, then on the cross, in the paschal mystery Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit. Likewise in the Mass first, at the consecration, the Holy Spirit gives us Jesus (it is by the power of the Spirit that the bread becomes the body of Christ!), then, at communion, Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist is the surest place to ask for the "baptism in the Spirit ", and the place to renew it. In receiving communion, we make ourselves "one in body and of one blood " not only with Jesus, but also with one another. One of the conciliar texts says that communion "adequately expresses and in a wonderful way produces the unity of the people of God " The sacrament, however does not achieve this goal by itself, automatically. Our active participation is also required. If someone were to receive communion pretending to be full of fervour for Christ when a short while earlier he has hurt or offended a brother and not yet asked his pardon, says St Augustine, he would be like a person who meets a friend he has not seen in years. He hurries to that friend and embraces him and kisses him on the forehead, not caring that he is standing with his hob-nailed boots on his friend's bare toes! Christ's bare feet are the members of his body, especially those who are poorest and most humiliated. Jesus in the Poor He who said, over the bread, "This is my body " says the very thing about the poor. He said it when, speaking of what had been done for the hungry and the thirsty, for prisoners and for those without clothing, he solemnly declared, "you did it to me! " (see Matthew 25, 35). I will always remember, the moment when this truth first "exploded " in my mind in all its clarity. I was preaching in a country of the third world. Before my very eyes was one spectacle after another of abject misery: little children with only tatters for clothing, tummies all swollen and faces covered in flies; little groups of people running after a refuse cart, hoping to find something when the cart was emptied; beggars full of sores, stretched out on the ground. As I looked at them, I seemed to hear the voice of Jesus saying, "Look well, this is my body. This is my body ". It took my breath away. St John Chrysostom drew attention to this intimate connection between Jesus present on the altar and Jesus present in the poor. "You honour the body of Christ, " he wrote. "Do not then let it become something despised in his members, that is, in the poor who have not even a rag to cover themselves. Do not try to honour that Body here in the church with hangings of silk, when out there you do not care when it suffers naked in the cold. c what good does it do Christ if the table of sacrifice is loaded with vessels of gold while out there he may be dying of hunger in the persons of the poor? Feed the hungry first, and only when you have done that, think of showing honour to the altar with what you have left over. Would you provide him with a golden chalice yet refuse to give him a cup of water. " "One goes hungry while another is getting drunk" "You did it to me! " We should remember these words of Jesus yet on another occasion; where the death penalty is concerned. Jesus takes as done to himself not only what is done to the poor, but also to those in prison. Nor did he make any distinction, in this respect, between the guilty and the innocent. "One has died for all " (2 Cor 5. 14), one has been sentenced to death for all. There is no need for other death sentences. We Christians have an additional reason for opposing the death penalty. How can we rejoice and be relieved at the news that a criminal has been put to death, when we read in our Bible "Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? Says the Lord God. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live? " (Ez 18.23) Final part in next issue
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"When
you hold these meetings, " St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "It
is not the Lord's supper that you are eating, since when the time comes
to eat, everyone is in such a hurry to start his own supper that one
person goes hungry while another is getting drunk " (1 Cor 11,
20-21). In our day the situation in which "one goes hungry while
another is getting drunk " is in fact present on a grand scale
globally. Less than twenty percent of the world population (in broad
terms, the rich Christian people of the northern hemisphere) consume
more than eighty percent of the world's resources. The earth, someone
has said, is like a spaceship with a crew of five and one member of
the crew has cornered 80% of all the supplies on board for himself and
is doing all he can to get his hands on the rest c. Christians
cannot simply remain insensitive to this scandalous situation; we need
to make ourselves heard, openly, where the decisions are taken about
the shape of the new world economy based on globalisation. Our pope
John Paul II has frequently said this.
