Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Dom Peter
At the end of the eleventh chapter of the book of Leviticus, God says to the people of Israel through Moses: “You…shall be holy, for I am holy.” The Hebrew word qadosh, “holy” connotes being ‘cut off’, different from the profane. God in effect, in making His covenant with Israel says, “if you desire life with Me, and this is true life, you must become worthy of Me: you must become different than the world, because I am other than the world.”
Significantly, this exhortation takes place in the midst of the kashrut or Kosher laws. There are many ways in which Israel is to be different from the surrounding Canaanites and other peoples, but the most obvious way is by refraining from eating certain foods. The foods that God permits the Israelites to eat also must be prepared in a certain way. In chapter seventeen, God says to Moses, “You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood.”
One can imagine, then, the scandal occasioned by Jesus when He says “to the crowds,” “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” This teaching gives some currency to C.S. Lewis’ argument that Jesus is either God or insane. We have the advantage of knowing Jesus Christ risen from the dead; we know that all authority has been given Him and so this testimony is perhaps easier for us to absorb. Or is it?
From time to time one reads about polls that claim alarming numbers of Catholics denying the Real Presence or at least not understanding it. One must always exercise caution in interpreting polls; I’m half Polish, so I should know. However, some struggle to grasp the presence of Christ in the Eucharist should not surprise us. The teaching has been a source of difficulty for believers from the very beginning. How can we deepen our faith in this mystery and enliven others’?
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Here we have life with God in a deeper and more intimate way than ever envisioned even in the marriage covenant given at Mount Sinai. “The life of every creature is its blood.” In this teaching of the Lord on Sinai, we see that all life belongs to God, but we also see the problem of sin in the world of creatures. The food that sustains our bodies is good. Eating is good, especially eating together. It is a visible and visceral reminder of our connectedness to the earth, to other creatures, and to each other. The downside of this is that creatures are perishable. The life of creatures has a limit. If we limit our horizons to the enjoyment of bread, we are apt to lose sight of the fact that we do not live on bread alone.
On the other hand, as the Council of Nicea taught, the Son of God is not a creature. The drink that He gives is not perishable but imparts eternal life. This is why, overruling the prohibitions of the old Law, Jesus can offer us His blood to drink. His life is also in the blood, but it is not the life of a creature, but the life of Blessed Trinity Himself.
With this as background, we return to the question: how to enliven our faith in the Eucharist, to desire communion with God and to receive it in this humble sacrament of bread and wine? We might ask an ancillary question: Why did God choose food as the privileged means of Christ’s continuing presence and of the gift of life? Surely this suggest that our attitude toward food and toward creation to which we are linked by our bodies must somehow be connected to the choice of bread and wine for the material of the source and summit of our faith.
This in turn suggests that if our faith in the Blessed Sacrament is somehow waning, we should examine our attitude toward creation. There are two temptations: to overvalue creation or to undervalue it. To overvalue it, to serve the creature rather than the Creator (Blessed be He), is tempting because the world is full of good things delightful to the eye. But this is to choose mortality rather than immortality. Not much of a bargain if you ask me, unless by some confused reasoning we think that the God who created the earth ki tov, very good, will somehow make heaven less good. There is also the temptation to equate God with creation, the mistake of pantheists or nature-worshippers. This makes God less than All-powerful and probably less than good as well.
However, we must also not become Manicheans and undervalue or denigrate this creation. Do we really do this today? I think that we do, when we eat meals on the run, treat bodies like machines or sculptures, abuse the earth for short-term conveniences and the like. We can also do this for alleged religious reasons, such is the temptation of Puritanism. This seems to me less of a temptation today, but it is worth noting, if only to make the Church’s stance clearer. Perhaps the clearest problem we have in this area is accepting the Incarnation, the idea that God would create the universe and the human person not merely as an amusement to be discarded when no longer interesting, but as a place within which He could dwell intimately with His creatures.
How do we balance a true appreciation for creation with a longing for everlasting life in union with the Blessed Trinity? Saint Paul gives us the answer in the Epistle to the Ephesians. “[Give] thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.” Do you have no choice but to eat quickly at McDonald’s? Give thanks. Do you have to cancel a trip this year because gas is scarce? Give thanks. Give thanks for those whom you love, and give thanks for those who show you your inability to love. Give thanks for good food and for lousy food. Give thanks for the sun and for the rain. Give thanks for this world and for the promise of a better world. This, after all, is the true meaning of the Eucharist: thanksgiving to God in Jesus Christ, to whom be power and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Significantly, this exhortation takes place in the midst of the kashrut or Kosher laws. There are many ways in which Israel is to be different from the surrounding Canaanites and other peoples, but the most obvious way is by refraining from eating certain foods. The foods that God permits the Israelites to eat also must be prepared in a certain way. In chapter seventeen, God says to Moses, “You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood.”
One can imagine, then, the scandal occasioned by Jesus when He says “to the crowds,” “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” This teaching gives some currency to C.S. Lewis’ argument that Jesus is either God or insane. We have the advantage of knowing Jesus Christ risen from the dead; we know that all authority has been given Him and so this testimony is perhaps easier for us to absorb. Or is it?
From time to time one reads about polls that claim alarming numbers of Catholics denying the Real Presence or at least not understanding it. One must always exercise caution in interpreting polls; I’m half Polish, so I should know. However, some struggle to grasp the presence of Christ in the Eucharist should not surprise us. The teaching has been a source of difficulty for believers from the very beginning. How can we deepen our faith in this mystery and enliven others’?
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Here we have life with God in a deeper and more intimate way than ever envisioned even in the marriage covenant given at Mount Sinai. “The life of every creature is its blood.” In this teaching of the Lord on Sinai, we see that all life belongs to God, but we also see the problem of sin in the world of creatures. The food that sustains our bodies is good. Eating is good, especially eating together. It is a visible and visceral reminder of our connectedness to the earth, to other creatures, and to each other. The downside of this is that creatures are perishable. The life of creatures has a limit. If we limit our horizons to the enjoyment of bread, we are apt to lose sight of the fact that we do not live on bread alone.
On the other hand, as the Council of Nicea taught, the Son of God is not a creature. The drink that He gives is not perishable but imparts eternal life. This is why, overruling the prohibitions of the old Law, Jesus can offer us His blood to drink. His life is also in the blood, but it is not the life of a creature, but the life of Blessed Trinity Himself.
With this as background, we return to the question: how to enliven our faith in the Eucharist, to desire communion with God and to receive it in this humble sacrament of bread and wine? We might ask an ancillary question: Why did God choose food as the privileged means of Christ’s continuing presence and of the gift of life? Surely this suggest that our attitude toward food and toward creation to which we are linked by our bodies must somehow be connected to the choice of bread and wine for the material of the source and summit of our faith.
This in turn suggests that if our faith in the Blessed Sacrament is somehow waning, we should examine our attitude toward creation. There are two temptations: to overvalue creation or to undervalue it. To overvalue it, to serve the creature rather than the Creator (Blessed be He), is tempting because the world is full of good things delightful to the eye. But this is to choose mortality rather than immortality. Not much of a bargain if you ask me, unless by some confused reasoning we think that the God who created the earth ki tov, very good, will somehow make heaven less good. There is also the temptation to equate God with creation, the mistake of pantheists or nature-worshippers. This makes God less than All-powerful and probably less than good as well.
However, we must also not become Manicheans and undervalue or denigrate this creation. Do we really do this today? I think that we do, when we eat meals on the run, treat bodies like machines or sculptures, abuse the earth for short-term conveniences and the like. We can also do this for alleged religious reasons, such is the temptation of Puritanism. This seems to me less of a temptation today, but it is worth noting, if only to make the Church’s stance clearer. Perhaps the clearest problem we have in this area is accepting the Incarnation, the idea that God would create the universe and the human person not merely as an amusement to be discarded when no longer interesting, but as a place within which He could dwell intimately with His creatures.
How do we balance a true appreciation for creation with a longing for everlasting life in union with the Blessed Trinity? Saint Paul gives us the answer in the Epistle to the Ephesians. “[Give] thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.” Do you have no choice but to eat quickly at McDonald’s? Give thanks. Do you have to cancel a trip this year because gas is scarce? Give thanks. Give thanks for those whom you love, and give thanks for those who show you your inability to love. Give thanks for good food and for lousy food. Give thanks for the sun and for the rain. Give thanks for this world and for the promise of a better world. This, after all, is the true meaning of the Eucharist: thanksgiving to God in Jesus Christ, to whom be power and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
posted by Prior Peter, OSB | 6:31 AM
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