Time Immortal

I’m going to take a day’s break from all the brouhaha that normally percolates through the blog here. It’s Friday, and it’s a good time to turn my thoughts away from the matters that trouble the world which I inhabit, and the orbits I find myself in. It would be nice to start preparing myself for Sunday, for Mass, and for yet another encounter with the Lord.

I’m talking, of course, about Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian faith. And also, both inside and outside of Catholicism, one of the most misunderstood aspects of the faith.

Catholicism makes what seems, initially, to be a very bold claim: that Christ Jesus literally becomes present in the breaking of the bread at each and every Mass, that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine, retaining only the “accidental” (to use the Aristotelean term) of qualities of each — the bread and wine still look like bread and wine, and still taste like it. But, contrary to the “if it quacks like a duck” thinking of the rest of the world around us, Catholics nevertheless boldly assert that despite the fact that the bread and wine seem, by all appearances, to still be bread and wine, they are in fact anything but.

It’s a bold declaration of complete faith…faith not in the Church (as an institution), nor faith in the priest, nor faith in the wafer itself. No, it is a declaration of faith in Christ, an affirmation of the Catholic belief that Christ really is Lord and King of all creation, and the He does so love the world — and everyone in it — that He desires to draw to Him those who profess their need for Him.

Equally, it is a declaration of faith in a Christ whose love and desire to be in communion with those who profess their need for His promise of salvation and forgiveness of sin that He will make Himself present to them, in keeping with His promise that He would be in the midst of any number who gather in His name. We all must die in due course and will, in so doing, end up before the Lord. But prior to that, Christ — out of love — elects to come into our presence too. His love for humanity is so great, and His desire to be in communion with us so powerful, that He will step down, but for a moment, to be with us in our present-tense reality, appearing before us in a guise at once hidden and yet obvious, as surely as He appeared to the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus.

It’s a powerful belief. But then, Christ is Lord and King of all creation — it is proper that a teaching pertaining to the direct intersection of Christ and the world is powerful.

Within Scripture, the first hints of the Eucharist are presented in the Gospel of John, in chapter 6. The close association between the Eucharistic revelation and the Paschal Meal is at once obvious.

[4] Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.
[5] Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”
[6] This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
[7] Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”
[8] One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him,
[9] “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?”
[10] Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
[11] Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
[12] And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.”
[13] So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.
[14] When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
[15]Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

These are not usually the verses cited in any apologetic concerning the Eucharist, but I would like to preface my analysis by noting the significance of the event within them. A large multitude has gathered to see and hear the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus — deeply moved — worries after the need of the people to eat. There is precious little food available to achieve that end, of course — to feed five thousand, two loaves and five fishes would amount to mere crumbs per person.

And so Jesus effects a miracle, both as a sign to the people and as a test of faith for the disciples. I’ve always thought the scene’s portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth captured the mood of the disciples perfectly, and I am still struck by the image of the apostle John holding forth an empty basket, apologizing that what little is in it is all he has. And yet, when the camera pans back to the basket, it is overflowing.
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So, I’m in Vancouver at present, celebrating Easter with Grace’s family there. Obviously, then, I’m not at my computer able to compose a suitable reflection on the idea of Easter and the meaning of the resurrection of Christ. Given a slightly less hectic week, I might have been able to compose just such a reflection, but as it is I will have to settle for re-iterating a point I made last year:

It is perhaps fitting to examine, then, how Easter completes the whole of the Christian year and unifies the faith. Christianity is not a series of beliefs, each atomically isolated from the others, but is rather one unified faith out of which flow many teachings that complement and enhance each other, and all of which are completed and joined by the pivotal historical event that is remembered this week: the death and resurrection of Christ. There is, within Holy Week, a smaller example of this same phenomenon, in our observance of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), His institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist (Holy Thursday) and his re-statement of the need for the Sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation (also Holy Thursday), to His death (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter Sunday). Within the week now almost over, the whole of Christianity and the whole of the Catholic expression of that faith finds its core, its foundation.

And to their credit, most Catholic churches emphasize the Sacraments during this season, as they ought…indeed, it is not by accident that adult baptisms take place during the Vigil Mass.

The need for baptism is, as noted, re-iterated by Christ in poignant fashion on Holy Thursday, when He washed the feet of the disciples. “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,” our Lord taught, and as with everything Christ said there is a deeper message being conveyed in that teaching than just the necessity of personal hygeine. Baptism is our first washing, the Sacramental sign of the way in which we are cleaned by the Lord, and water is the symbol of cleansing which we use. I’ve always been mystified by Protestants who declare confidently that water baptism is not necessary for salvation; while it is doubtless true that God, in His mercy, welcomes into His Kingdom those infants which die before being baptized (but then, to what extent are infants capable of sin?), it is equally true all the same that God desires, and that Christ taught, that baptism is necessary.

Likewise, many churches offer special penetential services during Holy Week, and again they do well to do so, because Christ likewise commanded that we return again and again to be cleansed, and commissioned His disciples to forgive sins in His name, and through His grace. Confession — the Sacrament of Reconciliation — is necessary as well in a fully-lived Christian life. “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,” Christ cautions Peter, following it up with the teaching outlined previously, and again the Lord is not here talking about personal hygeine. We too must seek to be cleansed of our sinfulness in Christ, and must do so repeatedly, just as in Hebrew custom the feet were to be washed regularly. If we do not seek that repeated cleansing, we too will have no share in Christ.

And of course, Catholic churches offer the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Real Presence, the literal and truthful Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, which Christ Himself gave to us in His transformation of the Passover Meal into the Feast of the Lamb and the food by which all might know salvation.

All of those are elements, but they are all given their whole meaning not only in Good Friday, but in what we celebrate on Easter Sunday — the risen Christ, the resurrection, Christ (and, by extension, God’s) victory over death won for the sake of all mankind, that we too might be able one day to join the chorus of angels in glorifying God in the Kingdom that is to come. It is in Christ’s death and resurrection that the Eucharistic meal is given its meaning, its form, and its power, for as it marks Christ’s being broken and shedding blood for our sake, so Christ was actually broken, and did actually shed blood, for our salvation.

At the same time, it is in Christ’s death and resurrection that we are truly cleansed from our sinfulness, for in His death and resurrection Christ took upon Himself the full weight of all human sin — past, present, and future — and made it to die with him, that we too might be dead to sin and risen in Christ, just as he later arose in glory.

And just as water and blood poured from our Lord’s pierced side, so too do we baptise with water, that all who share in baptism might have a share in due time in the life that is to come, which Christ’s resurrection has secured for His faithful.

Everything ties together in this one week, and as I have said this is an atomic expression of the whole of Christian year, and the whole of the Christian faith, and the way it ties together as well.

Catholicism is a complete, whole, unified faith, the Christian faith among all Christian denominations out there, and the Church is the means by which God’s fullest revelation is given to humanity. It is my prayer, this and every Easter season, that more and more people will be called to conversion during this time and throughout the year. For the Church is the light, and in her is found freedom and salvation. All else is darkness.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!