On a wall of my study hangs a crucifix I treasure. It caught my eye in
an antique shop in Salzburg, Austria, and the moment I saw it I fell in
love with it. It’s quite large and quite old – maybe as much as
three-hundred years, give or take - and while you couldn’t really call
it ‘high art – it’s more folk art – it speaks to me and stirs up very
deep feelings. In the face of Christ there is great sadness, great
resignation, and great peace; his arms are all-embracing, and from his
wounded side flows blood, red and riveting, against the dark wood of the
corpus.
The blood of Christ. The
blood he willingly shed on the cross out of love for us. The precious
blood of Christ as the Church likes to call it. But no matter how
precious, the blood of Christ is not, I think, something we give much
thought to, not as much as we should. We’re a bit squeamish about blood.
It has distasteful overtones, so closely associated is it with death,
and we don’t like to think a lot about death. But blood is really more
about life than death as was clear in both the reading from the Book of
Exodus and the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. When Moses poured
out the blood of the sacrificial animals on the altar and then sprinkled
it on the people, he was, in a dramatic way, sealing God’s great
covenant with them, a covenant of life, a covenant in which they came to
share in the very life of God. And in the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus
becomes the mediator of a New Covenant by offering himself to the
Father, willingly pouring out his blood on the cross for one reason
only: so that we might receive life: our “promised eternal inheritance,”
in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews.
And then in the reading
from Mark’s gospel, while eating the Passover meal with his friends,
Jesus takes bread, breaks it, and gives it to them, telling them that
the bread is his body given for them, his body that was about to be
broken for them on the cross. Then he takes a cup of wine, telling them
that it is his blood that would be shed for them and for all; the cup of
suffering that would mean death for him but life for them; the cup that
he and they would one day drink new in the Kingdom of God, when death
would be no more, only life.
Down through Christian
history, whenever believers – including ourselves – have gathered to
carry out the solemn command of Jesus, “Do this in memory of me,” they
have – we have, through the power of the words of Jesus which live in
the present as much as in the past, been mystically present at that Last
Supper table as well as at the foot of the cross; and they – we –
have been nourished by the Bread that is his body given for us and by
the wine that is his blood poured out for us. And deep down, we know
that without the Bread of life and without the Cup of Salvation, we are
really deprived of life.
We experienced this in a
striking way during this pandemic when, for quite some time, we were
deprived of the Eucharist. Some of us still are. And there is no
substitute for it, is there? - not a livestream broadcast, no matter how
well done; not a virtual Eucharist; not so-called ‘spiritual Communion.’
None of these, no matter how much of a lifeline they may have been over
these many months, has taken the place of the real thing, and they never
will. No wonder more and more of us are returning to the Cathedral for
Mass these days!
I love to read stories
about people for whom the Eucharist was literally a matter of life and
death. Think of those faithful Catholics and intrepid priests during the
Elizabethan persecutions of English Reformation times when to celebrate
the Eucharist was a near death sentence, and often enough, an actual
death sentence. Still, with great courage, they gathered in homes where
priests hid away in so-called ‘priest holes’ – sometimes for days and
weeks on end – for one reason only: to celebrate the Eucharist and to be
nourished and fortified by the Body and Blood of Christ. They just
couldn’t live without it so they were willing to take great chances to
have it.
Closer to our time - and
this story I owe to Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the
Dominicans – closer to our time, during the Soviet Communist regime in
what was then Czechoslovakia, the Cardinal Archbishop of Prague shared a
prison cell with Vaclav Hagel, the playwright and future president of
the Republic. To celebrate the Eucharist was, of course, verboten, but
that didn’t deter the two of them. They would engage in what appeared to
be a game of chess but the queen’s crown had a few drops of wine in it
and the king’s crown, a tiny fragment of bread. Unbeknownst to their
guards, the two of them celebrated and received the Body and Blood of
Christ. To quote Fr. Radcliffe, “Quietly whispering, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’
they participated in the liturgy of heaven!”
Dear friends, I hope
these stories remind us of why we are here, why we need to be here, why
we should long to be here. We cannot live for long without the Eucharist
– any more than those brave Elizabethan Catholics could; any more than
the Archbishop and the playwright could. The Body of Christ is the Bread
of Life. Without it, we starve. And the Blood of Christ is our cleansing
and our healing. Without it, we falter, we lack the strength we need to
go on.
As we celebrate this
great feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, may we awaken to our need
for the Eucharist, to what a gift it is, and may we be filled with
gratitude for this greatest of sacraments that is, for us, life,
healing, and hope!
Father Michael G. Ryan
|
|
