Sunday June 18, 2017
A priest teaching in Manila used to go to a barrio (village) on Sundays to say mass. It happened that there was a baguio (typhoon) and as he went there on the following Sunday he noticed that the house of an old childless couple, Antonio and Maria, living on the edge of the barrio was tilting quite a lot to one side. After his homily he mentioned to the congregation that he had noticed the house of Antonio and Maria was tilting to one side. On the second and third Sunday of that month he noticed the same thing and made the same remarks. On the fourth Sunday he said to the people, "I regret to inform you that this will be the last Sunday on which I will be saying Mass in this barrio." "Why, Father?" they asked, "Are you being transferred or something?" "No," he said, I am not being transferred. It is just that I cannot continue to say mass in this barrio because you are not Christians." "What do you mean?" they asked: "We are not Christians? Can't you see the numbers that come to church, confess, and who eat the Bread of Life?" "Yes," said the priest, "you eat the bread but you do not live the life! For one month now I have been telling you that there have been two old people in this barrio in need of help but not one person lifted a finger to help. You receive the Sacraments but you are not Christians, so why should I continue to give you the Christian Sacraments?"
For the Hebrew, "body" meant the "external expression of the person present." To see the "body" was to know that the person was present. Through Christian history the expression BODY OF CHRIST came to have many meanings but especially it came to express the Church itself, the Mystical Body of Christ, and the Eucharist the sacramental Body of Christ. One was a community and the other was a communion. While both meanings are kept very close together there is little problem. But when, as happened in out story about Antonio and Maria, the idea of community caring and the idea of sacramental communion got seriously separated then indeed the Body of Christ was severely broken.
Christ called for discipleship, a deep personal union with him. This was often expressed in table fellowship. He challenged the culture of his time, and particularly the way of acting of the Pharisees who tended to cut off the unclean, by inviting all sorts of people to table fellowship. He invited Samaritans, tax collectors, and prostitutes to his table. Later, in the early Church the pattern of coming together to share a meal of fellowship was continued. Jesus had said that "when two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of you." In the account of the Eucharist in Corinthians, Paul has Jesus tell the disciples, "do this in memory of me" (1 Cor. 11:24-25). In the same account the Corinthians are castigated for eating and drinking unworthily because of the divisions that are amongst them.
The point comes across repeatedly in the history of the early church, as in our own times, that there can be no true reverence for the sacramental real presence if there is not real reverence for the mystical real presence that is in the heart of each person. Christians would be shocked if someone were to take the sacred host and dance on it in disrespect. Yet the desecration of the human person, through oppression, exploitation, physical or psychological cruelty, can be an even greater desecration of the real presence.
For centuries now we have had vivid and forceful preaching on the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus was "produced" at the consecration of the Mass and "was a prisoner of love waiting for us in the tabernacle." I do not question this theology but I sometimes think that an over emphasis on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist may have led to an implicit downplaying of that presence in ourselves and in our neighbor. After all it is much easier to see Jesus in the host than it is to see him in that neighbor who throws his garbage into your garden, steals your chickens, or in those who are striking for a just wage.
"The one who made the universe lives in the cave of our hearts." There is also a real presence of God in the cave of our hearts. It is all the more real for the fact that it is not very controllable or manageable. Moses had a real experience of God in the burning bush but had to live on the memory of it for forty tormenting years in the desert. The disciples on the road to Emmaus had an experience of the Risen Jesus but at the time they did not know it. As soon as they recognized him he was gone. The true experience of God is often a memory, something seen in the rear view mirror. We get a glimpse of it but when we look around it is gone. This is the sort of experience of God that happens, or maybe more accurately does not happen, in meditation. We continue trying to be faithful, to be present to the mantra or prayer word. At the time we feel or experience nothing. But later on we know that God was working in the experience.
There is a story - probably apocryphal - that one of the engineers involved in constructing the huge face of Marcos along the highway going to Baguio City was asked how they did it. "Well," he said. "when we got that huge mass of stone and cement in place we just began to chip away. We chipped away anything that was not Marcos and then he was left." So too in meditation we let go of everything, our thoughts, desires, words, images, even our holding of God himself. When all of these, products of our own egos, are chipped away the only presence remaining is that of God.
Meditation brings one to be more really present to all things. It makes us more present to the prayers we may say at other times and to the scriptures that we listen to. It makes us more present too to the sacramental presence and hopefully more sensitive to its meaning and implications. It will make us realize that the fact that the house of Antonio and Maria is tilting to one side has something to do with the Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ.
