Friday, June 12, 2009
Indelicate Question
Why are you eating someone’s body and drinking his blood?
I know this is an indelicate question, and it makes a lot of presumptions. But still, why? Picture yourself walking up the aisle and receiving what appears to be bread and wine, but which is really Christ’s Body and Blood. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) seemed to have thought we were cannibals. And many of Jesus’ followers simply walked away when he told them “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (Jn 6:56ff)
Let's take a look. Today we use the word “sacrifice” to refer to something we give up for a good reason. “I sacrificed my own interests in order to raise you kids,” would be an example parents might use.
But there is a longer history of the word, and it involves body and blood. Once upon a time, the tribes of the world tried to please whatever gods their tradition believed in by offering sacrifices to them, in order to get a better harvest, to prevent the storm or the drought, to avoid starvation, get victory in battle, and so on.
They had to kill what was being offered. Why?
Slaughtering the best lamb from the herd made it a messenger to the gods because it was no longer part of this world, even though it came from here. It became part of heaven.
Send the best of earth to heaven in order that the best of heaven could come down to earth, they thought.
Often, people ate the flesh and drank the blood of the offering so that they too could be an integral part of this uniting of heaven and earth.
All along, of course, God knew about these sacrifices. He knew there was an intrinsic desire in all human beings to be at one with God (whom they were searching for with their "gods"). At root, sacrifices were an attempt to reach out to heaven and fulfill that desire. But their arms were too short. They could come to God only if God first came to them. God had to offer sacrifice on their behalf.
So in the fullness of time, the One God gave his people a real fulfillment of their urge to sanctify through sacrifice. He sent himself to them.
Send the best of heaven to earth in order that the best of earth can go up to heaven.
Jesus gave up his body and his blood, just as the ancient sacrifices had required, but now in a new way, to show the world that God acted first and all they needed to do was respond. Animals could not choose to be sacrificed, but Christ did freely so choose, out of love, on our behalf.
On the night before he suffered he gave them sacramental signs that would be fulfilled the next day. He gave them his body and blood under the appearance of bread and wine. He told them to consume it. These would become re-presentations for all time of the bloody sacrifice on the cross, but now in an unbloody form.
So the answer to the question with which we began is that you and I eat his body and drink his blood sacramentally—yes, in order to fulfill the idea behind the ancient sacrifices, but most of all in order to say yes to God’s never-ending love. We walk up the aisle to take our part in the new and eternal sacrifice of love.
Fr. John Foley, S. J.
