After quite a bit of planning and some fanagaling, I have a Sunday off. Yesterday evening, after a long day of teaching, I was able to quietly attend a Vigil Mass at another parish. Today is my first day off since the week before Holy Week.
I was sorely tempted to just let it go today. But I felt impelled (not compelled, had that been the case, I would've resisted), to share a concentrated take on today's Gospel reading: The Road to Emmaus. I never really fully grasped the centrality of the Emmaus pericope until I read Louis-Marie Chauvet's The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body.
Saint Luke's pericope in which the inspired author conveys the story of what happened to Cleopas and companion (perhaps his wife?) as they made their way back home to their village after Jesus' passion and death is simply amazing. Cleopas and companion ("companion" is literally someone with whom you share bread) had even heard news of some women, fellow disciples of Jesus, seeing angels who they said told them that Jesus rose from the dead.
But all these two disappointed disciples saw after hearing these reports was an empty tomb. What does an empty tomb prove? Did those women really encounter angels?
Saint Luke's telling of what happened on the way to and then in Emmaus contains an inspired and comprehensive Eucharistic theology as well as a fairly well sketched out liturgical theology, which even includes a dismissal. The dismissal occurs when, having recognized the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread, which happened after a very extended liturgy of word (like the one at the Paschal Vigil), they rush the seven miles back to Jerusalem, despite it now being nightime, to tell the others what they had seen and heard and how their hearts were burning.
The story of the road to Emmaus tells the story of the Word becoming flesh and how the Word still becomes flesh. Through the Eucharist, the flesh the Word now takes is your flesh, my flesh. When we say the Church is the Body of Christ, we are not using an analogy. We are describing reality.
The mystery of life in Christ is that Christ can live in you (Colossians 1:27). Moreover, Christ desires not only to live in but through you and through me. You and I, along with everyone who else partakes of Christ's Body and Blood, are united in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit by partaking of the one bread and the one cup (okay, chalice). Given to us by the Lord Himself, the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist, in turn, makes the Church the Body of Christ.
Let's be honest, the only convincing evidence that the bread and wine are transformed (transubstantiated) into Christ's Body and Blood are the lives of those of us who eat and drink. Conversely, the best argument against this reality are the lives of those of us who partake. In the Eucharist, something really profound is happening, ex opere operato (i.e., whether you experience it or not).
While it is imporant and even necessary, don't remain content with minimalism, with hanging your hat on the peg of ex opere operato. Your participation, my participation, should be intentional. In the most important sense, this is what it means to actively participate.
For some reason, this Easter season, I feel impelled to emphasize that Jesus didn't just rise from the tomb. He is risen, denoting the on-going nature of His resurrection. Resurrection isn't merely something to be believed but something/Someone to be experienced in the way Cleopas and his companion did. Resurrection is not just a way of life, a manner of living, but a mode of being.
What should happen during the Eucharist should also resound beyond Mass and outside the walls of the Church. Quite simply, worship that doesn't lead to self-giving service isn't Christian worship. And so, "Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord. Alleluia." "Go in peace, glorfying the Lord by your life. Alleluia" (we won't use the double "Alleluia" again until the dismissal at Pentecost).
No comments:
Post a Comment