A
bout
thirty years ago there were two brothers who got married. One was
a tidy man who married a tidy wife and they had a tidy family. The
other was a more carefree man who married a more carefree wife and
they had a large family. Soon after marriage an enterprising salesman
was able to convince both families to invest in all 24 volumes of
the Encyclopedia Britannica. The first brother built a glass case
with a lock and key for the precious books. The message was given
to the children that these were precious books and were to be used
with care, better wash your hands, and dry them carefully before touching
the books, and then return them carefully after use, or Mom and Dad
will be very displeased.
In
the other house the books were just stacked on the floor at the side
of the living room. I remember once visiting this house and I saw
the three year old son using the Encyclopedia Britannica! He could
not reach the food on the table so he brought over the volumes and
stacked them to make a stairs to get to the food! By four he was looking
at the pictures. In a few years he was using the books to help him
in his grade school, high school and college assignments. If an argument
arose in the family, the books were frequently consulted to add new
information and resolve the issue.
The
first family has now grown up and left the nest. The books are as
good as new in their glass case and the owners are looking for someone
who may buy them. The second family has also grown up and left the
nest. The Encyclopedias are old and tattered, marked with ice-cream
and coffee stains. Nobody in the family would think of selling the
books and nobody outside would think of buying them. The books had
suffered the love of a generation of children, they had become part
of them and in doing so had lost their own beauty. If you were an
encyclopedia, which would you like to be at the end of your life:
spick and span, untouched by life, or, worn and used, kicked about
and loved by life?
This
tendency to put what is precious away in an untouchable place of reverence
can also be seen regarding the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, the
feast we celebrate today. It is clear that meals were of great importance
in the ministry of Jesus. He reached out to people at mealtime; he
broke down barriers by sharing meals with publicans and prostitutes;
he manifested himself at meals. The Gospels tell us that he shared
a fellowship meal with his disciples a short time before he died.
The early church re-membered, were reconnected with Christ by a simple
cultic celebration of the same meal. In this meal they recalled how
Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples.
So too Jesus takes each person and blesses them, sets them apart for
his service. In fulfilling this call we will be broken. It is only
when we are broken and know that we are needy that the Lord can make
his home in us.
In
time the practice developed of taking the Eucharist to those who,
because of sickness, could not be present at the celebration. The
sacred hosts were reserved for the sick. Later, they came to be reverenced
- because they were the real sacramental presence of Jesus. While
this devotional development has a logic and a value, it also has it's
danger. The danger is that "the real presence" becomes too
identified with the hosts in the tabernacle. The bread that Jesus
spoke of as taken, blessed, broken and given was something more than
that, it was a living bread immersed in the midst of life. There is
great danger in having a too-holy-to-be-touched God. It is so much
easier to love Jesus really present in the Blessed Sacrament than
to love him in an irritable mother-in-law or a cantankerous neighbor.
We will miss the real presence of Jesus if we ignore that presence
found in the heart of each person. This is the presence that we are
present to when we meditate, and being present to this also brings
us to a richer understanding of Eucharist.
