Human life is spatial-temporal, since it occupies a limited space for a limited time. In becoming man, God took on this limitation (Philippians 2:6-11). By incarnating in a human person, by setting up his tent in our camp, he agreed to live in a precise time and space. However, it would make no sense for the son of God, creator of everything and everyone, to limit his saving action only to the time and space he lived in.
The Church, the Eucharist and the priesthood are institutions created by Him to extend his saving action to all times and all places, until the end of time and the end of the world. These three institutions are, in themselves and by themselves, three presences of Christ among us. More specifically, the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, the Eucharist is the Sacramental Body of Christ, and the priesthood is the Physical Body of Christ.
3 Thursdays: Holy Thursday – Ascension – Corpus Christi
There are three Thursdays in the year that shine more than the sun: Holy Thursday, Corpus Christi and Ascension Thursday. Popular Spanish saying
Holy Thursday
Jesus' public life began at the wedding of Cana, where he transforms the water of our tears into the wine of our joy (Psalm 104:14-15). And it ends at the Last Supper, where he gives himself as the bread of our sustenance (John 6:48-63). Between these two banquets, many of Jesus' teachings arise in the course of an invitation to a meal. (Luke 19:1-10; Matthew 26:6-13)
A meal, a wedding banquet is a recurring theme in Jesus' parables: the Kingdom of Heaven is like a banquet... Good food, good drink, good company, they produce the greatest happiness and joy that this world can offer us. Therefore, when he tells us about the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus finds no better comparison than sharing good food, good drink, and good company.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food... (Isaiah 25:6-9). The theme of the banquet as the symbol of happiness that God can bring to man was already also very recurrent in the Old Testament. The Hebrew people celebrated their departure from Egypt, that is, from slavery, and their entry into the Promised Land of freedom with a meal where a lamb is eaten, whose blood painted on the doorpost saved the Jews by making the angel of death pass over that house.
Jesus ate this same meal with his female and male disciples. At that meal, however, he is the lamb, as John the Baptist had long ago announced. Jesus transfers his physical presence to the bread and gives it to us as his flesh. He transfers to the wine his life, his blood, his Spirit, and gives it to us as his strength, his joy, his Spirit.
Ascension
After his resurrection, and for forty days as the Scripture says, Jesus did not immediately go back to His Father (John 20:17). It is said that the dead do not realize right away that they have died, and depending on the issues they had clung to on this earth, it seems that they wander around until these are resolved. They are the so-called suffering or condemned souls, because they died suddenly in an accident before their time and left behind some unfinished business.
No longer limited by the laws of space and time, Jesus in his glorious body is detained for some time on this earth, before ascending to the Father, and during this time, he appears to his friends and disciples to confirm them in the Mission to continue his work.
The feast of Ascension was traditionally celebrated on a Thursday. Jesus' farewell takes place on Holy Thursday, his departure is not his death. After his death, Jesus returns to his disciples in the reality of his glorious body, he lives, eats, and drinks with them again as some accounts of his apparitions tell us, but he is already in another dimension.
The departure of the Lord, his last farewell in the true sense of the word, takes place forty days after his resurrection from the dead. After he sent them all over the world to continue his work, to extend his Kingdom, he ascends into Heaven. After having found other ways to stay among us, he took to heaven our human nature divinized in his body, to prepare a place for us.
Corpus Christi
On the 60th day after the Lord's resurrection, the Church celebrates Jesus’ sacramental presence with the feast of Corpus Christi or Body of Christ, the third Thursday that shines brighter than the sun. "Do this in memory of me..." as he had said on Holy Thursday. He went up to heaven on Ascension Thursday and left us in the Eucharist the memorial of his life, passion, death and resurrection.
This is my body... This is my blood... they are the abracadabra, the password, the magic spell that causes a regular bread to become his flesh, a regular wine to turn into his blood. There is a change of substance, called transubstantiation, which is not accidental, that is, the bread continues with the same shape, color, texture and flavor, and the same with the wine, but the bread is no longer bread, and the wine no longer wine.
Over time and in different places on our planet, some of those who doubted this transubstantiation have truly seen this bread turned into flesh, and this wine into blood in the many Eucharistic Miracles that have taken place over time in different latitudes and longitudes of the earth.
As Jesus said at his Last Supper, he continues to be truly among us as the one who serves and who serves as food for us, as the Viaticum in this pilgrimage of our life to the heavenly homeland. If the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament contained manna, a symbol of God's power, then the consecrated bread really contains the Lord: his body given up and his blood poured out so that we may have life in his name and have it in abundance.
Pentecost
In the same upper room where the Church was conceived at the Lord's Last Supper, when the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, united with the Holy Spirit, there the soul of that same Church was born. The Church, therefore, was born on the day of Pentecost when the already pre-existing body formed by her founder, Our Lord Jesus Christ on Holy Thursday, received the divine breath by which she began to live and went out of that womb where she had been conceived on Holy Thursday.
To understand the importance of the Holy Spirit in the Church, let us look at the Peter that associates with Jesus before Pentecost: faltering, cowering and full of adolescent fear, and the same person, the same Peter, full of energy, courage and zeal on the day of Pentecost, even challenging the high priests.
The Church is the mystical body of Christ, who feeds on the sacramental body of Christ that is his flesh and blood, and has as her soul the Holy Spirit who inspires, encourages, governs, guides and gives her strength in tribulation.
THE CHURCH: THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST
The content of Jesus' preaching
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. Matthew 9:35
Jesus did not come into the world to preach himself, or about himself. In the synoptic Gospels, he speaks little about himself, and when he does, it is to say that he does the will of the Father. He refers to himself as the son of man and not as the son of God or as the Messiah. The content of Jesus' preaching is the Kingdom of God which he says he came to bring to earth. About the Kingdom of God, Jesus not only speaks about it, but he also concretizes it in words and deeds.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. Luke 4:18-19
In the synagogue of his village, right at the beginning of his ministry, he reads a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah stating after the reading that this part of scripture is fulfilled by and with his Mission. When John the Baptist is already in prison, his doubts about Jesus’ identity arise, and so he sends some of his disciples to inquire about it. Because for Jesus a person is known by his works, this is what he replied:
‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.’ Matthew 11:4-5
To define what the Kingdom of God is, Jesus uses many parables and in some of them the image of a banquet is frequently used. This led St. Paul to say that the Kingdom of God is not food or drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17). But Jesus left the kingdom defined in the prayer he taught his disciples: "Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." In the same petition for the coming of the Kingdom, Jesus defines it as being an earth where the will of the Father is done as it is already done in Heaven; that is, when earth is like heaven, then earth is the Kingdom of God like heaven already is.
The content of the Church's preaching
Now I should remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you – unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 1 Corinthians 15:1-5
The gospel that the apostles of the Lord preach is quite different from what the Master preached. What is evident from the above-mentioned text of St. Paul to the Christians of Corinth, as well as from Peter's discourse on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:14-41), and from what he says before the high priests and the people after he and John heal a man lame from birth (Acts 3:11-26), is that the Kingdom of God is not part of the content of their preaching, nor is it the purpose of it.
The person and personality, the sayings and deeds, and the life of Jesus of Nazareth as the expected Messiah to the nations, is now the content of the apostles' preaching. However, at the time of Jesus, as practical lessons and mission experience, He himself sent them out to cities and villages "to proclaim the Kingdom of God and heal the sick" (Luke 9:1-2), that is, to practice the kind of mission he himself practiced.
Now, however, the content of the apostles' preaching is exclusively the person of Jesus and the objective of preaching is no longer the Kingdom, but the implantation of the Church. It is no wonder that the "Implantatio ecclesia" has been for many centuries the objective of her Mission. In other words, the Church instead of preaching the Kingdom, as her founder did, spent many centuries and until recently, preaching herself; to make herself great, to draw members to her flock.
Did Jesus intend to found the Church?
The Church and Christianity were not per se founded by St. Paul, as some have badmouthed. It is true that Jesus only mentions the name "Ecclesia" twice and only in the Gospel of Matthew. Of these two times, it is doubtful that one of them came out of his mouth and it is believed that the other was really invented. From all four gospels, it is understood with all certainty and surety that Jesus planned to leave some structure behind after his death.
"Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophet" (Mark 8:28) – Jesus' contemporaries conceptualized his identity as that of a prophet. Even some, if not most of his disciples, saw in Jesus not the Messiah, but a prophet; proof of this is what the disciples of Emmaus say, "a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people" (Luke 24:19).
Even if Jesus fits in the context of the prophets of Israel, he is certainly a prophet different from all his predecessors, for none before him elected 12 disciples among his many followers. With the people of Israel made up of 12 tribes, it is certain that Jesus intended to create a structure. And when these twelve were reduced to 11 by the death of one of them, the concern of the apostles, especially Peter, to restore the number cannot be due to anything other than being faithful to the Master's intention.
If Jesus had taken care to call a disciple from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, we could conclude that his intention was to restore, to reform the people of Israel; but this was not the case. By maintaining the symbolism of the number 12, Jesus intended to create a structure comparable to that of the people of Israel. However, by not calling one person from each tribe of Israel to be his disciple, he intended to create a new structure and not to restore or reformulate Israel.
We conclude that Jesus intended to create a structure that would continue his work and he even made it very clear that this structure, in order to remain standing, should have a leader. The primacy of Peter, as we have already said in an article about him, is also evident in all four gospels in many ways.
Church or Kingdom of God?
Beyond opinions, theologies or ideologies, what counts are the facts. It is a fact that the Greek word "Ekklesia" meaning assembly appears 112 times in the New Testament, most often in Paul’s letters and those of the other apostles, as well as in the book of Acts. As we have said above, it does not appear in the Gospel of Mark, the first to be written, nor in the last, the Gospel of John; it also does not appear in Luke, and in Matthew which is precisely the gospel about the Kingdom, this same word Church appears twice:
(...) you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matthew 16:18-19
It is likely that Jesus did say this, although none of the other gospels mentions it, not even Mark’s, written in Rome, which is based on Peter's preaching. He more than anyone would be interested in affirming Peter's primacy over the other apostles.
However, Mark does not paint a very favorable picture of any of the apostles, not even of Peter. For Mark, the one who discovers and affirms the true identity of Jesus is the Roman centurion when Jesus breathed his last and not Peter in Caesarea Philippi, as Matthew tells us.
We could conclude that this phrase, in the case that it is not historical, is at least true. That is, even if this phrase had not been historically uttered by Jesus, "Ipsissima iesum verbum", by the context of all the gospels concerning the primacy of Peter, expressed so often and in so many varied ways, the phrase is true because it expresses a gospel truth.
If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. Matthew 18:17
This sentence was certainly not uttered by Jesus, as it deals with a norm of discipline practiced in the community from where the evangelist was writing. Jesus always commands forgiveness, never gives up on anybody and always believes in conversion; he would not, therefore, exclude anyone since he came for the righteous and the sinners alike.
Let us look at the number of times the words Kingdom and Church appear in the New Testament writings:
|
|
KINGDOM |
CHURCH |
|
NEW TESTAMENT |
162 |
112 |
|
GOSPELS |
127 |
2 |
|
ACTS & LETTERS |
35 |
110 |
In sharp contrast to the word CHURCH which appears 112 times and almost only in Acts and in the letters, the word KINGDOM appears 162 times and of these, only 35 times in the book of Acts and the letters; the remaining 127 times appear in the gospels. This shows how important the Kingdom of God was for Jesus and how of little importance this same Kingdom was for the Church that he himself founded.
Way - Truth - Life (John 14:6)
A human being has an individual and personal dimension for which the value to cultivate is freedom, and a social dimension for which the value to cultivate is equality. Jesus came into the world with two projects: one for the human being as unique, indivisible, independent and free, and the other for the same human being as part of a community.
Jesus' project for the world, for society, for the human being as a social being, is the Kingdom of God; Jesus' project for the human being, while individual and personal being not reducible to the community but free, independent and autonomous, is Jesus himself. Jesus came into the world to propose himself in deeds and in his personal behavior as the way, the truth, and the life.
Jesus of Nazareth is the way back to the Father from where we came, Jesus of Nazareth is the full truth of God and man because he is true God and true man, and he is the archetype of human life, that is, the model, the paradigm, the narrative, the myth, the legend, because he and he alone incarnated humanity as God had idealized when he created Adam and Eve.
Whether Christian, atheist, agnostic, Muslim or Buddhist, anyone who wants to be authentic and genuinely human is measured in relation to Jesus because he is the gold standard of humanity. There is no equally valid alternative other than Jesus, for he did not say that he was one of the ways, one of the truths and one of the lives. On the contrary, he said that no one goes to the Father except through him (John 14:6), and that whoever does not gather with him scatters, since there are no one else with whom one can gather. (Matthew 12:30)
Church - Mission - Kingdom
After the Second Vatican Council, the Church stopped looking at her bellybutton and began to look at the world as Jesus had looked and to see in it the Kingdom that is already in our midst since Jesus came into the world, but not yet in its fullness. The Mission began with God sending his firstborn son into the world. The goal of this mission has always been to transform the world into the Kingdom of God; before this moment, the world was from the sin of our parents.
The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, can have no other purpose than to continue the work of Christ. Therefore, the objective of her existence is not to implant herself in every corner of this earth, but to bring the Good News of the Kingdom to every corner of the earth.
The main objective of the Church is not to produce Christians, not to increase the number of her members, but to join all men of good will, from other religions, atheists or agnostics and, with them, to help in the building of a better world, a more just and fraternal society, where justice, peace and harmony, and love among peoples’ reign. If this had been the goal of the Church from the very beginning, as it was of her founder, there would have been no fundamentalism like the Inquisition, or holy wars like that driven by the Crusades.
The Church does not exist for herself nor should she preach herself, since her Master and founder did not preach himself: The Church exists for the Mission, that is, to continue the work of her founder and the purpose of the Mission, which is the Kingdom. The Church is what we are, it is our identity, the Kingdom is our mission, it is what we do.
It is precisely the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Gospel of the Kingdom, that reminds us in chapter 25 that in the end we will not be judged by who we are, by our identity, by whether or not we were Christians, atheists or Muslims, but by what we did or did not do, whether or not we assisted the thirsty, the hungry, the naked, the pilgrims, the prisoners, the foreigners and the sick. Because assisting the latter few had been the purpose of Jesus' life and his coming into the world, this very thing must be our goal too.
Therefore, do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:31-33
Our mission or evangelization is to live Christ and to extend the Kingdom. It should not be primarily to preach the figure of Christ, but to make the Kingdom a reality. This is what Francis of Assisi meant when he said, "Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words”; most of the time it will not be necessary to use words as your life will speak for itself.
This is why Jesus himself told us to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth which are two silent symbols whose identities are not linked to what they say but to what they do: their action of exposing and destroying darkness, and giving color to the world, in the case of light, and of preserving, avoiding corruption, and giving flavor and meaning to life, in the case of salt.
EUCHARIST: SACRAMENTAL BODY OF CHRIST
Unus christianus nullus christianus
St. Augustine said that a lone Christian is a null Christian. Christianity was born in community and can only be lived in community. Without community there is no Christianity. As all animals have a habitat where they live and thrive, so a Christian can only live and thrive within the Christian community.
The Church, a group of people united in the same faith, exists as such and manifests herself as such in the Eucharist. A club, an association of people who never gets together, will cease to exist as such, will not subsist. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them, " said Jesus; therefore, the meeting, the encounter is essential. Without the Eucharist there is no Church, just as without the Church there is no Eucharist, that is, there is nothing to celebrate. As many grains of wheat make one bread and as many grapes make one wine, so is the same with the Eucharist: it gathers everyone to community.
Our physical body is made up of trillions of cells very different from each other, such as skin, liver, muscles and blood cells, etc. Each of our cells is, in itself, a differentiated and independent living being; there are in fact single-celled living organisms. What keeps the trillions of cells together in one body is the genetic code that each of these cells has which is the same in all of them.
In fact, when one of our organs ceases to function and an organ belonging to another person is transplanted into us, our body naturally rejects it because that organ is made up of cells with a different genetic code. What keeps all Christians united in the Eucharist is faith in Jesus Christ, who is the genetic code or the DNA of Christ's mystical body.
The trillions of cells in our body have the same DNA because they are all daughters of the same parent cell or zygote, which formed when our father's half-cell, the sperm, joined our mother's half-cell, the egg. The cell that resulted from this union, was the beginning of our life, was the parent cell of the trillions of cells that currently form our body. So also, the mystical body of Christ, which is the Church today, originated from Christ himself, from Christ’s own physical body.
Just as our zygote implanted itself in our mother’s womb and grew, thrived, self-differentiated and increased in number until it formed our present physical body of trillions of cells, so Christ, the "image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation" (Colossians 1:15), was the first cell that, by incarnation, was implanted into the world, grew and thrived giving rise to the Church.
Faith lived, faith celebrated and faith reflected
Faith, like so many other realities that we have been studying for three years, is three-dimensional: faith lived, faith celebrated and faith studied.
Faith lived manifests itself in works – A practicing Catholic is not someone who participates in the sacraments, but someone who lives his faith; the one who embodies it, who makes his faith his everyday behavior. Saint James recalls that faith without works is dead. It is not the works that save us, for there are not enough works that would make us deserving of salvation, if this were the case, then Christ's coming into the world would not have been needed. "Without me you can do nothing,” said the Lord, so it is faith that saves us. However, a faith that does not manifest itself in works is nonexistent.
Faith celebrates itself in the sacraments – We grow in faith when we practice it in life and when we celebrate it in the sacraments with other members of the community who shares our faith. It was the Lord himself who told us to celebrate in his memory. The festal gathering takes us out of the ordinary of our lives. The human being needs to celebrate, to manifest individually and socially what he believes in.
The Eucharist is the heart of the Church. In the human body, the function of the heart is to be the engine that moves blood from the heart to the cells and from the cells to the heart. In the same way, the life of a Christian is a shuttle between the Eucharist and the world. When Mass was celebrated in Latin, the priest would say at the end "Ite, missa est" which meant "you can go, the Mass is over", but it also meant "the Mass is over, the mission begins".
On their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. Luke 9:10.
Faith is a reasonable gift – (…) always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you. 1 Peter 3:15. Our faith should also be the object of study. The First Vatican Council defined it as a reasonable gift. Faith is not rational, because it is not a scientific knowledge, but it is also not irrational, like superstition. Faith must be reasonable, humanly credible, and plausible, it must make sense, because if God gave us the ability to reason, it is for us to make good use of it.
Regarding the Eucharist, already in Jesus’ time, the Jews wondered how he could give them his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. Is he inviting them to become cannibals and vampires? Even today, if any atheist, agnostic or member of other religions ask this question, many Christians do not know what to say. We will give you our answer later.
Lamb of God... history of the Eucharist
According to the author of the letter to the Hebrews, the purpose of religion is to access friendship with God. This goal was achieved through obedience to the Law of Moses. However, even if the spirit is strong, the flesh is weak when it is prevaricated, that is, whenever the law was disobeyed the only way to return to friendship with God was to offer a sacrifice. This is not only true in the Jewish religion, but also in all the religions of the world.
The impersonal sacrifices of the Old Testament
The only way to appease the divine wrath when the Law was violated was to reestablish good relations with God. Since no one is perfect, without the sacrificial system the Law would be completely useless. The sacrifice had different outlines, but it was always the sacrifice of something outside of oneself. The book of Leviticus (16:10) tells us of the scapegoat that was a "male goat" upon which the sins of the people were projected, and then sent into the wilderness to die.
This idea of atoning for the sins of others, of the righteous paying for the sinner, is ingrained in our nature. In the English monarchy there was the figure of the "weeping boy" who was a poor bastard that was punished instead of the prince who, because he was a prince, could not be punished for his wrongdoings.
This same idea I found in a Boy Scout camp; whenever a scout committed some error, he was not disciplined alone: the punishment was extended to all the members of his group. From a psychological point of view, this punishment was more effective than if it were individual since it also conveyed the idea that when you sin, even if individually, you always sin against the community.
The sacrifice of oneself
Jesus is the ultimate "scapegoat" of humanity. As John the Baptist said, he is the Lamb of God who once and for all takes away the sin of the world. Christ's sacrifice in the context of the Jewish Passover, the moment Jesus chose to die, is the last of the Old Testament, because he died in our place, he was our "scapegoat". This same sacrifice is the first of the new covenant because it is not about offering something outside of oneself, but about offering one’s very self.
To be valid, once and for all, Jesus' sacrifice had to be perfect. A perfect thing is a singular thing, it cannot be repeated or improved; so it was the sacrifice of Jesus, since he could not die twice. Jesus' sacrifice was perfect because he himself was the temple, the altar, the lamb, and the priest.
The temple is the place where God dwells: Jesus is God himself, so he is the perfect temple; the altar is the place inside the temple where the lamb is offered: Jesus is the altar because the sacrifice happens in him and not external to him; the lamb should be spotless: Jesus is like us in all things, except sin, that is why he is the most perfect lamb.
Furthermore, the priest of the old covenant, before offering a sacrifice for the people, had to offer a sacrifice for himself to purify himself; Jesus, as the High Priest, is pure, he does not need to offer any sacrifice for himself; on the other hand, the priest is a pontiff, a bridge between God and men; Jesus, being true God and true man at the same time, is the perfect bridge between God and men. Thus it is concluded that it is not possible to perfect the sacrifice of Jesus, so it applies to humanity of all times.
At the Last Supper, like every Jew, Jesus celebrates with his disciples the Passover Seder. This time, however, when he pronounces over the bread and wine "this is my body…this is my blood…", Jesus declares himself the Paschal Lamb who forever replaces the lambs of the Old Covenant. Christ died at a time when thousands of lambs were immolated in the Temple. (Cf. John 19:14). Saint Paul says, "For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed." (1 Cor. 5:7)
It was instituted in bread
Man has already been carnivore and has already been vegetarian and fruit gatherer. But in that capacity, he never thrived or constituted any civilization, since like today's wild animals, most of the 24 hours of his day were spent searching for food – life was a constant struggle for survival.
With the discovery of agriculture, especially cereals, man conquered his independence from nature. It is possible to store cereals for many years, as the story of Joseph of Egypt shows and, in fact, wheat grains were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun that is more than 5,000 years old, and which still germinated. By having food stored, man had time to devote to other things.
Where there was no cereal, there was no culture or civilization. This happened to the Indians of North America and the Africans of the sub-Saharan Africa. It is interesting that the word culture is ambivalent: it applies to both the cultivation of science and art and the cultivation of land. As we have already demonstrated in a previous text, European culture is essentially based on the cultivation of wheat. The Asian culture has as its stable food rice, and that of the American Continent, where there was culture, depended on the cultivation of corn.
On the other hand, we can say that whole grains are the basis of human food because they provide energy slowly and for a long time when ingested integrally. The basis of any healthy diet is always cereal.
If the grain of wheat doesn't die...
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:24-25
The Eucharist reveals to us the truth about life that emanates from these words of Jesus. Jesus interpreted his death as being necessary for life and for teaching us that there is no life without death or death without life. That death is a passage between a form of life based on space and time continuum to eternal life, beyond space and time.
That's exactly what we see in nature. "In nature nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed" said Lavoisier. Life and death follow each other, and death is only a passage and life a constant. The grass grows and dies in the gazelle’s teeth, the grass transforms into the gazelle that, in turn, dies in the teeth of the lion, turning into lion. The lion dies and the hyena and vultures eat it; they die and are eaten by worms; these die too and fertilize the earth, rich in humus where the grass grows again. In the food chain, both on land and at sea, every form of life is a form of food.
This is the law of nature and the human being who lives in it is certainly not governed by any other laws. Now we understand the issue of cannibalism or vampirism raised above. We do not live to eat the flesh of others and drink their blood, but rather to be eaten by them and drunk by them. Anyone who wants to gain his life will lose it. To live physically, we must kill, whether wheat grains, vegetables or animals like chicken, pig, cow, but to live humanly with meaning, to live spiritually, we must die, we must give ourselves to others as food.
No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his friends, Jesus said. A mother lives for her child and at the beginning of his life, the baby's food comes from her body. Therefore, the breast from which milk springs forth gave rise to the word mama/mommy. And when the child grows up, the first solid food that he eats is porridge, traditionally made of cereals grown by the father, whom the baby learns to call papa/daddy.
Beethoven gave his life to music, he was food for music, so much so that at the end of life he could no longer hear. To devote ourselves to a human task, to a human value, with heart and soul it is to give our life to be food for this cause, just as Gandhi was for the independence of India, just as Nelson Mandela was against racism.
The grain of wheat can die in the mill by turning into bread, or on the ground by turning into other grains of wheat. But let us imagine that the grain of wheat would not accept dying either in the mill or on the ground, and that it could flee from the miller and the sower: in the end, it would die anyway, since every living organism dies. But how would it die? It would die rotten.
But before dying, let us imagine that the grain of wheat wondered "what good did my life serve, what meaning did my life have, when I withdrew from the laws of nature and tried to save my life from the sower and miller?" Surely its life made no sense since it would only have made sense if it had agreed to die.
The Lord Jesus was right in saying that whoever clings to his life, who retains it for himself, loses it and whoever gives it away gains it. To live is always to give one’s life for a cause, and to be the food for a human cause to which we give ourselves totally, putting all the meat in the roaster, as a Spanish expression says, without reserving anything for ourselves.
To abandon the Eucharist is to abandon the Church
The first disciples to abandon the Master did so because they did not understand or accept that Jesus could give himself to them as food (John 6:51-69). From that time until our days, those who leave the Church begin by failing to participate in the Eucharist, that is, they stop celebrating the memory of Jesus as He himself had asked.
The episode of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is another example where it is proven that the abandonment of the Eucharist is the abandonment of the Church and vice versa. Jesus catches them leaving Jerusalem, abandoning the community; along the way, what Jesus does in explaining the scriptures to them is like the Liturgy of the Word, the first part of Mass. Later, when sitting at the table he shares the bread with them, the offertory and communion take place. The return to participate in the Eucharist led the disciples of Emmaus back to Jerusalem, to life with the Christian community that lived there.
PRIESTHOOD: PHYSICAL BODY OF CHRIST
The Mission, according to Luke, is not the exclusive task of the 12 Apostles, but of every disciple, of every Christian. This is clear from the very beginning of the Church: the name or title of apostle was given to everyone who acted as such, that is, to those who preached the gospel and not only to those who were directly chosen by Christ, like the twelve. Paul and Barnabas are a clear example of this: they were not in the company of Jesus, but they rightly claim the title of apostle.
It is more than clear today that at the Last Supper, where the Eucharist was instituted, the diners were not only the 12 apostles, as Leonardo da Vinci depicts in his famous painting, or even as the gospels describe that do not include nor exclude the female disciples of Jesus, such as Mary Magdalene and all the others who had followed him from Galilee and who contributed their resources to the support of the group.
We can also conclude that Jesus would have admitted some women, certainly his mother and Mary Magdalene, as he indicated in the episode of Martha and Mary of Bethany in which he accepted that Mary should put aside domestic service proper to women. It is precisely in this most important meal that he would have shared it with those closest to him. In fact, a Jewish Passover Seder begins with the lighting of candles and a sung ritual prayer; this rite was always done by the mother of the house, in this case quite possibly by the mother of Jesus. We can then conclude that yes, there were women at the Last Supper who were in charge of domestic service, but there would also be women sitting at the table with the disciples, at least Mary, mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
Today's priests are the successors of Jesus' apostles, from the inner most circle of those who accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem. The apostolic succession that confers today and always the priestly legitimacy on an individual refers to the rite of the imposition of hands of the 12 apostles on their successors from generation to generation, to this day. The Protestant clergy is not legitimate, because Luther broke away with this succession by breaking ties with the Church.
Pontifex Maximus
Whether Supreme Pontiff, or chief bridge engineer, this was the title of the Roman emperor and is today the title of the Pope as the bishop of Rome. One of the contributions of the Romans to the ancient world was the creation of roads and bridges. Many of Europe's current roads are built on top of Roman roads. The concept of bridge is original to the ancient world; the Greeks were great philosophers and artists, but weak builders and architects. The most they did was the Parthenon of Athens, a building that needed many columns to stand on. With an arch, the Romans were able to unite two different realities over the void that separated them, for example, the banks of a river.
Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Hebrews 5:1
Christ being true God and true man, has one foot in God and the other in humanity: he is the true bridge between God and men. Jesus Christ is the only priest, mediator between God and men. The Catholic priest represents Christ today, he is an alter Christus, he is Christ here and now because he acts "In persona Christi", in the name of Christ, as we see what Peter and John did when they told the man lame from birth who asked for alms at the door of the temple: "in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazareth, stand up and walk!" (Acts 3:6)
Consecrated for a service
"I am among you as one who serves." Luke 22:27
The priest already lives on earth the life that we all hope to live in Heaven, which is why he does not marry, does not accumulate wealth. As a bridge between God and men, he lives with one foot on earth and the other in Heaven; he does not live completely in Heaven, because he has a physical body to satisfy, nor does he live completely on earth, because he does not live the life of ordinary mortals: getting married, having children, having a job or a profession to support the family...
Faithful to both sides, firmly resting on each, he does not belong to any of them because he is not entirely in one or the other: he has one foot in each. Since he does not live like the rest of the mortals, he does not live for himself, he has no personal life, he is a public person; he is, like Christ, 24 hours a day entirely at the service of others. He could not be a minister of Christ if he were not a witness and dispenser of another life other than the earthly life, but he could not serve men either if he remained completely detached from their lives and conditions.
The bridge supports the weight of those who pass over it, it is a place of passage, people do not live on a bridge, they pass over it. Those who seek affections ought to seek another profession, another kind of life where these can be found. The bridge is not valued for its beauty, but for its usefulness. The bridge is forgotten, because the person who crosses it remembers the shore he left and embraces the shore he comes to, but does not even remember the bridge that joined these two shores, he takes it for granted. In the same way, the priest who serves as an intermediary between God and men is a channel, not a shell.
The priest is always called to be a bridge and mediator between men, peoples, among ideas, between generations. Mediator, peacemaker, he reconciles the faithful with himself, with others and with God. That is why he is an instrument of divine mercy.
Abandonment of the sacrament of reconciliation
In relation to the mystical body of Christ, people abandon the Church by abandoning the Eucharist; in relation to the physical body of Christ, many abandon the Church by abandoning the sacrament of reconciliation, they cease to be in communion with Christ by rejecting in the priest the power or faculty to forgive sins in the name of Christ.
Lately, many other abandonments of the Church are due to the scandal that certain priests committed by not living their ministry as they should and as they promised before the Church on the day of their ordination or the imposition of hands. Those who left the Church felt defrauded by the behavior of the priest who, according to them, should be holy.
The Church is holy because she was founded by Christ, but she is human because she is made up of humans with their defects. A certain idolizing of the priest, promoted by himself or due to the veneration of the faithful, is also responsible for this scandal, when it is perceived that the priest is not on a personal level who he appears to be in public.
The faithful must remember that the priest is only an intermediary, or that he is only a bridge. The faithful must remember that his faith is in Christ, and that the priest, however well he represents Him, never represents Him perfectly; only Christ is Holy, Holy, Holy. A representative is an actor; there are good actors and bad actors. The holy priest, like Saint Cure of Ars and so many others, represents Christ well; others represent him badly, on account of certain behaviors
As someone used to say, a tree that falls makes more noise in the forest than a thousand trees that grow. The faithful must also remember that for every priest that causes a scandal, there are 20 or more who edify. The 20 who build should be more than enough reason for the faithful to remain in the Church with their eyes fixed on Christ. The first priests, the 12 that Jesus chose, also had their flaws, Peter denied him, Judas betrayed him, the rest abandoned him, and yet Jesus did not reject them and did not reject his project – the Church.
Conclusion - The Church is Christ in his mystical body, the Eucharist is Christ in his sacramental body, the priest is Christ in his physical body. Both the Church, the Eucharist and the Priest, represent Him in the here and now, and act in His name.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
