Eucharist and the Mystical Body
Back to the Source and Summit.
We were discussing suffering and the Eucharist, and this lead us to examine anew the Mystical Body of Christ and our participation in It. This is the crux of everything, the point that makes sense of everything else – that we are IN Christ, and Christ is IN us.
My head spins with these words, because there is a lifetime of meditation here, and if we can get our minds around the truth of it, it transforms everything we do.
These were Christ’s words before He gave us His very Body and Blood to sustain us after His sacrificial death. He explained the mystery of the Mystical Body, described our oneness in Love, His identification with us and our incorporation in Him (we are “sons in the Son”). And then He fed us with Himself – became one with us physically, as a bridegroom becomes one with his bride. He gives Himself to us fully in love, invites us to open ourselves fully to Him, and we become one Body – one with Him, one with each other (we all partake of the “one loaf,” as St Paul puts it), one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as we participate in the intimate life of the Trinity.
We are tabernacles of the Trinity.
We are in God, God is in us. Allow me to condense the whole of theology in one dense paragraph:
In every moment, God is acting, His plan is being fulfilled, His work is being done. His action is always love (we see this as mercy and forgiveness on earth) and His work is to draw all things to Himself in love. The Son became man, the Second Adam, to re-do what had been un-done, to restore man to his intended dignity, and to identify Himself with our weakness so that Christ may be all in all. Christ is all, we can do nothing without Him, we must put on Christ and submit our wills to His so that He can continue to act in the world, and so that we may become UNUM QUID – one entity, the Mystical Body of Christ come to full stature. And as we are all one in the Body, what we do to the least of these, and to the greatest, we do to Christ.
It is all Christ.
We are oned with God; we are alive by the breath of God. If God stopped “breathing” us, we would cease to be. Everything we do is participation in the life of God, who is intimately connected with our life. What we do, we do IN GOD.
Our understanding of this should change our understanding of our deliberate choices - sin becomes not just a "rejection of the rules" or "something I do by myself for myself" but a real interruption in the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ. Every selfish choice prevents Christ from participating in that action, and effectively prevents Him from acting in the world in that moment. Our pride and sin can disrupt the process of God’s action and prevent His will from being done fully in us and through us at that particular intersection of time and space. Every act contrary to the will of God cannot be shared by Christ, is not part of the life of His Body, and therefore has no real value.
And yet (one of those paradoxical mysteries of God that are hidden from our understanding in this life), Christ Himself has redeemed the whole world, and has somehow "made good" every wrong. Somehow, even our sins can be made to bring glory to Him, or He would not have allowed sin to be. And of course, He loves us and died for us "while we were yet sinning," so our sin does not diminish His absolute and unwavering - unwavering! - love for us.
So in an ultimate and real sense, our sins do not disrupt His Plan, because He has allowed for our sin too, which is the mind-boggling part of this meditation. EVEN THOUGH we sin and disrupt His plan, His plan is not disrupted; He's already allowed for our sinfulness and selfishness and woundedness. He's already become the Second Adam, undoing the worst thing that was ever done, redeeming all of creation, so that whatever is done now easily finds its remedy in His death and resurrection.
Yet Christ taught us to pray "Thy will be done," so that we would learn to conform our wills to the Father's, as He did. If there were no possibility that God's will could be disrupted, we would not have to pray that His will would be done. Our will CAN be (and often is) opposed to God's, in which case we are not allowing God to act fully. Christ "came to do the will of the Father," which implies that He had a will of His own, which He actively conformed to the Father's - "not my will, but Yours be done." This is our prayer as well, and insofar as we are able to let Christ reign in us and submit our wills to His, He will be free to act in us and through us in the world.
So in one of those ineffable awe-some paradoxes of God, we might say that even though our sins evade God or oppose Him or disrupt the unity of His Body or offend Him or prevent Him from acting fully through us, His will is always done. He's already allowed for our brokenness and weakness, He already knows what will happen, and so His Plan continues to unfold and His will is done.
Yet in the practical milieu of everyday choices, it is helpful for me to consider that my choices are not about the best thing FOR God, but the best thing IN God.
If I had more time to think and pray and write, I might make these reflections more organized and maybe even clearer. But you are forgiving, and the discussions here often clarify (when I don’t scramble everything), so I’m posting this and relying on the Holy Spirit, as usual ;-)
Back to the Source and Summit.
We were discussing suffering and the Eucharist, and this lead us to examine anew the Mystical Body of Christ and our participation in It. This is the crux of everything, the point that makes sense of everything else – that we are IN Christ, and Christ is IN us.
“…that they all may be one as You, Father, in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us… And the glory which You have given to Me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as We also are one: I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one…that the love wherewith You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them…” (John 17)
My head spins with these words, because there is a lifetime of meditation here, and if we can get our minds around the truth of it, it transforms everything we do.
These were Christ’s words before He gave us His very Body and Blood to sustain us after His sacrificial death. He explained the mystery of the Mystical Body, described our oneness in Love, His identification with us and our incorporation in Him (we are “sons in the Son”). And then He fed us with Himself – became one with us physically, as a bridegroom becomes one with his bride. He gives Himself to us fully in love, invites us to open ourselves fully to Him, and we become one Body – one with Him, one with each other (we all partake of the “one loaf,” as St Paul puts it), one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as we participate in the intimate life of the Trinity.
We are tabernacles of the Trinity.
We are in God, God is in us. Allow me to condense the whole of theology in one dense paragraph:
In every moment, God is acting, His plan is being fulfilled, His work is being done. His action is always love (we see this as mercy and forgiveness on earth) and His work is to draw all things to Himself in love. The Son became man, the Second Adam, to re-do what had been un-done, to restore man to his intended dignity, and to identify Himself with our weakness so that Christ may be all in all. Christ is all, we can do nothing without Him, we must put on Christ and submit our wills to His so that He can continue to act in the world, and so that we may become UNUM QUID – one entity, the Mystical Body of Christ come to full stature. And as we are all one in the Body, what we do to the least of these, and to the greatest, we do to Christ.
It is all Christ.
We are oned with God; we are alive by the breath of God. If God stopped “breathing” us, we would cease to be. Everything we do is participation in the life of God, who is intimately connected with our life. What we do, we do IN GOD.
Our understanding of this should change our understanding of our deliberate choices - sin becomes not just a "rejection of the rules" or "something I do by myself for myself" but a real interruption in the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ. Every selfish choice prevents Christ from participating in that action, and effectively prevents Him from acting in the world in that moment. Our pride and sin can disrupt the process of God’s action and prevent His will from being done fully in us and through us at that particular intersection of time and space. Every act contrary to the will of God cannot be shared by Christ, is not part of the life of His Body, and therefore has no real value.
And yet (one of those paradoxical mysteries of God that are hidden from our understanding in this life), Christ Himself has redeemed the whole world, and has somehow "made good" every wrong. Somehow, even our sins can be made to bring glory to Him, or He would not have allowed sin to be. And of course, He loves us and died for us "while we were yet sinning," so our sin does not diminish His absolute and unwavering - unwavering! - love for us.
So in an ultimate and real sense, our sins do not disrupt His Plan, because He has allowed for our sin too, which is the mind-boggling part of this meditation. EVEN THOUGH we sin and disrupt His plan, His plan is not disrupted; He's already allowed for our sinfulness and selfishness and woundedness. He's already become the Second Adam, undoing the worst thing that was ever done, redeeming all of creation, so that whatever is done now easily finds its remedy in His death and resurrection.
Yet Christ taught us to pray "Thy will be done," so that we would learn to conform our wills to the Father's, as He did. If there were no possibility that God's will could be disrupted, we would not have to pray that His will would be done. Our will CAN be (and often is) opposed to God's, in which case we are not allowing God to act fully. Christ "came to do the will of the Father," which implies that He had a will of His own, which He actively conformed to the Father's - "not my will, but Yours be done." This is our prayer as well, and insofar as we are able to let Christ reign in us and submit our wills to His, He will be free to act in us and through us in the world.
So in one of those ineffable awe-some paradoxes of God, we might say that even though our sins evade God or oppose Him or disrupt the unity of His Body or offend Him or prevent Him from acting fully through us, His will is always done. He's already allowed for our brokenness and weakness, He already knows what will happen, and so His Plan continues to unfold and His will is done.
Yet in the practical milieu of everyday choices, it is helpful for me to consider that my choices are not about the best thing FOR God, but the best thing IN God.
If I had more time to think and pray and write, I might make these reflections more organized and maybe even clearer. But you are forgiving, and the discussions here often clarify (when I don’t scramble everything), so I’m posting this and relying on the Holy Spirit, as usual ;-)
posted by KathrynTherese at 4:55 PM
6 Comments:
Just thinking out loud here, but sometimes, to better understand of what value each person is to Him, one might jump ahead -- to Catherine of Genoa's and/or Jesuit Michael Taylor's "Purgatory". But still, one might put on a small lamp for those readings, because eternity is the most mysterious of mysteries, and without God's direct input and enlarging, which is delayed by so much, we have fear of the unknown. I think that is because except for a few brief moments, we are never loved as we ought to be, nor do we love as we ought, except while we are tiny children.. until and unless we later find Love, which is not hidden and is knowable, but is humble, quiet, unassuming. Like living in a world of ocean, but needing to find the tiny yet endless and potable spring.
It seems to me that the more one grows in grace - as the body and mind and outer life grows in stature, the soul is growth on the inside - the more it seems one understands the point of suffering, and the point of His Eucharist. We all will suffer, but we can do so be-Christedly, in which there is holiness for self and possibly for other or others (at the very least, we become holy arrow, pointing), or we can suffer unto ourselves, like Gestas, in which the pain of fallen existence continues (a hellish thing) and is allowed to be our God and which is allowed to define us. De-fruited, all of it, except for the mercies He grants upon the prayers and Masses from known and unknown others for struggling souls.
Unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have not (His) life within us. And if we do, if we have His life within us, even our hands will think/act as His. Until we see as we are seen, we bend our backs mostly in faith of what we have heard. What I have heard is that He has atoned for me, took on my life and gave me His life to wear and breathe and eat, to live and love from, and lives in me, thereby a Triune indwelling, and wants me perpetually and eternally with Him, having prepared a place for me. So how can I overworry about the rust to burn off on my own account.. must I not be more concerned for those who suffer from the greatest pain, that of not knowing they are Loved, or how much, or how unwaveringly, or who in their great suffering, need yoked help in their suffering, both spiritually and in physical easing.
She who loved much was forgiven much. What guts it takes in this world to cry our departures upon holy Feet because others did not offer them a courtesy. Such pain of contrition and gratitude and also of compassion, laves not only holy Feet, but that one's soul. Our selfless love ones us to Him, but of course, we have first had an inkling of Love. And it is only His school, His gospels, that teach us how to be self-less. He chose us, we didn't choose Him.
Now, we can choose Him.
Whether we pray the Anima Christi as a "me" or an "us", it is the perfect prayer after the Our Father, and we ought to marvel anew over every word. Growing in grace as part of His Body means we will be more aware of what is discordant, of what defiles, but also, more aware of What heals, brings in, transforms, ones, and raises from all death. Him. So (for me, anyway) if growth must be via His share given to us of unavoidable suffering, and/or is unavoidably (by reason of love) a shared suffering, then indeed, Paul, in/with/through Him, to live is Christ, and so be it. Each day that I walk away from His Eucharist, however, away from Life - of far more weight than mere prayer or service or goodwill, which without Him becomes only a longing - then I lose His Dismas "today" pronouncement, and soon return to Gestas' teeth-gnashing in Evian darkness, and thus suffer His others to starve as well. This is why we worship, work, live (and receive) as community. No man (but He) is an island. Our Anima Christi plea must also be or become an "us" prayer, but either way, we've no means to pray it without His Body and Blood in us. We've no way to hide self or others within His Wounds, and we must be hid there, one way or another.
Love,
C
Keep "thinking out loud," C. ;-)
You've said so much worth pursuing here, but let me at least say this -
You have pointed to God's absolute immanence, His Presence in every atom and quark of creation, every flash of time; His gentle and absolutely unwavering tenderness toward every one of us at every moment, even in our darkest hours, even in our turning away, even in our tumbling down into the crevasse by our own willfulness.
Every moment is in God, and Love will restore all - His Plan is the same from the beginning until now and has not changed or fluctuated and His vision has not changed and His Promise has not changed and His Name has not changed. God does not blink. He is forever "Savior."
All is Love - Love loving, Love creating, Love forgiving, Love redeeming, Love restoring, Love elvating, Love renewing, Love enriching, Love disposing, Love fulfilling, Love flowing into us, Love flowing through us. And for Love, all is one.
All is gift, and the gifts cannot be separated from the Giver - it is all one same Christ. All is Christ's and Christ is all and all are cherished equalling and infinitely and eternally just as the Son is loved infinitely and eternally.
We will at last be drawn fully to Him and oned with Him in the Holy Spirit. This is His will for us, and His will will be done.
:-) You have reminded me of something I read in Interior Castle, of how only the Lord could thrill her more than when she and all her sisters got together and simply broke into praise upon praise of Him, just pouring out of each ever so naturally. Which reminded me of Francis' dream in which he was shown he would be given brothers. Again, except for the Lord, nothing thrilled him as much. The Holy Spirit, nudge upon nudge, insists on real joy in our Christ. If we joice and re-joice in Exquisite News, there is no adhesive of crank and no vise of ho-hum that can hold us down; joy upon joy is added, wave by wave, and we become impatient for the world to wake up and see what happy Magnificence has unfallen us. But He hears even the tiniest, most lone magnificat. Until we hear it, we don't realize it's what we long to hear, too.
:-) Amen, God does not blink.
Love,
C
Well.. I don't know how profound it is.. it's more like simply speaking aloud a facet of Truth others are not prepared to hear, or dare not. It would seem we somehow feel safer in the midst of hellfire and brimstone, rather than think of God as being as vulnerable and accessible and as intimate as flesh and blood in sacred Species.
It takes courage to let God be God in all the Personal ways He would like.
Questions, questions... One wonders-- did Jesus spend 18 years thinking of how to institute the Eucharist perfectly? Why did He say, "My hour has not yet come," at Cana? Did Mary spend 18 years thinking of how to nudge our Saviour? Was there mirth in His eyes the day 4 friends lowered an ill man down through the roof on his pallet while Jesus preached to an SRO crowd?
Except in childbirth, it feels like such a failure to lay down one's life for another--as if their suffering was victor over one, rather than one's love. Love looks, feels, bleeds and smells like defeat, I guess, until it rises. Still, like in childbirth pains, Jesus must've thrilled a million more times than we, to know He was opening the door for all people, in all times, including His own beloved relatives, to the Father.
Satan would've done his utmost to stomp out His joy, His least joy, the least bit of energy to let that joy live in, the least molecule of earthly life. But that's what it came down to, isn't it--in order to redeem the least molecule of earthly life. Virgin and sinless created Mary gave birth to Jesus; uncreated Virgin and sinless Jesus gave birth to all God's people, in the hardest labor there ever could be. The Firstfruit opened the womb of all the earth; in Him, every single one of us is dedicated to the Lord.
We need to see life differently, now. Why is it taking so long?
Love,
C
Yes, "in Him every single one of us is dedicated to the Lord." We are not our own; we are bought at a great Price.
It isn't until we appreciate that great Price that we recognize the true value of ourselves. And when we glimpse our true value, we begin to begin to know the humble Love from whence we come...
And when we begin to begin to know Him, we glimpse the beauty of every created thing, and every soul - every soul cherished and desired by Him. And THEN we become His co-workers, participators in His great Work.
We scratch the surface here, but what magnificent treasure begins to spill forth!
Clarification:
It isn't that He doesn't allow us to participate in His work of salvation until we reach some high degree of perfection. On the contrary, He can use everyone, everything, even sinners, even sin. He is ingenius to save.
But when we begin to comprehend His great Love and allow that Love to possess us, we are free for Him to act in us in a fuller way. As we make room for Him, His Spirit of Love informs our actions more comprehensively, and we participate in His Work more fully. Because as Christ reigns in us, His work is accomplished through us.
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