Nourished by the Sacraments - Eucharist

(the Eucharist - taken from here)

It's been awhile since I last attended the talks at LSCO, with time away back home and other stuff- and today I managed to catch 'Nourished by the Sacraments' and today the featured Sacrament was the Holy Eucharist. The talk was given by Brother Lance, a Jesuit novitiate.

He began by asking us 2 questions:-
1. What gets you most in touch with God?
2. What does the Holy Eucharist mean to you?

We wrote our answers on slips of paper and he read them out - there was a range of answers, which Bro Lance said just went to show how different we all were. Nevertheless, what is important to know is that we all have a limited human conception of God for God cannot be boxed in, He is a mystery.

"The fact that you're surrounded by God and you don't see God, because you know ABOUT God" - Anthony de Mello SJ.
or put another way, we're like the little fish in the ocean who says, "Excuse me, i m looking for the ocean. Can you tell me where to find it?" (Anthony De Mello SJ)

The fact is that we're so caught up in our lives, we don't see/feel God, leaving us more and more dead. We bring our 'deadness' to the Sacrament, with no sense of God.

• Mundane vs Mystical

"We have emptied the Lord's Supper of its mystical union with the divine presence in the bread and wine. We have lost the divine reality it represents"
There is a dual existence to all of us: spiritual/mystical and the physical reality, which is why the fact of the Incarnation, that Christ was fully divine and fully human is so important.
Briefly: the truth of the Incarnation was already laid down as early as 381 AD at the Council of Constantinople and the Council of Chalcedon, 461 AD.

Who am I? Why do I exist? What is my purpose here?

In gazing with love at the Eucharist, it awakens something in us as we get to truly know ourselves as a child of God.

• Spirituality vs Religiosity

"God would be much happier, according to Jesus Christ, if you were transformed than if you worshipped. He would be much more pleased by your loving than by your adoration, or by saying Lord, Lord ... that's spirituality, that's everything. If you have that you have God"
-Anthony de Mello SJ -

Worship is empty without spirituality, and the sad thing is most of us are ignorant of the spirituality of the Eucharist.

So, how to worship/adore the H0ly Eucharist?
It begins with Awareness.
Are you awake? What is your reality? What is your prayer like?
or Are you asleep? Are you confused? or Are you in touch with God??
The question is do we understand what the deeper reality of life is and are awake spiritually.
To do that, we must learn to listen to God in the silence of our prayer -do we feel anything during Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament?
One of the members of the audience shared that she felt nothing, heard nothing, but felt patience and peace come much later.

In fact, we sometimes pray without even realising it - what comes from the heart is honest prayer.
Getting to the heart prayer - starts with honesty!
1. Knowing God
2. Knowing ourselves
3. Coming to accept the juxtaposition
Even if the gulf between God and the self is large, it does not matter. Acceptance is the key.

Spirituality , there is not about piety, devotion, religion or worship but is about awareness: to love, to be free, to have joy and peace.
Religion minus Spirituality makes us in danger of becoming mechanical people.

The question put to all of us by Christ is : Who do you say I am?
Master? Teacher? Friend? Lover?
God = the friend to whom we can pour out all our feelings, deep within our heart.
Our lamentations and joys are all prayer.
The Eucharist invites us to a personal vertical relationship with God, calling for a complete surrender to Him in openness.
Are we allowing God to transform us through the Eucharist?

The speaker then moved to the doctrine of transubstantiation - the transformation of the bread and wine into the blood and body of Christ.
The 2 requirements are a priest and bread and wine. Through the process of Consecration during Mass, the bread and wine is changed.
Scriptural foundation for this can be found here:-
1. John 6: 51-56
2. John 6:63, 66
Cf 1 Cor 2:12-14 and 10:16

Take note of 1 Cor 11: 27-29:-

*Herefore anyone who eats the bread** or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone is to examine himself and only then eat of the bread or drink from the cup; because a person who eats and drinks without recognising the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation. *

Receiving the Eucharist in a state of sin deadens us even more - we are eating and drinking sin on ourselves, living in a state of unawareness, spiritually dead.

Moving on to the historical aspect, the basic features of Catholicism were fixed during the period from Constantine to Pope Leo the Great.
The belief in the Real Presence of Christ was highlighted by many saints, St Ignatius of Antioch, St Justin Martyr and St Cyril the Great.
even though the senses suggest it is just bread and wine, let faith make you firm!

The Eucharist is primarily a calling - reawakening us to the God within us.
What is the real reality of our lives?
Who is calling us? Christ? or our feelings/thoughts?
Thus the Holy Eucharist is the daily saving action of Christ - what was visible during His earthly life is now sacramentalised and rendered visible through the official actions of His body, the Church.
It engages all of who we are - saying Yes to God, and to be the salt and light of the Earth.

This said, although we are so often lost - the disconnect between head and heart i.e. we know but we truly do not know which is all the more reason for us to build a real friendship with the Holy Eucharist.

We could try contemplating Psalm 139 or try the Examen (both personal favourites) and remember that the primary thing to be honest in our prayer - tell God what we are grateful for and not grateful for. In short, to allow God to actually come into our lives.
And when we do that, we love God and all His people
to be special to no one, and love everyone because love shines on good and bad alike, it makes rain fall on saints and sinners alike. (Anthony de Mello SJ)

We all need to learn to focus on true spirituality and not get too caught up in piety.

***

I have much to share about the Eucharist, but since this has been a long post I'll end now with a lovely Eucharistic hymn, 'One Bread, One Body'

My Temporary Home

It was Alex who introduced this song to me, and listening to it reminded me why i chose the name 'The Sojourner Speaks' for this blog - the recognition that i am but a person on a journey and that Earth is not my permanent home. Of course, at the time i started this blog, i was indeed away from my earthly home of Malaysia, across the Causeway,starting a new chapter in my life.

In so many of my walks here, i reflected on where i had come from and where i was heading to, and another bout of homesickness led me to reflect on what heaven was like. The lack of concrete details about what it was like gave me pause, emptiness? God? Harps? Angels? Choirs? And then the great brightness...?
Heaven is real only in the light of God's love, i realised - and coming to know that He loved me first, loves me best and will love me til the end of time gives me the conviction and faith that Heaven, though my imagination fails me, is the singular place where i will encounter God and be with Him for eternity.

the Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of love - i find that drawing closer to home, it is not as if i totally relinquish all my duties and obligations on earth, but i find it easier to put things in perspective, to detach myself from too much fretting about the future (although i still worry) and to concentrate on becoming truer to what He created me to be.

but then again, only if we go away can we experience the true joy of coming home - the experience is incomplete without the journey and the departure.

Heaven and Earth

(picture taken from here)

Today at Living Stones prayer meet, Bryan continued with Part 2 of his talk which was entitled "Heaven and Earth".

He began with a wonderful slideshow of the wonders of Nature while the Creation story was being read out slowly - for those who are interested, it's from Genesis Chapter 1 which is available online here.

Bryan impressed upon us the necessity of understanding the reading in its historical context. in Biblical times, the conception of the world is that of a flat plane with a vault/dome/firmament above - which would be the Heavens where the sun, moon, stars were located.

The reading and images gave us a sense of awe and wonder, that only an Almighty Creator could have made this world, and to cap it off, on the 6th day, God looked back at all He had made and saw that it was very good. Note that this was after God had created man - a point which Bryan would elaborate later on.

Bryan explained that Heaven = All Spiritual realities
while Earth = All Physical Realities

It is known that God created Heaven first, and with it billions upon billions of spiritual beings, as many as there are stars in the sky. these were intelligent beings with free choice. through their beauty and the good they do, they praise God.
Indeed, the most brilliant of the spiritual beings had 12 wings, and his name was Lucifer, the bearer of Light (now, doesn't this name sound familiar?)

Then God created Earth, an act which confounded Lucifer - where was the element of free choice in the creations so far? they seemed nothing more than a vainglorious act of making things just to praise God. But the folly of God is greater than the wisdom of these spiritual beings, and was seen in the ultimate of God's creations on the 6th day: Man. Now, at this point, Lucifer had enough and together with other spiritual beings who agreed with him, decided to abandon God.

Man is both a Spiritual and Physical Being who can bring all realities into praising God.

Praising God is manifested through the following ways:-

• man's inner beauty and goodness;
• the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit:- wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord; and
  
• bringing all physical realities into praising God - by his dominion over the land and creatures of Earth.

Most importantly, it is voluntary, an act out of free will. To worship in the best way possible is to praise God, and we have an entrusted duty to bring all of Creation to praise Him. Here, worship means to cultivate and keep in a good state the physical and spiritual 'gardens' which have been entrusted to us - as was first used in Gen 2:15.

Thus Lucifer has made it his mission to launch an all-out spiritual battle against Man, tempting him to be more animalistic and abandon his role in praising God. the animalistic side of Man is shown when he sins - relating back to last week's topic on the 7 Deadly Sins.

Lucifer's methods are simple, but with terrifying results:-

• influencing Man into taking advantage of physical realities and each other
  
• selfishly enjoying to the limits without transcending Man's own limitations; and
  
• destroying resources, others and finally themselves.
  

All this is done to show proof of the folly of Man. Hence the word 'Devil' is derived from the Greek word "Diabolos', which means 'the accuser' - and Lucifer will stand and accuse us of failing to live up to our God-given role when we die.

Now, take this is a fact - a spiritual man is higher than angels as one of the Sufi mystics put it - although angels are higher than men. This point is made in 1 Cor 6:2-3 as well.

Therefore, it is important that Man fulfils his divine role via free choice and the supremacy of spirit, with the help of the Holy Spirit (The Advocate). We too have a Guardian Angel each whom we ought to get to know!

Reassuringly, God is more powerful than all temptations, and none of these occur without His permission or knowledge. We take comfort in this and seek to praise Him through discipline, freedom of choice and sincere action without any ulterior motives. to this end, we need to get to know our spiritual side, and we can start by attending a silent retreat.

***

The Earth is awesome. We know that. But even more awesome are the tremendous blessings and role we have to play in praising, reverencing and honouring God.
Long ago, St Iranaeus made this observation "God is glorified when man is fully alive"
In conclusion, we are most fully alive when we have sought to live sinless lives (we can never really be free of sin because of the stain of original sin) and also cultivate all our many charisms in the act of reflecting God's glory and bringing others closer to Him.
Finally, AMDG - Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam = all for the greater glory of God (the Ignatian motto) - it's something handy to remember when we are doing anything at all, that it all goes to the Creator Lord.