The Drama Divine
The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life." "It is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the people of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and the worship we give to Christ and through Him to the Father in the Holy Spirit. By the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life when God will be all in all." So the Documents.
Merely to list the titles by which we identify the Eucharist indicates its inexhaustible riches. We call it:
Similarly, one might think of the sacrament in terms of drama, of play. Play is an age-old effort to express reality in terms that deepen our understanding. Drama is life as viewed by a bystander. One pulls back from the real in order to understand it better.
We can see sanctuary as stage, priest as actor, people as witnesses, as participants: no participants, no drama. We deal with setting, costume, lighting, ritual. The priest says, in effect: "Let us play. I will be Christ. I will take bread on a plate. I will take wine in a cup. I will say over the bread, not this is His Body, for I act in the role of Christ, but this is My Body. I will say over the cup, not this is His Blood, but this is My Blood given for you. And we offer them to the Father the separated Body and Blood expressing His death since body and blood were separated in Him.
This Christ is offered to the Father in atonement for sin. And the sin is forgiven in the mercy of God. He embraces us in love, bids us come forward and eat and drink with Him at the holy table.
Having done so, He dismisses us, sends us back to the world: "Having put Me to death, let be. Abandon evil for good now, hate for love, condemnation for mercy."
For our faith tells us that we put Him to death by our sins. And in the Eucharist we confront again what we have done, beg pardon, receive forgiveness, are graced with His love and life. The Mass is profoundly traumatic.
And of course the play, the drama, the theatre of it is all reality. Here make-believe, pretending, acting, cross the threshold of what is real and become living history.
Yet the Mass is not Calvary repeated. It cannot be repeated. It is Calvary. Calvary carried on through what we call time until the end. Here we enter into stage time, dream time, mythic time, mystic time, God's time---the ultimately real. And hence our engagement is real, our involvement as real as our sins, which are real indeed.
"Were you there when they crucified the Lord?" Yes. This morning.
It is no wonder some of His disciples withdrew when He first started talking about this mystery. They were the first to withdraw. There have been many since.
Even Catholics who avoid Mass reveal meaning by doing so. It can be more than mere indifference. It can be, rather, some canny instinct that is aware of the true meaning of it all. Like an animal sensing danger: a fragile bridge, thin ice which is simply too challenging.
The Mass is everything. You cannot get used to it anymore than you can get used to another new day, another week, another year. Each is unique. A fresh creation. The Mass is one and whole and simple. And yet in God's Now we have it with us new every new day. Drama indeed. Until the final curtain.
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