The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr

Author:Richard Rohr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Universal Incarnate Presence

As if eating his body weren’t enough, Jesus pushes us in even further and scarier directions by adding the symbolism of intoxicating wine as we lift the chalice and speak over all of suffering humanity, “This is my blood.” Jesus then directs us, “Drink me, all of you!” Pause for a moment and try to step outside the domestication of the Eucharist that has occurred in the churches. Remember, contact with blood was usually ritual impurity for a Jew at that time. Is it just me, or is this beginning to have a Count Dracula feeling? Or is it supposed to? Is it supposed to be scandalous and shocking?

One of the things I’ve learned from studying male initiation rites is that startling, vivid rituals are the only ones that have much psychic effect—things like symbolic drowning, digging your own grave, rolling naked in ashes, or even the now outdated slap that the bishop used to give at Confirmation, which shock us into realization. Anything too tame has little psychic effect, at least for men, but I suspect for women too. There’s a real difference between harmless repetitive ceremonies and life-changing rituals. Scholars say that ceremonies normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of things (think of a Fourth of July parade), whereas true ritual offers an alternative universe, where the shadow is named (think of a true Eucharist). In the church, I am afraid we mostly have ceremonies. Most masses I have ever attended are about affirming the status quo, which seldom reveals and often even denies the shadow side of church, state, or culture.

Many mystics and liberation theologians have further recognized that inviting us to drink wine as his blood is an invitation to live in bodily solidarity “with the blood of every person whose blood has been unjustly shed on this earth, from the blood of Abel the Holy to the blood of Zechariah” (Matthew 23:35). These are the first and last murders noted in the Hebrew Bible. In the act of drinking the blood of Christ at this Holy Meal, you are consciously uniting yourself with all unjust suffering in the world, from the beginning of time till its end. Wherever there was and is suffering, there is the sympathy and the empathy of God. “This is all my blood!” Jesus is saying, which sanctifies the victim and gives all bloodshed utter and final significance.

I think of this often as I pronounce these same words looking out over a congregation that barely seems interested in the message. Seeing it as a miracle is not really the message at all. I can see why we celebrate the Eucharist so often. This message is such a shock to the psyche, such a challenge to our pride and individualism, that it takes a lifetime of practice and much vulnerability for it to sink in—as the pattern of every thing—and not just this thing.

The bread and the wine together are stand-ins for the very elements of the universe, which also enjoy and communicate the incarnate presence.

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