Reflections on Holy Thursday with Herbert McCabe

Two years ago I wrote a number of reflections during Holy Week drawing from the late Dominican priest Herbert McCabe’s sermons. You can find his sermons in God Matters. I’ve decided to re-post these (slightly revised) reflections once again here.

On Holy Thursday the church remembers Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples and so also the mystery of communion, or what the church has traditionally called the Eucharist. The Eucharist and indeed everything that the church is about points to the “mystery of unity,” that is, the being-together of people. The church proclaims that all of our efforts toward human unity find their apex and indeed culminate as we participate in the life of the triune God. As the late English Dominican Herbert McCabe pointed out, “The ultimate unity of people is only to be found in God, and the real God is only to be found in unity between people” (God Matters, 78). Needless to say, humanity has not reached a point of unity. Today, we solemnly remember our utter estrangement and alienation from one another. As a result of our persistent disunity our concepts of God constantly slip into idolatry. As McCabe put it, “God becomes for us the God of our class, our nation, our race or time, the tutelary deity, perhaps, of the ‘free world’” (78). When we recall the launching of an illegal U.S.-led war in Iraq seven years ago we still hear the voices of those who said, “God is on our side.” Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us, the church, for our complicity in this idolatry and our collusion with nationalist politics. To recognize the disunity of humanity and our own complicity in this is to recognize our role in the pervasiveness of sin, which is our continual denial of God’s loving grace.

In the church’s celebration of the Eucharist the Last Supper is made present, but we are also flung into the future, for the future of the world is nothing less than participation in the mystery and life of the triune God. It is the unity, the communion that we long for; it is being-together in freedom and truthfulness. Holy Thursday is the celebration of being together as people, as human beings, and so we also celebrate the unity that is to come with the Father, in the Son, and through the Holy Spirit. Yet, Holy Thursday, like all the church’s traditional sacraments, only exists because of sin, which is to say that these things are temporary and incomplete.

Our only hope for unity is in God. As the church, our effort toward this unity is nothing other than solidarity with “the poor and the exploited against their oppressors,” for “the only God we know is the God of the poor, the God who takes sides in the struggle, and that any God of consensus who is supposed to belong to both sides is an illusion and a dangerous one” (79). God takes sides. But we do not. And so we can never say “God is on our side.” Let me be clear, this is not because God is somehow neutral to injustice, but because we are, in fact, compromised. Because God is on the side of the poor, so the church if it is to be a sign of the kingdom must be the church of the poor.

What we experience in the United States is not freedom, peace, or unity primarily because it is born out of fear, indifference to truth, and based on violence. The unity that we have as citizens of a nation, that which constitutes the United States as a public, for instance, is a false unity because it is not grounded in the God who is love and truthfulness. The very structure of the United States and the false catholicity that “globalization” seems to offer is built on human antagonism and violence. The depth of human sin is so severe that all our efforts to dismantle structural violence will not finally bring about unity. Indeed, the human race is in need of a much greater transformation, a more radical revolution than the overthrow of systems of injustice: we are in need of forgiveness.

And so, when the local church gathers together on Holy Thursday, the whole church is present, just as the whole Christ is made present in the Eucharist. This gathering is never private. Whenever the church gathers it gathers as a public in its own right. There is no such thing as private worship. The Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, is thus a sign of the mystery of unity. The Eucharist as a meal is a sign of community and hospitality—the hospitality of God. Each and every human being is invited to the table to share in the food that is a sign of our present and future unity in God. And so we give thanks for the gift of life and nourishment, for God’s sustaining love and God’s Word made flesh in whom we were made and to whom we are destined to share in life together.

All quotes taken from Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987).

Index to Holy Week Series

Here is an index to my series of Holy Week reflections:

1. Holy Thursday
2. Good Friday
3. Holy Saturday
4. Easter Sunday

Reflections on Holy Thursday

Last year I wrote a number of reflections during Holy Week drawing from the late Dominican priest Herbert McCabe’s sermons. You can find his sermons in God Matters. I’ve decided to re-post these reflections here.

On Holy Thursday the church remembers the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples and so also the mystery of the Eucharist.
Because I’m immersed in the work of Herbert McCabe right now this post primarily consists of my reflections on a Holy Thursday sermon he once delivered that was published in God Matters. For McCabe, the Eucharist and indeed everything that the church points to is about the “mystery of unity,” that is, the being together of people. The church proclaims that all our efforts toward unity culminate in God. “The ultimate unity of people is only to be found in God, and the real God is only to be found in unity between people” (God Matters, 78). Needless to say, humanity has not reached a point of unity. Today, we solemnly remember our utter estrangement and alienation from one another. As a result of our persistent disunity our concepts of God constantly slip into idolatry. As McCabe points out, “God becomes for us the God of our class, our nation, our race or time, the tutelary deity, perhaps, of the ‘free world’” (78). As we recall the launching of an illegal war in Iraq five years ago we still hear the sound of “God is on our side.” Lord Jesus forgive us, the church, for our complicity in this idolatry and our collusion with nationalist politics. To recognize the disunity of humanity and our own complicity in this is to recognize the pervasiveness of sin.

In the church’s celebration of the Eucharist the Last Supper is made present, but we are also flung into the future. The future of the world is nothing less than participation in the mystery of triune God. It is the unity, the communion that we long for; it is being-together in truthfulness and freedom. At the moment, as McCabe notes, “We can see humankind itself as one only in mystery, in the gesture towards the reality that is to come. We cannot see love except in hints and guesses of what is to come” (79). Holy Thursday is the celebration of being together as people, as humans, and so we also celebrate the unity that is to come. Yet, Holy Thursday like the sacraments only exist because of sin, which is to say that these things are temporary and incomplete. Sin is “the depth within our quarrels and disunity and dislikes. Sin is the seriousness within human injustice, where it becomes a matter of what God we serve.

Our only hope for unity is in God and our approach toward this unity is, as McCabe points out, to be in solidarity with “the poor and the exploited against their oppressors,” for “the only God we know is the God of the poor, the God who takes sides in the struggle, and that any God of consensus who is supposed to belong to both sides is an illusion and a dangerous one” (79). In McCabe’s view, though God takes sides we do not. And so we can never say that “God is on our side,” but this is not because God is neutral but because we are compromised. Because God is on the side of the poor, so the church if it is to be a sign of the kingdom must be the church of the poor. Despite the optimism of modernity “there is no real unity to the world, the only authentic unity is in the struggle, and it is because this is our real unity here and now that we can only express the Kingdom sacramentally” (79).

What we experience in the United States is not true peace or unity primarily because it is born out of fear and based on violence. The unity that we have as citizens of the U.S. is a false unity because it is not built on love. Indeed, this false unity is nothing but “concealed hatred, a hypocritical pretense of fellowship” (80). The entire structure of the United States and the false unity that we have through global capitalism is built on antagonism and violence. However important the dismantling of structural violence is it will not finally bring about unity. If we believe this, according to McCabe, we have not come to recognize the depth of human sin. The human race is in need of a greater transformation, a more radical revolution than the overthrow of systems of injustice: we are in need of forgiveness.

When the local church gathers together on Holy Thursday, the whole church is present, just as the whole Christ is made present in the Eucharist. This gathering is never private. Whenever the church gathers it gathers as a public in its own right. There is no such thing as a private mass. “Those who are actually enacting the liturgical sign of eating the Body of Christ and drinking his Blood are doing so not for their own private sakes, but for the whole community, just as actors are not acting just for their own private satisfaction but for the whole audience as well” (83).

The Eucharist is thus a sign of the mystery of unity and “Christ is present precisely as the sign of our unity and not in any other way” (84). The Eucharist as a meal is a sign of community and hospitality. Each and every human being is invited to the table to share in the food that is a sign of our unity in God. And so we give thanks for the gift of life and nourishment, for God’s sustaining love and his Word made flesh in whom we were made and to whom we are destined to share in life together.

The Eucharist as Foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet

At the Last Supper Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Mt 26:29; cf. Lk 22:18; Mk 14:25). In saying this Jesus was pointing to the end of temporal history as we know it; he was pointing to the full reality of the kingdom of God that is to come. Every Eucharistic celebration is both a memorial of what the triune God has accomplished in history and a foretaste of what the triune God will do in the future. As the Catholic Catechism points out, “Whenever the Church celebrates the Eucharist she remembers this promise and turns her gaze ‘to him who is to come.’ In her prayer she calls for his coming: ‘Maranatha!’ ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ ‘May your grace come and this world pass away!’” (CCC 1403). In the Eucharist the future breaks into the present time and we cannot help but be caught up in the glory and splendor of God. Although “his presence is veiled” the Lord of heaven and earth meets us in the Eucharist and calls us into communion with him. Our communion with God in the Eucharist is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

The U2charist: Why Anglicans Aren’t Catholic

Oh, have mercy. Will it ever stop? I just found out about the U2charist.The U2charist is a very specific kind of Eucharist service started by the Episcopal church in which U2 songs are played during the celebration of the Eucharist. According to  Wikipedia the U2charist “features the music of the rock band U2 and a message about God’s call to rally around the Millennium Development Goals.” Apparently the U2charist began a couple years ago to rally around Bono and his humanitarian efforts.Of course, I think that Christians should urge countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals, but does this mean holding a U2charist? I’m not a major “traditionalist” by any means, but everyone knows my disdain for Bono. If you haven’t heard read here and here.  Okay three points: 1) A U2charist reflects how deep the wedge really is between our worship and our politics that we have to transform the Eucharist into a promotion for a social program.  2) The traditional Eucharist has been so privatized to the point where people don’t believe that it has any relevant social meaning. So, we need something like U2 to spruce it up and make it relevant to the world.3) The name U2charist just makes me sick.  I don’t know. What do people think about this? Am I too cynical? Is this a helpful way to get people to connect worship with politics? Is the Eucharist as it is so socially irrelevant?    

On Intercommunion

As a non-Catholic studying theology at a Catholic university, I often think about the possiblity of intercommunion, that is, sharing the Eucharist with my Catholic sisters and brothers. Often you will hear Protestants speak against any exclusion when it comes to sharing the Eucharist, for all are welcome at the table. Yes, all are welcome at the Lord’s table – this must be affirmed. God calls his people to share communion together not apart. Does this mean, therefore, that protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, should now begin to share the Eucharist together? No! because the truth of the matter is that we are divided and not in communion. It is our hope that all will come into communion, but until that day we must be honest about where divisions exist. As Zizioulas notes, “In disagreeing with [intercommunion], we do not preach exclusiveness and exclusion of the other; we simply acknowledge that such an exclusion does exist, and until the causes of it are removed, communion with the other’ suffers” (Zizioulas,Communion & Otherness, 8).

Proclaiming the Gospel in a Pluralist Society: The Wafer and the Reconciling Work of God

The Christian church must seriously engage the truth-claims of other faith traditions because we believe God is active in the world seeking to gather all of humanity back to himself. On the one hand, this is just another way of saying that the church must have a posture of openness to the work of God in the truth-claims of other traditions. On the other hand, it is also a way of affirming that God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is the truth and therefore the only proper starting point for Christian reflection and evaluation of the truth-claims of other religions. To say otherwise is to suggest that Christians (or anyone else for that matter) have access to some other superior and “objective” perspective by which to evaluate competing truth-claims. Thus, to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the truth, the way, and the light, is no more of a confessional statement then to say he is not, or something else is, or nobody knows. Of course, truth-claims contain little value if they are not embodied by a people. Thus, Christians must witness to God’s saving work in Jesus through peaceableness and service to and for the world, which includes other faith traditions.

With the rise of globalization the religious and cultural “pluralism” that exists in the world seems to be magnified. Paradoxically, however, the reality of globalization threatens to collapse the distinctiveness of all traditions into one, homogenized, faith in the ideology of the global market. Nevertheless, religious pluralism does exist and so it poses a challenge to the Christian church, especially in an age that seeks to consume all religions at once to satisfy the thirst for more, or, for the sake of unity, attempts to privatize religion altogether. Although there is much to affirm in other traditions, whenever truth-claims are made truly public there will exist some degree of conflict and division. Still, the unity we desire with other religions is not to be found in the nation-state (around a flag). Instead, in the face of conflict the church must proclaim that unity is to be found in a wafer, for God has reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ.

The Eucharist and A Bishop Does Not Constitute Church

The celebration of the Eucharist and the existence of a bishop are not necessary for a particular community to be called church. If we agree with Vatican II that the Eucharist and a bishop are necessary components of what constitutes a church, then how do we account for “ecclesial communities” that do not have a college of bishops and do not celebrate the Eucharist in communion with Rome? Does this necessarily mean that when these people gather to worship they do not constitute church? By the logic of Vatican II we are left with the Roman Catholic church and other “ecclesial communities” not other churches. To be fair, Vatican II made many concessions in the direction of ecumenical dialogue, but this writer cannot in good conscience agree with an idea of church that, by the necessity of its own logic, excludes other communities of baptized people who gather for worship and partake in the Lord’s Supper.In order to defend such a claim, I must demonstrate that something else constitutes a church. To clarify, I do believe that a congregation that celebrates the Eucharist around its bishop is a desirable model of church, but it does not by itself constitute it. Indeed, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the church’s life and the bishop provides the visible connection and helps bring the particular church into communion with other churches. However, it is not the Eucharist and a bishop that constitutes our identity as church. Rather, our identity as church is grounded in our having been called into communion with the Triune God. In other words, we are constituted by God as we participate in this communion. All of this is not to deny the importance of the Eucharist; nor is it to discredit the function of the bishop. However, to claim that these two elements of the church’s life constitute its being as such, fails to fully recognize that only the Triune God calls the church into being, and that our participation in this communion is a flawed participation. This does not mean that we cease to be church; it does mean that what constitutes church cannot be solely identified on the basis of particular ecclesial practices.

Alexander Schmemann on the Church as leitourgia

Thus the Church itself is a leitourgia, a ministry, a calling to act in this world after the fashion of Christ, to bear testimony to Him and His kingdom. The eucharistic liturgy, therefore, must not be approached and understood in “liturgical” or “cultic” terms alone. Just as Christianity can-and must-be considered the end of religion, so the Christian liturgy in general, and the Eucharist in particular, are indeed the end of cult, of the “sacred” religious act isolated from, and opposed to, the “profane” life of the community. The first condition for the understanding of liturgy is to forget about any specific “liturgical piety.”

Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 25-26.

Mass without Consecration?

The Words of Institution always remain consecratory for every Eucharist celebration regardless of whether they are recited or not. Therefore, even though it does not contain the Words of Institution, the Anaphora of Addai and Mari traditionally used in the Assyrian Church of the East is rightly considered a valid Eucharist celebration by the Roman Catholic Church. In his article “Mass without Consecration?” Robert F. Taft defends the Catholic Church’s recent declaration that this prayer, though absent of the Words of Institution, is still valid. He argues that the Latin West in the Late Middle Ages narrowly understood the Words of Institution as a sort of formula that, at the precise moment when recited by a priest, effected the consecration of the gifts of the Eucharist. The problem with this view is that it isolates the Words of Institution from the rest of the Eucharistic prayer.

Taft defends the Catholic Church’s validation of Addai and Mari on the basis that it is more faithful to the practices of the undivided early Church. Furthermore, there is much evidence to suggest that Addai and Mari is one of most ancient Anaphoras. In fact, some scholars have argued it is likely that Addai and Mari was not the only Anaphora without the Words of Institution in the early Church. All of this, however, does not deny or discount the Catholic insistence that the Words of Institution are both “constitutive” and “indispensable,” for as Taft rightly states, “they are words eternally efficacious in the mouth of Jesus.” Addai and Mari is valid precisely because, in the view of John Chrysostom, consecratory power is to be found not in its priestly recitation but in the historical moment of Jesus’ institution of the prayer.