Called out of Slavery

The Church is the people of God.   The Latin word for “church,” ecclesia, comes from the Greek ek, which means “out,” and kaleo, which means “to call.”   The Church is the people of God called out of slavery to freedom, sin to salvation, despair to hope, darkness to light, an existence centered on death to an existence focused on life.

When we think of Church we have to think of a body of people, travelling together.   We have to envision women, men, and children of all ages, races, and societies supporting one another on their long and often tiresome journeys to their final home.

The Pillars of the Church

The two main sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, are the spiritual pillars of the Church.   They are not simply instruments by which the Church exercises its ministry.   They are not just means by which we become and remain members of the Church but belong to the essence of the Church.   Without these sacraments there is no Church.   The Church is the body of Christ fashioned by baptism and the Eucharist.   When people are baptised in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and when they gather around the table of Christ and receive his Body and Blood, they become the people of God, called the Church.

Really Present

Where is Jesus today?   Jesus is where those who believe in him and express that belief in baptism and the Eucharist become one body.   As long as we think about the body of believers as a group of people who share a common faith in Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus remains an inspirational historical figure.   But when we realise that the body Jesus fashions in the Eucharist is his body, we can start to see what real presence is.   Jesus, who is present in the gifts of his Body and Blood, becomes present in the body of believers that is formed by these gifts.   We who receive the Body of Christ become the living Christ.

Becoming the Mystical Body of Christ

As we gather around the Eucharistic table and make the death and resurrection of Jesus our own by sharing in the “bread of life” and the “cup of salvation,” we become together the living body of Christ.

The Eucharist is the sacrament by which we become one body.   Becoming one body is not becoming a team or a group or even a fellowship.   Becoming one body is becoming the body of Christ.   It is becoming the living Lord, visibly present in the world.   It is – as often has been said – becoming the mystical Body of Christ.     But  mystical  and  real  are the same in the realm of the Spirit.

Deepening the Passage of Baptism

In and through the celebration of the Eucharist, Jesus’ death and resurrection   become a reality for us here and now.   As we eat and drink from the Body and Blood of Christ, our mortal bodies become united with the risen Christ.   Thus our deaths, like Jesus’ death, means not destruction but passage to new life.

In this way the Eucharist deepens and strengthens in us the passage that we first made through baptism.   The Eucharist is the sacrament that allows us to appropriate fully our baptismal grace.

Knowing One Another in Christ

Often we think that we first have to know and understand one another before we gather around the Eucharistic table.   Although it is good if those who share in the Body and Blood of Christ know one another personally, coming together regularly for the Eucharist can create a spiritual unity that goes far beyond the various levels of “knowing one another” in human ways.     As we enter together into the sacred mysteries of the death and resurrection of Jesus by participating in the Eucharist, we gradually become one body.   We truly come to know one another  in  Christ.

Breaking Through the Boundaries

The sacrament of the Eucharist, as the sacrament of the presence of Christ among and within us, has the unique power to unite us into one body, irrespective of age, colour, race or gender, emotional condition, economic status, or social background.   The Eucharist breaks through all these boundaries and creates the one body of Christ, living in the world as a vibrant sign of unity and community.

Jesus prays fervently to his Father:   “May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me” (John 17:21).   The Eucharist is the sacrament of this divine unity lived out among all people.

Christ’s Body, Our Body

When we gather for the Eucharist we gather in the Name of Jesus, who is calling us together to remember his death and resurrection in the breaking of the bread.   There he is truly among us.   “Where two or three meet in my name,” he says, “I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

The presence of Jesus among us and in the gifts of bread and wine are the same presence.   As we recognise Jesus in the breaking of the bread, we recognise him also in our brothers and sisters.   As we give one another the bread, saying:     “This is the Body of Christ,” we give ourselves to each other saying:   “We are the Body of Christ.”   It is one and the same giving, it is one and the same body, it is one and the same Christ.

Sacrament of Unity

The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity.   It makes us into one body.   The apostle Paul writes:   “As there is one loaf, so we, although there are many of us, are one single body, for we all share in the one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10:17).

The Eucharist is much more than a place where we celebrate our unity in Christ.   The Eucharist creates this unity.   By eating from the same bread and drinking from the same cup, we become the body of Christ present in the world.   Just as Christ becomes really present to us in the breaking of the bread, we become really present to one another as brothers and sisters of Christ, members of the same body.   Thus the Eucharist not only signifies unity but also creates it.

Jesus Living Among Us

The Eucharist is the place where Jesus becomes most present to us because he becomes not only the Christ living within us but also the Christ living among us.   Just as the disciples at Emmaus who had recognised Jesus in the breaking of the bread discovered a new intimacy between themselves and found the courage to return to their friends, we who have received the Body and Blood of Jesus will find a new unity among ourselves.   As we realise that Christ lives within us, we also come to realise that Christ lives among us and makes us into a body of people witnessing together to the presence of Christ in the world.

Jesus Living Within Us

When we gather around the Eucharistic table and eat from the same bread and drink from the same cup, saying,   “This is the Body and Blood of Christ,” we become the living Christ, here and now.

Our faith in Jesus is not our belief that Jesus, the Son of God, lived long ago, performed great miracles, presented wise teachings, died for us on the cross, and rose from the grave.   It first of all means that we fully accept the truth that Jesus lives within us and fulfills his divine ministry in and through us.   This spiritual knowledge of the Christ living in us is what allows us to affirm fully the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection as historic events.   It is the Christ in us who reveals to us the Christ in history.

Companion of the Souls

When the two disciples recognised Jesus as he broke the bread for them in their house in Emmaus, he “vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:31).   The recognition and the disappearance of Jesus are one and the same event.   Why?   Because the disciples recognised that their Lord Jesus, the Christ, now lives in them … that they have become Christ-bearers.   Therefore, Jesus no longer sits across the table from them as the stranger, the guest, the friend with whom they can speak and from whom they can receive good counsel.   He has become one with them.   He has given them his own Spirit of Love.   Their companion on the journey has become the companion of their souls.   They are alive, yet it is no longer them, but Christ living in them (see Galatians 2:20).

Jesus, Our Food and Drink

Jesus is the Word of God, who came down from heaven, was born of the Virgin Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, and became a human person.   This happened in a specific place at a specific time.     But each day when we celebrate the Eucharist, Jesus comes down from heaven, takes bread and wine, and by the power of the Holy Spirit becomes our food and drink.   Indeed, through the Eucharist, God’s incarnation continues to happen at any time and at any place.

Sometimes we might think:   “I wish I had been there with Jesus and his apostles long ago!”   But Jesus is closer to us now than he was to his own friends.   Today he is our daily bread!

The Sacredness of God’s Handiwork

How do we live in creation?   Do we relate to it as a place full of “things” we can use for whatever need we want to fulfill and whatever goal we wish to accomplish?     Or do we see creation first of all as a sacramental reality, a sacred space where God reveals to us the immense beauty of the Divine?

As long as we only use creation, we cannot recognise its sacredness because we are approaching it as if we are its owners.   But when we relate to all that surrounds us as created by the same God who created us and as the place where God appears to us and calls us to worship and adoration, then we are able to recognise the sacred quality of all God’s handiwork.

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Baptism and Eucharist

Sacraments are very specific events in which God touches us through creation and transforms us into living Christs.   The two main sacraments are baptism and the Eucharist.   In baptism water is the way to transformation.   In the Eucharist it is bread and wine.   The most ordinary things in life – water, bread, and wine – become the sacred way by which God comes to us.

These sacraments are actual events.   Water, bread, and wine are not simple reminders of God’s love;   they bring God to us.   In baptism we are set free from the slavery of sin and dressed with Christ.   In the Eucharist, Christ himself becomes our food and drink.

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Baptism:   Becoming Children of the Light

When Jesus appears for the last time to his disciples, he sends them out into the world saying:   “Go, … make disciples of all nations;   baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”   (Matthew 28:19).

Jesus offers us baptism as the way to enter into communion with God, Father, Son, and Spirit, and to live our lives as God’s beloved children.   Through baptism we say no to the world.   We declare that we no longer want to remain children of the darkness but want to become children of the light, God’s children.     We do not want to escape the world, but we want to live in it without belonging to it.   That is what baptism enables us to do.

Baptism, a Rite of Passage

Baptism is a rite of passage.   The Jewish people passed through the Red Sea to the Promised Land in the great exodus.   Jesus himself wanted to make this exodus by passing through suffering and death into the house of his heavenly Father.   This was his baptism.   He asked his disciples and now asks us:   “Can you … be baptised with the baptism with which I shall be baptised?” (Mark 10:38).   When the apostle Paul, therefore, speaks about our baptism, he calls it a baptism into Jesus’ death (Romans 6:4).

To be baptised means to make the passage with the people of Israel and with Jesus from slavery to freedom and from death to new life.   It is a commitment to a life in and through Jesus.

Baptism, the Way to Freedom

When parents have their children baptised they indicate their desire to have their children grow up and live as children of God and brothers or sisters of Jesus, and be guided by the Holy Spirit.

Through birth a child is given to parents; through baptism a child is given to God.   At baptism the parents acknowledge that their parenthood is a participation in God’s parenthood, that all fatherhood and motherhood comes from God.   Thus baptism frees the parents from a sense of owning their children.   Children belong to God and are given to the parents to love and care for in God’s name.   It is the parents’ vocation to welcome their children as honored guests in their home and bring them to the physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom that enables them to leave the home and become parents themselves.   Baptism reminds parents of this vocation and sets children on the path of freedom.

Baptism, the Way to Community

Baptism is more than a way to spiritual freedom.   It also is the way to community.   Baptising a person, whether child or adult, is receiving that person into the community of faith.     Those who are reborn from above through baptism, and are called to live the life of sons and daughters of God, belong together as members of one spiritual family, the living body of Christ.   When we baptise people, we welcome them into this family of God and offer them guidance, support, and formation, as they grow to the full maturity of the Christ-like life.

Baptism, a Call to Commitment

Baptism as a way to the freedom of the children of God and as a way to a life in community calls for a personal commitment.   There is nothing magical or automatic about this sacrament.   Having water poured over us while someone says, “I baptise you in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” has   lasting significance when we are willing to claim and reclaim in all possible ways the spiritual truth of who we are as baptised people.

In this sense baptism is a call to parents of baptised children and to the baptised themselves to choose constantly for the light in the midst of a dark world and for life in the midst of a death-harbouring society.

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Eucharist, the Sacrament of Communion

Baptism opens the door to the Eucharist.   The Eucharist is the sacrament through which Jesus enters into an intimate, permanent communion with us.   It is the sacrament of the table.   It is the sacrament of food and drink.   It is the sacrament of daily nurture.     While baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime event, the Eucharist can be a monthly, weekly, or even daily occurrence.   Jesus gave us the Eucharist as a constant memory of his life and death.   Not a memory that simply makes us think of him but a memory that makes us members of his body.     That is why Jesus on the evening before he died took bread saying, “This is my Body,” and took the cup saying, “This is my Blood.”   By eating the Body and drinking the Blood of Christ, we become one with him.

The Most Human and Most Divine Gesture

The two disciples whom Jesus joined on the road to Emmaus recognised him in the breaking of the bread.     What is a more common, ordinary gesture than breaking bread?   It may be the most human of all human gestures:   a gesture of hospitality, friendship, care, and the desire to be together.   Taking a loaf of bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it to those seated around the table signifies unity, community, and peace.     When Jesus does this he does the most ordinary as well as the most extraordinary.   It is the most human as well as the most divine gesture.

The great mystery is that this daily and most human gesture is the way we recognise the presence of Christ among us.   God becomes most present when we are most human.

Jesus Gives Himself to Us

When we invite friends for a meal, we do much more than offer them food for their bodies.   We offer friendship, fellowship, good conversation, intimacy, and closeness.     When we say:   “Help yourself … take some more … don’t be shy … have another glass,” we offer our guests not only our food and our drink but also ourselves.   A spiritual bond grows, and we become food and drink for one another other.

In the most complete and perfect way, this happens when Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist as food and drink.   By offering us his Body and Blood, Jesus offers us the most intimate communion possible.   It is a divine communion.

A Place of Vulnerability and Trust

When we gather around the table and eat from the same loaf and drink from the same cup, we are most vulnerable to one another.   We cannot have a meal together in peace with guns hanging over our shoulders and pistols attached to our belts.   When we break bread together we leave our arms – whether they are physical or mental – at the door   and enter into a place of mutual vulnerability and trust.

The beauty of the Eucharist is precisely that it is the place where a vulnerable God invites vulnerable people to come together in a peaceful meal.   When we break bread and give it to each other, fear vanishes and God becomes very close.