Posts

Posted on

Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ

Have you noticed how we use the word “Amen” like a liturgical full stop?

Many of our prayers, both liturgical and personal, end with the words “through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Quite frequently, there is then a physical shift — for example, in our Eucharistic celebration, the community sits at the conclusion of the Opening Prayer, and activity relocates to the ambo (the lectern, for the uninitiated).

We conclude our Prayers of the Faithful with a communal Amen, and activity relocates to the altar.

A liturgical doxology will often conclude with the words “Through Him, and with Him … Amen.”

During the Rite of Communion, people approach the minister of Bread and/or Cup and the following exchange takes place:

“Body of Christ.” — “Amen.” “Blood of Christ.” — “Amen.”

Technically, “Amen” means “So be it.” (Beyoncé has a track on her album Cowboy Carter titled “Amen”.)

Amen has become a liturgical full stop.

I was once in ministry in a parish where one elderly woman had done away with the full stop — at least during the Rite of Communion.

She was a Māori kuia — an elderly woman of standing in her community.

At the Rite of Communion, she would approach the Minister of Communion and, to the invocation “Body of Christ,” respond: “Nau mai.” (Pronounced “naw my.”)

To the invocation “Blood of Christ,” she would respond in kind: “Nau mai.”

In Māori culture, nau mai is a form of greeting and welcome — about as far from a full stop as you could possibly get.

Does the Body of Christ, which we call the Church, resemble a full stop or a welcome?

Body of Christ — Nau mai.

Posted on

Trinity Sunday

Anyone who has seen the film Zorba the Greek will remember this scene. It happens toward the end.

“Teach me to dance,” says Basil, broken by failure. Basil is a young, reserved English writer who has set out to Crete to claim a small inheritance.

Zorba, smiling, opens his arms to the sea. “Dance?” he replies, his eyes shining. “C’mon, my boy.”

As the zither plucks that familiar tune, Zorba snaps his fingers and begins slowly to dance. Basil joins him, and soon they are whirling and kicking sand.

By the fourth century, Eastern theologians had found a metaphor to describe how God’s energy works: perichoresis. We can loosely translate the word as “circling around” — and it is the root of our own word “choreography.”

These theologians — including Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory Nazianzen — had turned to a word from Greek theatre. Perichoresis means circle dance.

Modern Greeks still use the same word for their ancient folk dance.

In perichoresis, the dancers join hands and move in a circle, stepping faster and faster as the music speeds up. Watching from the sidelines, bystanders can no longer see individual dancers — only the moving energy of the whole circle.

Searching for a metaphor to describe God’s nature and activity, the Eastern theologians looked at perichoresis and said, “That’s what the Trinity is like.”

This was the word they used to describe the foundational quality of God’s character: relationship and communion.

In the beginning is relationship. In the beginning is movement. In the beginning is dance.

As we celebrate the feast of Trinity Sunday, maybe our simple chorus to our Triune God is, as it was on the beach for Basil, “Teach me to dance!”

Posted on

Pentecost Sunday

A very early Christian manuscript is the 6th-century Rabula Gospel Book.

Produced in Syria and completed in AD 586 at the Monastery of St. John of Zagba, the texts of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are presented in Syriac.

The text is one of the earliest Christian manuscripts to be illuminated. (An illuminated text is one decorated with coloured borders and illustrations. One of the most widely known is the Book of Kells.)

Folio 14v in the Rabula Gospel Book manuscript is an illustration highlighting today’s feast of Pentecost. The illustration shows six men standing either side of a woman.

Fast forward some 1000 years.

Around 1600 Doménikos Theotokópoulos — known as El Greco — painted his Pentecost, now in the Prado in Madrid.

Again, we see a woman taking centre stage surrounded by men, and indeed there is the face of a second woman visible.

Fast forward to the present day and we find a painting with the same title as both the Rabula Gospels and that of El Greco, namely “Pentecost.”

Painted by the American artist Jen Norton in 2021, it too shows a woman surrounded by a group of twelve men.

Indeed, from the beginning of the 12th century Pentecost images increasingly put Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the centre of the image among the apostles.

There is, in fact, no Scriptural reference to the mother of Jesus having been present.

So, why include Mary? And why put this woman centre stage?

Today’s feast day is known as the birth of the Church, illustrated by those in the upper room having received the gift of the Holy Spirit, then going out to tell others: Parthians, Medes and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, of Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene; travellers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism; Cretans and Arabs.

Now, that is quite a collection. And furthermore, each heard the word in their own language, “we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.” (Acts 2:1–11)

Might it be that our Church ought to have the feminine centre stage? Might it be that our Church, born of a group of men gathered around the feminine, is being called on this birthday to gather once again around the feminine?

Posted on

Ascension Sunday

Ascension Sunday — that moment when it came time for Jesus the Christ to conclude his earthly ministry and return to his place with his Abba/Father.

I would invite you to reflect on two “other than” paintings of this moment of Ascension.

The first is titled “The Ascension of Christ” and is by the German artist Hans Suess Von Kulmbach. Painted in 1513, the picture now hangs in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

What I find striking is very little of the ascending figure of Jesus, the Christ, is visible — shins and a pair of bare feet! What is in sharp focus is those gathered to farewell Jesus.

Maybe, that is the point of the Ascension story; not the one departing rather those staying!

This is highlighted by the second artwork. Painted sometime in the 18th century by Hans Stiegler, it is part of a diptych on the North Gallery of the Amandus Church, Freiberg, Germany.

Certainly, more of the person of Jesus the Christ is visible, however, a close inspection of the painting reveals something extraordinary — He is leaving his shoes behind!

The 16th century Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Ávila may provide us with an answer.

There is a prayer attributed to Teresa which is printed under the title, “Christ has no body now but yours.”

The prayer reads: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Maybe, the shoes have been left for us to fill, and rather than looking skyward, we are invited to step into the shoes of the other!