i write with pictures

Friday, October 06, 2006

For the past several weeks, I haven't had anyone to talk to about spiritual things, and it's been a little frustrating. (All I want for Christmas is an email on 1 John) When I wrote about love and grace and Philip Yancey's book, I was just hashing out my thoughts, and I wasn't expecting any response. I'm glad I got some. :)

I was doing the dishes the other day, and thinking, and I thought to myself, Amy, you need someone who can look you in the face and tell you every day that you need God. Which was slight hyperbole, but I'm waiting for that person. Someone to help me, push and pull me, talk with me, help me work things out, someone who knows who I want to be. The trip is twice as much fun when you don't go alone. And I can't wait until I get back home or go to my university and have people I can share everything I'm thinking about and struggling against with. I love all my friends, but I really want some family.

So if I ever ponder on heavenly things here, feel free to tell me what you think.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: If I may, I would like to take seriously your kind offer to respond to your ponderings on heavenly things. Not long ago, you quoted William Blake: “As our dear Redeemer said: ‘This the Wine, and this the Bread’.” It is a touching sentiment indeed. But it is not exactly what our dear Redeemer said, is it?

We are familiar with the words in John 6:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world… Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in me and I in him.”

These words may be familiar, but perhaps not widely understood.

Christ often teaches us through the use of metaphor. He says I am “the door,” “the vine,” “the light,” “the root,” “the rock,” etc. These metaphors all have similar structure – He compares something else to Himself – and symbolic meaning, by which we come to understand Him better by recognizing a property we already know in something else: we go through doors to get places, and thus He is the door through which we may access heaven, and so on.

But in the Gospel accounts of the Eucharist, Christ speaks of the bread and wine in a different way. In these cases, it is not the bread and wine that show us something of Christ. Rather, Christ instructs us to take the consecrated bread and wine as Him:

“Take, eat; this is my body… Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant.” (Mt 26: 26-27)

“Take; this is my body… This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mk 14:22-24)

“This is my body which is given to you…This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Lk 21: 19-20)

Reading these accounts of the Eucharist reinforce what Christ told us 12 times in John 6, that He is the bread that came down from heaven, and also what he told us 4 times in that chapter, that we must eat his flesh and drink His blood. While He often used metaphors to teach us, the Gospels make clear time and time again that the Eucharist is no metaphor: “The bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.”

We know from Ignatius of Antioch (among many sources) that Christians since the 1st century believed in this great mystery, and partook regularly in the Eucharist with reverence.

For what else can we do? What else would we want to do? After all, “It is the Lord’s death that you are heralding, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup… And therefore, if anyone eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be held to account for the Lord’s body and blood. A man must examine himself first, and then eat of that bread and drink of that cup; he is eating and drinking damnation to himself if he eats and drinks unworthily, not recognizing the Lord’s body for what it is.” (Corinthians 11:26-30)

And so we can be thankful for Blake’s beautiful words, but also accurately remember the great gift we receive from the Lord: redemption and life through His Blessed Sacrament.; 8:19 PM