In the Breaking of the Bread

JUNE 10, 2007: Feast of Corpus Christi

Genesis: 14: 18-20 I Corinthian 11:23-26 Luke 9:11-17

To the church in the diaspora[1]

& to the church of the unchurched[2]

Introduction

Corpus Christi yesterday

In his ascension Jesus promised he would not leave us orphans but would be with us to the end of time (Jn 14:14; Mt 18:20). He kept his promise by sending us the Holy Spirit. We celebrated that last Sunday with the feast of Pentecost. He kept his promise also by giving us the Eucharist--the abiding presence of Christ in our midst under the form of bread and wine. We celebrate that today with the feast of Corpus Christi--the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.

With a bit of nostalgia some of us recall the solemn celebration of Corpus Christi of a past day. It was, indeed, a big production. The Blessed Sacrament was placed in a monstrance (a very elaborate gold receptacle or show case). Under a portable canopy the Sacrament was carried in solemn procession amidst clouds of incense and over carpets of peony petals through villages in valleys and hamlets on hills. Three times the procession stopped along the way for benediction with the Blessed Sacrament.

Corpus Christi today

Today the feast is no longer the big production it used to be. Since Vatican II we’ve made a journey of a light-year out of our Catholic Eucharistic past; many things have changed on us. For example, in the old days (that means before Vatican II), only twenty to thirty people out of a packed congregation would rise to receive Communion. They were the ones who considered themselves in the state of Sanctifying Grace. The rest of the faithful (i.e., those who had committed a mortal sin and not confessed it, or who were divorced, or who weren’t Roman Catholics, or who hadn’t fasted from every speck of food and every drop of water from midnight on) remained nailed to their pews. All that has dramatically changed. Now at Communion time a whole congregation of sinners rises to receive the Eucharist, and most of them (everyone knows) haven’t gone to confession for a very long time. Communion now is seen more as food for sinners than as a reward for saints. Yes, indeed, we’ve come a long way.

In the old days, too, we were diligently warned about making “bad Communions.” That was going to Holy Communion with a mortal sin on our soul (like taking pleasure in a dirty thought or performing a dirty act) and then not confessing it. Many Catholics in those days were tortured over having made a bad Communion, either because they hid something in confession or had not confessed matters in the right way. You don’t hear much talk anymore about bad confessions and Communions, except on EWTN. We’ve come a long way.

In the past, we were also very scrupulous about handling the Eucharist. Only the consecrated hands of an ordained male could touch the Blessed Sacrament. Now we see the faithful receiving Communion in their hands and from the hands of Eucharistic ministers who are not ordained and some of whom are not even males! We see also the faithful after Sunday Mass carrying the Eucharist home to a sick loved one. And now with increasing frequency we hear the rumblings of a debate which gets louder as priests get older and scarcer: the debate over ordaining married men and even women as priests (!) in order to supply pastors for God’s people. The very debate itself shows that we’ve come a long way from our Catholic Eucharistic past. Yes, indeed, almost everything has changed on us except one thing: the Eucharist remains central to Catholic faith.

Jesus present in the bread?

In 1951, I was ordained into the priesthood and Eucharistic life of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Then along came Good Pope John XXIII who summoned us to Vatican II (1962-1965) which ignited remarkable changes in our Catholic Eucharistic life. Having personally made that long trip from Trent to Vatican II in 11 short years, I have pondered over those remarkable changes and have come up with my own characterization of them: In the old days the emphasis was on Jesus present in the bread (period). In this new day the emphasis is upon Jesus present in the breaking of the bread. The difference is not just a matter of semantics; it’s quite substantial.

In the old days when the emphasis was on Jesus present in the bread, we gazed upon the Eucharistic bread held on high at the elevation of the Mass. We even rang a bell[3] at that moment to make sure everyone was paying attention. On big feast days Mass was climaxed with benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist encased in an extravagant golden monstrance was held on high so all could gaze upon Jesus present in the bread. Benediction after Mass was a kind of frosting on the cake. [4] We crowned our gazing at Jesus in the bread with the feast of Corpus Christi. With the Eucharist encased in the monstrance and held on high by a priest under a canopy, we processed through villages in valleys and hamlets on hills so that all the country folk could gaze upon Jesus in the bread.

Gazing upon a bronze serpent fashioned by Moses and held on high was a moment of salvation for the people of Israel bitten by snakes as they journeyed through the desert (Num 21:4-9). So, too, gazing upon Jesus present in the bread and held on high was a kind of moment of salvation for us in those days (Jn 12:32).

Or Jesus present in the breaking of the bread?

In this new day the emphasis is on Jesus present in the breaking of the bread. That’s a notable difference, and it is scriptural. When two of the disciples were on the road to Emmaus, as they were walking along and talking, the risen Lord appeared and asked what they were discussing. They related to him all the great events that had just happened that first Easter morning. The disciples, however, did not recognize that it was Jesus. As they drew near to Emmaus, they said to the stranger, “Sir, it’s getting dusk, why don’t you come and stay with us?” He stayed and had supper with them. At table, he took bread, said a blessing over it and then broke the bread and gave it to the disciples. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24:30-31).

The liturgical rules laid down for the celebration of Mass are important so that the celebrant doesn’t become a liturgical loose canon. When that happens, congregants do not recognize the person of Jesus in the liturgical action but rather the person of the performing priest doing his own thing up there at the altar. I am not a liturgical loose canon, but I also refuse to be a liturgical automaton. For a plausible pastoral reason I sometimes depart from the prescribed rubrics. For example, I break the bread at the moment of consecration instead of later on as the rubrics prescribe. The cracking sound of the host breaking and then the broken bread held on high dramatize what the Mass is all about: it’s about bread broken and shared.

Eucharistic bread not broken and shared

What a contradiction happens when the bread at Mass is not really broken and shared! Sometime ago, I concelebrated at the funeral Mass of a dear friend who died in the operating room, as his wife and I were anxiously waiting outside. I participated at the funeral Mass not as the main celebrant but as the homilist. Everything went off well enough, until it came time to break bread and share. At that moment the pastor made an unseemly invitation saying, “Catholics may now come up and receive Holy Communion!”

Catholics know when it’s time to come up and receive Communion! At the very moment when bread was to be broken and shared and people were to be brought into communion with each other, people were divided into Catholics and non-Catholics. When Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, he offered no unseemly invitation. Instead, it was open Communion: bread was broken, and all five thousand men were fed, and all were brought into communion by the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes for the sake of hungry people. When the church or the synagogue does not break bread and share--when, in fact, it scatters people instead of gathering them into one, it betrays her profoundest meaning as ecclesia or synagoga.[5] What’s more, when the church does not break bread especially at Mass, she betrays the very Eucharist Itself—the Bread of unity.

Eucharistic bread broken and shared

In a letter to a Father Enrique from South America Barbara Marion Horn, a feisty lady from Ireland with a good knack for words, writes,

Dear Father, I want to tell you of my experience at the Mass at the Hyatt Hotel last fall. You may have noticed a woman weeping in the front row at Communion time. That would be me. I wept and wept and wept. Is there any way to put on paper what my heart and mind were immersed in? I will make the attempt, if only because I so desperately want you to know the great peace and joy you have brought me.”

You came to Milwaukee in November to share your experience, strength and hope. You told your story on a Friday. It was on Saturday that you breathed life into that story at a Mass set up by a gang of us who enjoy the royal priesthood of the baptized. Then came Communion time. You looked over the assembly and spoke the telltale words, perhaps the very ones which brought on Rome's final blow? “All are welcome,” you said. “This is the banquet, the table of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you feel called to join in his celebration, you are welcome. No matter if you have been away from the Church, belong to a different denomination or not to any at all, if you feel called to come forward and break bread, you are welcome.”

[Writing out of the bloody background of Northern Ireland she continues now in a higher pitch.] Suddenly my mind careened backwards and sideways and all over the place. Flashes of Protestant and Catholic ancestors at odds with each other, storming out of weddings and baptisms, fighting over the faith and refusing to break bread with each other—all that came roaring into my psyche. [Her emotional pitch peaks with these words.] Sitting there, your invitation, dear Father Enrique, continued to wash over me. “All are welcome.” God, thank you, thank you, thank you for letting me live to hear such words. I am the luckiest person alive!

Good bread breakers--good recipients

The old Baltimore Catechism asks what makes one a legal recipient of the Eucharist? Answer: (a) One must be baptized, (b) one must be a Catholic and (c) one must have reached the use of reason. Those are external and visible elements. What, we ask, makes one to be a worthy recipient of the Eucharist? Answer: It is being a good breaker of bread. That’s an internal and spiritual element.

A man going from Jerusalem to Jericho was waylaid by robbers and left half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest and a Levite who saw the poor man, did nothing and passed him by. Along came a despised Samaritan. Though he had a reputation in Samaria for being a kind of rounder, he stopped to pour the oil of compassion into the poor man’s wounds and hurry him off to the nearest inn where he provided for his care and cure.

Now back in the temple in Jerusalem there were twelve cakes or loaves of bread which were continually on the Table of Showbread as an offering to God. It was against the Law for anyone to eat those breads except the priests (Matthew 12:1-8). That priest who had hurried by a dying man that day could legally eat the showbreads, but he couldn’t worthily eat them, for he had not broken bread with one in great need. On the other hand, the Good Samaritan who had stopped could not legally eat the showbreads, for he was not only not a priest but was also a heretical Samaritan who worshipped God in the wrong temple (Jn 4:20). The Good Samaritan could, however, worthily eat the showbreads, for he was, indeed, a good breaker of bread.

Jerry Quinn owns a bar and restaurant in Boston. Reading the newspaper one morning he came upon an article about Franklin Piedra, an Ecuadorian, 33 years old, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wanted to give him one of her kidneys. The transplants would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she had no health insurance. The Ecuadorian Consulate suggested that he go home and die. Quinn had a better idea. He had been saving his money for a major down-payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view. He decided to forfeit a brand new home in order to pay for the $100,000 kidney transplant. “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only one bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do I need?”

I don’t know much more about Jerry Quinn. With a name like his, however, he’s probably a baptized Roman Catholic, and that would make him a legal recipient of Catholic Communion. But what’s even more important is that he is, indeed, a good breaker of bread, and that makes make him particularly a worthy recipient of Holy Communion.

Good bread breakers-- good celebrants

The same Baltimore Catechism asks what makes one to be a legal celebrant of the Eucharist. Answer: (a) one must be a baptized Catholic, (b) one must be an unmarried male and (c) one must be ordained. Again, those are external and visible elements. What, we ask, makes one to be a worthy celebrant of the Eucharist? Answer: it is being a good breaker of bread. Again, that’s an invisible and spiritual element.

When our Archdiocese was in the throes of a painful crisis, my depressed spirit was lifted up by the Rev. Mary Ann Neevel, pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church here in Milwaukee. Standing in spirit beside our wounded Archbishop (as Mary, the Stabat Mater, stood beside the wounded Jesus) in a homily to her congregation she declared, “We are all in this together.” It was magnanimous bread breaking of which some Roman Catholics were incapable in those days. It made the Rev. Mary Ann Neevel, female though she is, a worthy celebrant of the Eucharist.

Conclusion

Ite! Go and break bread!

The bread breaking that takes place in the Sunday assembly is sacramental and symbolic. It costs very little. The really costly bread breaking takes place out there in the real world and in the week ahead, when we are called to pour the oil of compassion upon someone waylaid by robbers, or to share our wealth with someone in need of a costly operation or to stand beside someone wounded in spirit.

Though sacramental and symbolic, the bread breaking at Mass is important. We come to the Sunday assembly to celebrate great bread breakers like the Good Samaritan and Jerry Quinn and the Rev. Mary Ann Neevel. We come also to celebrate our own costly bread breaking of the week past, and to be inspired to go forth to break even more bread in the week ahead.

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[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!

[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!

[3] Since Vatican II the bell-ringing at the consecration has been silenced in most parishes.

[4] After Vatican II, Benediction immediately after Mass is forbidden because the Mass is a cake which needs no frosting.

[5] Ecclesia (Latin for church) comes from the Greek meaning “to gather together.” Synagoga comes from the Hebrew also meaning “to gather together.” So to scatter, to divide and to set one against the other is against the profoundest meaning of church and synagogue. (Mosque, on the other hand, means “a place for prostrating” and not a place for gathering.)