The Eucharist as an antidote to the culture of power

The dominant narrative of our age is one of power: power over others, the triumph of the ego or the nation-state and the reduction of human persons to numbers, consumers or units of production. Against this backdrop, Pope Leo XIV offers a compelling witness to the Gospel, calling us back to the true source of human renewal: the Eucharist. In Magnifica Humanitas, he writes (#234):

The spirituality that we need is a Eucharistic spirituality, that is, a spirituality of ecclesial unity in love. The Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery reveal God entering into our human condition and transforming it through the gift of himself. This gift remains present and active in the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives himself and gathers the Church together, so that his offering becomes the principle of unity and source of new life. It is from this communion that Christian solidarity also arises, since “union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself.” 

Mary, the first tabernacle: celebrating the nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Towards the end of his long reflection in Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV exhorts the faithful to join their prayers with those of the Blessed Virgin Mary (#299):

At the end of this reflection, I would like to propose a sober yet demanding program of Christian life with which we can navigate this epochal change in the light of the Gospel. This avenue emerges through contemplating God’s plan, living ecclesial unity by partaking of the Eucharist, building a world centred on the common good and praying in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

On this the birthday of Mary we celebrate the moment when Mary is born into a world awaiting its saviour.  Together with her son, Jesus, and cousin, John the Baptist, today is only one of three days in the liturgical calendar when we celebrate a birthday.  The seasons are marked in this way:

Beyond Babel: Eucharistic Solidarity in Magnifica Humanitas

 

Eucharist — Saint Patrick Catholic Church

Earlier this summer, Pope Leo XIV published a ground-breaking encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in which he spoke of the urgent need to rise to the challenge of artificial intelligence.  The encyclical is like a condensed story of the development of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) since the 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. In my view CST is a great and unique treasure of the Roman Catholic church. Together with the mystery of the Eucharist, CST is among the principal reasons that I remain within Roman Catholicism. In saying this I am painfully aware of the collective as well as many individual failures to live according to CST principles in the light of the Gospel. At the heart of CST are the principles of:

The intrinsic, infinite and equal dignity of all humans;

Victorious in Christ

 

In the Cross, we are reminded that God became one of us, sharing all our vulnerabilities. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He who did not sin made himself one with us on the Cross (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21). God invites us to offer him our weaknesses, our uncertainties, even our despair, casting all our anxieties on him, for he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). It is in uniting ourselves with the Cross of Jesus in the celebration of the Eucharist — especially on this, the Lord’s Day, the day of the Resurrection (Luke 24:1-8; Acts 20:7) — that we draw new hope and new strength for the journey ahead.

We do not walk this road alone, nor do we walk it under our own power. The same Christ who emptied himself on the Cross rose again on the third day, and it is his risen life we receive at every Eucharist. Whatever weighs on us this week — the world’s brokenness or our own — we can bring it to the altar and leave transformed, 'more than conquerors through him who loved us' (Romans 8:37). That is the hope of the Lord’s Day: not that our struggles vanish, but that we face them carried by a strength not our own. 

Jesus at the door and on the altar

 St Teresa of Calcutta served the dying, the abandoned, and the poorest of the poor. She famously insisted that the Eucharist and service of the poor were inseparable. She often taught that the Christ received in Holy Communion is the same Christ encountered in the distressing disguise of the poor.

In July 1981, I attended a Mass in Dublin at which Mother Teresa, as she was known at the time, spoke to a packed church of some 1,500 people. She spoke about holiness, love of the poor, family life as well as abortion. On the subject of family life, she called for prayer and love. When family life breaks down, bitterness and wrongdoing can take root, she said. Holiness was not just for a few but for everyone. 'We must all imitate Jesus, meek and humble of heart', she urged.

Three years later, during a visit to Liverpool, I was brought to a house in a very deprived area of the inner city where the Missionaries of Charity lived and served the local community. I cannot forget the bare floor on which the sisters prayed as Mass was celebrated. I had the honour of being given a chair, notwithstanding my youth! Nor can I forget the constant ringing of the doorbell as people continued to come seeking help.

Jesus was adored in the Blessed Sacrament in the living room and served in the poor in the hallway.

A universe drawn towards Christ in the Eucharist

 Earlier this week, I have written about the essay-poem of Teilhard de Chardin (TDC), The Mass on the World (MOW).  Although largely sidelined and to some extent silenced, Fr Teilhard de Chardin remained a priest in good standing until his death in 1955. His writings and thinking have had a profound effect within and beyond the Catholic world.  One person, in particular, deeply influenced by TDC is the US Franciscan priest, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM. In many ways, he has helped popularise many of TDC’s ideas. In The Influence of Teilhard de Chardin, Rohr has written:

Teilhard gives a beautiful coherence to the universe and unites the disparate strands of knowledge into one unified whole, which is exactly what our deepest soul invariably insists must be true. Whether you agree with his precise interpretation or not, you cannot help but breathe fresh air when you absorb even a bit of his optimism, faith, and intelligence—in what, for him, was a certain and positive future, which he called the Omega Point, the Cosmic Christ.

Rohr closes his short article with the following:

How the Fathers shaped the Church's Eucharistic faith

Among the great teachers and Fathers of the early Christian Church is Pope St. Gregory the Great (c. 540–604 A.D.). Just as monastic Christianity was flourishing in Ireland, the entire Christian Church that was in communion with the see of Rome was, directly, under the leadership of the successor to Peter.

Sometimes, writers like to believe that Celtic Christianity was something very separate and unique, to such an extent that something called 'Roman Christianity' arrived, more or less, with the Normans in the 12th Century. This is a distortion of Irish history. Yes, there were features unique to Ireland and what is now Britain, including an emphasis on nature, monasticism, asceticism and fashions and habits that might hint at ties to Eastern Christian traditions. Pragmatically, Christianity, as it did elsewhere, had to negotiate its way into local cultures, 'baptising' some pagan symbols and rites by removing what was idolatrous and centring attention on the Son of God and not the Sun. Pagan ritual sites became holy wells, and some scholars argue that the cult of St. Brigid absorbed elements of an earlier pagan goddess of the same name — though the extent of any direct continuity is debated among historians of early Ireland and should be taken as a contested thesis rather than settled fact.

One area of interest is the Eucharist, because we can be assured that what was believed and practiced in the universal Church - East and West - was also held in Ireland, notwithstanding any particular local adaptations in the liturgy.