CORPUS CHRISTI
REMAINING IN LOVE
June 14, 2009
The Eucharist is about living a life of love. It is about living a whole life of love, over a life-time. ‘Remain in my love’.
Literature means writing up the story of a life. It is usually said that in literature there are four basic interpretations of life. It is either tragic, or ironic, it is either comic, or romantic. [These headings do, in a way, correspond with autumn, winter, spring and summer!] Just suppose you took a tragic approach to your own life: you would see it as – more or less necessarily – having more downs than ups, having a lot of flops you couldn’t avoid. Love would be steadfast in difficulties. One of the main themes is sacrifice. Suppose you took an ironic approach to your own life: you would see it – despite everyone’s best effort – as mostly difficult, a tough existence despite a veneer of pleasantness: a good cynic, you would insist that life is not meant to be easy. Love would be long suffering, like that of a martyr not giving in despite it all. One of the main themes is the contrast between what ordinary people suppose and what an informed person really knows. Suppose you took a comic approach to your life (I don’t mean joining a circus, just realizing you are in one anyway, called the human race): you would always expect (good) surprises, often get them, and wonder in incomprehension when you didn’t. Nice to be on a high, appalling to miss out sometimes. Love would be a mix of excitement and denial of the dullness. The main theme is a happy ending. Suppose you took a romantic approach to your life: you would ignore the realities, the Mondays to Fridays, and spend your week fantasizing about the next weekend. Love would be in a world of your own that never quite arrived to your satisfaction… There are lots of main themes – struggle, emotion and feeling, sadness, awakening…
Studies of literature call some stories of life ‘classics’. One of the characteristics of a ‘classic’ is that it is a mix of the tragic, the ironic, the comic, and the romantic, and the mix rings bells for many if not most people, because many if not most people have come to know that life is actually like that mix. Love has many expressions. Most people would say that LIFE IS LIKE THAT.
Maybe you could say that in its own way, every family’s life story is a classic….
I am saying this because the fourth gospel, that of John, that we read a lot in this Easter-Pentecost season, is, in these terms, a ‘classic’ – it has a good mix of the tragic, the ironic, the comic, the romantic. Jn 11-12 is Tragedy. [It is about the death of Lazarus, and the negative reaction to Jesus then and at his entry into Jerusalem.] Jn 5-10 is Irony (Satire) [Despite the public attitude, Jesus is the real judge, the real bread of life, the real living water, the real light of the world, the real healer of blindness, the real and good Shepherd.] . Jn 2 is Comedy at Cana [a wedding reception...some magic…a lot of flowing wine]. Jn 2-4 is Romance [John the Baptist speaks of the bridegroom’s joyful cry, Jesus speaks with the Samaritan woman and enjoys the conversation of what might be when all divisions are healed]. In Jn, JESUS’LIFE WAS LIKE THAT – a mix of all the basic lines of real life. He suggests that our lives are too.
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There is a movie going the rounds at present, called ‘Still Walking’. It comes from a Japanese writer, who previously gave us ‘Nobody knows’. It is about family relations. Let me introduce the main characters.
First, there is an elderly mother, in a traditional house, preparing a meal, helped by the second character, her daughter. In a different place, a man (third character) begs his wife (fourth character) to make up an excuse to cut short his coming visit to his old mother. On the way, he is so absorbed and worried about this meeting that he lets his wife carry all the heavy parcels and presents! He meets his mother. Then he meets (character five) his elderly father, a retired doctor, who is very deaf. His sister (six) has come too, with her jovial husband (7) and two children.
It looks like a reunited family. One member (8) is missing. The eldest brother was tragically killed fifteen years earlier. The mother always invites the person in the village whom she considers responsible for this son’s death (9). She does so, so he can’t forget it. There is also the youngest son, who too has come(10)….
The relationships here are ‘ordinary’, but they are complex and delicate. The passage of the years speaks loudly. There are silences, some bitter, and hopes that have not materialized. There are unexpressed feelings. There are absences. There is love that has not been avowed. There are forced pleasantries. All with a veneer, and more than a veneer, of respect for the elderly…
This is a garden enclosed, with locked in and lived paradoxes. There is a lot of hypocrisy as they meet. The rancour under the surface is kept under by conventions of politeness.
In the old mother, there is what has to be named as cruelty. All human beings have a cruel side. She let her cruelty grow from year to year, and let it express itself once a year, at this meal. The youngest son, who hasn’t come for some years, is shocked at it.
All of these characters are dealing with the same thing. It is lack. It is a great absence. It is a phantom that is haunting them all. They have to live without choice between black and white (or bitter and sweet). But in the title of this movie, they are ‘still walking’. Walking. Is it to reconciliation, to appeasement? There is something inevitable about it, but there is pathos, too…..
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Today is the feast of Corpus Christi. The Body of Christ. The Eucharist. On this day, families come to Church and receive Holy Communion together.
The mixed lives they live are gathered into the mixed life of Jesus. His life feeds them as families. With all their highs and lows, with all their hopes and limits, he somehow gives them as a present gift all that they would have wished in the past, and would want in the future. Something touches them all from outside themselves. It is Grace. For which they give Thanks.
Receiving the Body of Christ in the Eucharist is also a healing thing. Not all families are as torn as the one in the movie above. But they all have their unhealable mysteries. And today they come with other families whose inner stories they don’t know and receive Eucharistic healing. It makes them all human, and relating to one another, and happy with a happiness they did not create themselves.
They go to their homes, still walking, but knowing…. They are the Body of Christ.