03/11/01
The Eucharist molds us into community
By Father Ronald Rolheiser,O.M.I.
There is a story told about a Jewish farmer who, because he was
careless, had to spend a Sabbath day in his field. Preoccupied
with his work, he had let the sun go down without going home.
Now, being a pious believer, he was not allowed to travel until
sunset the next day. So he spent the dayin the field, by himself,
missing both the Seder meal with his family and the services at
the synagogue.
When he finally did return home the next evening, he was met by
an irate wife and an equally upset rabbi. The rabbi chided him
for his carelessness and asked him, “What did you do in the field
by yourself all day? Did you at least pray?”
“Rabbi,” the farmer answered, “I’m not a very smart man and I
don’t know many prayers. All the prayers I knew, I said in five
minutes. What I did the rest of the day was simply recite the
alphabet. I left it up to God to make some words out of all those
letters.”
We leave it to God to make the words out of the alphabet of our
lives. There are few better ways to describe how the Eucharist
works in terms of forming us into one heart in Christ. The Eucharist,
as we know, is meant to form us into one body in a way that takes
us beyond the differences and divisions of personality, ideology,
theology, gender, ethnicity, history, social status, preoccupation,
privatized agenda and jealousy. Oftentimes it alone has the power
to do this. Why? Why does the Eucharist have such unique power?
The Eucharist creates community in a way that cannot be explained
in terms of normal group process. Only the language of ritual
sheds any light here. What happens at the Eucharist cannot be
extrapolated and explained in terms of simple psychological dynamics.
It transcends the purely psychological, as does all powerful ritual
process. How?
An analogy might be helpful in trying to understand this. I entered
the Oblate seminary in my late teens as part of a group of nearly
50 young men (with an average age under 25). We were housed in
one small, overcrowded building that also served us for classrooms,
library, cafeteria and recreation. I lived in that situation,
a potential psychological hotbed, for six years and, overall,
it was a wonderful experience. Despite our differences in background
and personality and our youthful immaturities, we basically got
on quite well with each other. Very few left the seminary, in
those years, over relational difficulties with other seminarians.
However, one of the linchpins within our daily program was something
we called “Oraison.” It worked this way: For half an hour each
morning and for another half-hour each night, we would sit together,
all of us, in complete silence in the chapel. No words were exchanged
among us and nothing was expected of anyone except his silent
presence.
Looking back now, I see that this particular practice of sitting
together in silence, in prayer, for an hour each day, did more
to bring us together and keep us together than did all the community-building
exercises we did at other times. It created a ritual container
that held us together in a way that no purely psychological or
emotional container ever can.
What we had each day was akin to a “Quaker silence.” We sat together,
before God, and asked God to give us something that we could not
give to ourselves, namely, community beyond our differences. We
asked God to make a single word out of the different letters of
our lives.
And it wasn’t anything romantic, you can be sure of that! We sat
in a chapel, which itself was no aesthetic prize, as a group of
immature, young men, and we fought sleep, boredom, our hormones,
tiredness, low sugar, irritation with each other, full moons,
growling stomachs, homesickness, emotional obsessions, scars from
our sporting events and jealousies. This wasn’t the holy family–-not
by a long shot. But it worked—marvelously so. God gave us, daily,
something we couldn’t give to ourselves: a common heart and common
spirit. So, too, in Eucharist.
Recently I saw a satirical version of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous
Last Supper. Mostly it looked like the original, except, in this
updated version, one of the disciples is making a phone call on
a mobile phone, just as Jesus is lifting the bread and wine to
God for consecration. Not far off the mark at all!
One of our deepest, congenital longings is for community. But
we come together, seeking each other, carrying huge differences:
our wounds, our separate histories, our preoccupations, our sexual
and emotional obsessions, our jealousies, our boredom, and (far
too often) our cellular telephones. Such is our alphabet. On our
own we cannot form ourselves into a single prayer or into a single
heart. Only God can make those words. God does this for us in
the Eucharist.
Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author, and
currently serves in Rome as general councilor for Canada for the
Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
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