Spiritual Contours of Sacrament – 3
- Valsan Tampu
Arguably, ‘brokenness’ and ‘shed-ness’ constitute the core of the sacramental: the body broken, the bloodshed. Yet, communicants, even celebrants, tend be vague, or insensitive, to what this brokenness signifies. It is, therefore, as necessary as it is helpful to attain clarity in this regard, so that partaking of the Sacrament becomes an authentic spiritual experience, and not merely a habitual observation.
The key to this sacramental essence – brokenness plus shed-ness – is found in the words of Jesus: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mtt.16:24). It is this self, the breaking of which serves as the sacramental act, that needs to be rendered good enough to be broken. So, the question arises naturally and necessarily: What is ‘self’?
It took me years and years of reflection and meditation to realize that the ‘self’ itself is an outcome of brokenness. What is our birth, if not brokenness in relation to the intra-uterine state? Our life as discrete individuals begins with the breaking of the umbilical cord. We were broken from our mothers in order that we may come to be.
Not only that, the birth of our consciousness too involved brokenness. A baby is one with the universe. That is why self-awareness is least in a baby. Awareness is induced by otherness. We become aware of our self through a world we perceive as our other. Our consciousness is also a world-delivered birth. The birth of our consciousness is also predicated on brokenness.
Despite this, our attitude to brokenness remains ambivalent. Innate in human nature is the tendency to dwell in one’s comfort zone; or, in the words of Jesus, to choose the easy-going, broad path. As psychologists maintain, we do not wish to outgrow our infantile stateWe are ‘Immortal Infants’, in the words of Freud. We are born as adults through the brokenness of the Immortal Infant in each one of us. This saves us from remaining infantile and puerile.
The Bible challenges us with yet another astonishing insight in this regard. Our gender-consciousness itself is a product of brokenness. That explains why Eve had to be created out of Adam’s rib. It is a poetic-creational intuition: not a literal fact. The female comes into being through the pre-conscious, or primeval, brokenness of the male. For him to be male, he needs to ‘mother’ his ‘other’ – the female – out of himself. The gender-sexuality-dynamic being a product of such brokenness, it is essential that man – male and female – exercise this privilege sacramentally.
A word more about why this brokenness is essential. As Jesus presents via the parable of the wheat and tares and the parable of the grain of wheat, we exist ‘mixed-up’; and not in a pure state. In the fertile soil of our earthly existence, wheat and tares grow side-by-side. Our sense of identity, our awareness of who we are, has to be formed, and is formed, in relation to a universe of objects and influences to which we relate selectively and, for the most part, passively. The difference between ‘wheat’ and ‘tares’ – as also between wheat and chaff – is the capacity or incapacity for ‘significant’ brokenness. Grains of wheat yield a harvest via their brokenness.
The bread that Jesus took in his hands to be transformed via brokenness into his body was itself the product of an antecedent brokenness. The wheat was broken to make bread. For the wheat and for the bread alike, there is a contrary option: to say un-broken. Result? Well, physical or spiritual famine, respectively!
This brings us to the very heart of the spiritual scope of sacramental, or abundant brokenness: not a negation, but a mysterious affirmation. It is the necessary condition for being ‘transformed’ into something incomparably higher, meaningful and relevant to the human condition and to God’s purposes concerning the world. Nothing indifferent to this purpose amounts to the sacramental.
The long and short of our biblical focus on brokenness as the sacramental essence is the need to educate the Christian community that the Sacrament must be entered into, respecting its profound spiritual logic, in openness to its life-transforming scope. Participating in it as a ritualized habit falls short of abiding in Jesus via the sacramental experience. It says ‘no’ to the Sacrament even as it says ‘yes’ to the sacrament.
