- Valson Thampu
A thing is understood best in light of its original intent and the over-all vision within which it was conceived. Secondly, what a person does as he approaches death expresses the essence of his life and mission. The Last Supper, envisaged as a fellowship meal, is an event of this kind. The Supreme Sacrament, or the Holy Mass, has its origin in this special experience Jesus organized for his disciples on purpose.
In understanding the essential significance and spiritual scope of the Sacrament, the following points need to be noted-
- To Jesus, the blessedness of life consisted in being one with God. Life becomes degraded when that blessed state is disrupted. But for Jesus’s oneness with his Father (Jn.10:30) the Last Supper would not have had a sacramental scope.
- The rupture or alienation between the human and the divine is the seed of human sorrow. Reconciliation of the two is our foremost need.
- Spiritual alienation is a serious problem because human beings are not meant to live for themselves alone. The life of every human being involves the life of humanity as a whole. Hence the teaching, ‘You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world’. (Matt 5:13-16). As contemporary depth-psychology recognizes, the individual is in the race, and the race is in the individual. Or, as John Donne, the English poet, affirmed, no man is an island complete in himself. Or, in the words of Genesis: ‘It is not good that man be alone’. The essence of the sacrament is the integration of the one with the One, the individual with humankind.
- Ideally, there is no discontinuity between the spiritual and the social, the physical and the metaphysical. The relationship between the two is symbolised, in the context of the Sacrament, by the continuity -or, the ‘is-ness’- between the body and the bread. Jesus said, ‘This (the bread) is my body’. What does not recognize and honour this ‘is’-ness, falls short of the sacramental.
- The hallmark of the redeemed is that they see the world -the opportunities and responsivities therein- through the eyes of God and respond as such. For that to happen, our eyes have to be opened, and a new vision born. The sacramental, therefore, also includes this opening of the eyes of the blind (Lk.4:18), which is the significance of the feet-washing within the Sacrament.
Jesus and the Intimations of the Sacrament
Strictly speaking, the origin of the Sacrament goes back to the Incarnation: The Word becoming flesh, dwelling in our midst full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14). The pre-incarnational ‘flesh’ does not lend itself to the sacramental. St John’s insight emphasizes the divine significance of the Person of Jesus. Jesus dwelt in our midst so that we may dwell in him. Hence, the core sacramental condition is: ‘Abide in me, and I in you’ (Jn. 15:4). To communicate and to commune is for the communicator and the communicant ‘to abide in’ each other.
For our species, the gulf between God and humans -or, spiritual alienation- has been the seminal existential issue. All of the life and mission of Jesus -the Fellowship Meal being its climax- was envisaged as a remedial response to this core issue in the human condition. The sanctified realism of the biblical vision recognizes the disinclination inherent in human nature to accept this reconciliation. This realism underlies the Crucifixion, and connects it with the Last Supper. The Last Supper is ritualized precognition of the Crucifixion. The feet-washing nuances this paradox in human nature, especially through the awkwardness that Peter feels in Jesus washing his feet.
This brings us to two further anticipations of the Sacrament. The first is the parable of the mustard seed (Matt 13:31-32). The poetic exaggeration is deliberate. The mustard plant in the parable has to become a tree because the birds in the air need accommodation, so to speak. The Kingdom mustard tree stands in sacramental contrast to the inn distinguished by the notice: ‘There is room’. The sacramental scope of Jesus’s Person is best expressed in his words, ‘Come to me all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest’. (Matt 11:28). In him there is room for all. The Sacrament transforms the worldly inn into a Kingdom mustard tree.
The second of such anticipations is Jesus’s transcending, as St Paul puts it, the ‘walls of division’. In breaking the bread and making it one with his Body -that is, his personality- Jesus dismantled the most fundamental of all walls – the wall that separates the material and the spiritual. The Incarnation itself is instinct with this liberating breach. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:28).
This Pauline ‘neither’ is, then, the essence of the unconditional hospitality subsumed in the Sacrament. There is room in it even for Judas; for ‘betrayal’ is the ultimate wall between man and man. Without dismantling this wall, the breaking of the body may become a glorified gesture sans the sacramental and salvific scope it has come to have.
