Asking the right question

Asking the Right Question

Chapter 2 from Tad Guzie’s book: The Book of Sacramental Basics

(This is from one the best books I have read on sacraments. It was published by Paulist Press.)

The Roman church, along with other Christian churches, has a new set of sacramental rites. The commissions that worked, on, the new rites knew the basic questions to ask: What is the Easter experience that we are celebrating? How does each sacrament celebrate that experience? Where did the old rites miss the mark? Are there parts of the story we have been overlooking?

But revising books is easier than revising people. We have now become aware of the substantial changes in thinking and attitude that need to go along with the new books. Turning altars around, talking English, having laypeople read at Mass and distribute communion, hearing confessions in a pleasant room instead of a dark box—only a few years ago such things looked like radical reform. Indeed they were at the time, but it is now evident to a vast number of Catholics that all of this has only been a scratch on the surface.

Attitudes are not reformed merely by external changes, or
by changes in the elements of festivity. We have to develop new
attitudes toward the whole cycle of experience and story as well.
Pie fact is that for centuries we had been living on a tradition, a story, which was too narrow and not sufficiently "catholic," not expressive enough of our whole tradition. Especially where the sacraments are concerned, we had been living mostly on the ideas handed down to us from the middle ages. And the insights of the middle ages are not the whole story. In order to be truly catholic and universal, we have to take into account a whole two thousand years, not just a few centuries. The Second Vatican Council was in touch with much modern research which put us into fuller contact with our past and with older sources that had been overlooked or forgotten. This council's message to the church, especially in the area of liturgy and sacrament, was that it is time to pick up where the Council of Trent left off in the sixteenth century, at the end of the middle ages.

This is not a simple issue. A century ago Pope Leo XIII insisted that all theologizing must harmonize with the conclusions of Thomas Aquinas, a man of the thirteenth century. Until very recent decades, Catholic publishing reflected this enthronement of the middle ages. I remember a book entitled The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries.

Today's Catholics who are over forty—laypeople who went to Catholic colleges, their pastors who studied in seminaries, and those less schooled who learned their Catholicism from pulpit and catechism—all were imbued with a view of history which saw the middle ages as the golden age of religious understanding. Scripture and the writings of the church fathers during the early centuries were considered vague, unsharpened, or insuffi­ciently clarified until men like Aquinas came along, Since then, according to this view, there has been mostly decline, and the best theology is a repetition or rewording of medieval insights, filtered through the Council of Trent.

Many Catholics no longer accept the perspective that the insights of one era should be normative for, all ages. Others are disturbed to see this perspective, called into question, and some functionaries in the church are determined to keep it alive and healthy. But the fact remains that Vatican II officially opened the door onto a modern interpretation of history in which the past is not absolutized and each era is permitted its own insights.

Medieval theology had many limitations, because it worked against heavy odds. The four or five centuries which we call the Dark Ages (roughly 600-1000 A.D.) were a crude age, a time when sheer self-preservation was practically the only concern of people. Even monasteries were rough places; among the monks were warlords who had been sent to a monastery because they had gotten into trouble with the king or emperor. Such practices were not calculated to make the monastery a center of study and learning. When the great medieval universities began to develop in the twelfth century, the vast majority of people thought the world was flat, even though fifteen centuries earlier the Greeks knew it wasn't.

The Spirit was still at work in the church, preserving the faith of the church. There were still holy people during the Dark Ages. But there was little learning, and a great deal of information about the past and about our Christian origins was simply lost. The theologians of the thirteenth century did remarkable work in recovering and reformulating insights that had become obscure during the Dark Ages. But especially in the area of worship and the sacraments, they lacked basic historical information.

For example, medieval theologians did not know that Jesus
created no new rituals. They did not know that a meal of bread
and wine was already a religious practice before Jesus' time.
They did not know that the practice of individual confession
went back only to the sixth century, not anywhere near the time of Jesus. They did not know that confirmation was separated from baptism more by accident than by design. In the middle ages, the anointing of the sick had become last rites for those who were dying. There was "extreme unction," a sacrament for those departing from this life, but there was no sacrament of the sick and no real theology for it. As for holy orders, the scholastics were not agreed whether the episcopate was a sacrament or only an honor added to the priesthood. They did not know that it was several centuries before presbyters began taking over from bishops sacramental duties like presiding at the Eucharist.

In short, such information which any well-informed Catholic today takes for granted was simply not available to the theologians of the middle ages. So it is not surprising that their sacramental theology does not reflect the whole of the Christian tradition. Key parts of the story were missing along with important dimensions of lived experience. This inevitably affected reflection on the meaning of the sacraments. Not that we now have to reject what the medievals did, but we do have to take account of what they overlooked or simply did not know about the tradition. It is a matter of broadening our understanding, seeing the larger or more universal story, and so becoming more authentically "catholic."

Today, when we talk about "celebrating baptism" or "celebrating the eucharist," we are using quite a different language from the one most of us learned as children. It is important to reflect on the language we use, because the way we talk usually mirrors the way we think about things. "Celebrating the eucharist" represents an attitude that is quite different from "saying and hearing Mass."

The new language is not arbitrary. It reflects important discoveries that we have made about our origins. When the early Christians came together for worship, they were very conscious of themselves as a community gathered in the name of their Lord Jesus. Different people performed different roles in their rituals. But the people were conscious that the whole celebration was their action, not just the action of the presiding ministers.

Suppose you were a Christian early in the second century.

What would you do on Sunday morning? Let's set the scene as though it were a North American city, where you live, say, on the near west side. Though this is Sunday, the Lord's day for Christians, it is an ordinary working day, not a day of rest. So the Christian community has to gather before the working day begins. You and your family get up around five in the morning. You set out through the quiet streets as the sun is rising. In your pocket or purse you carry a small bun which you will bring to the Eucharistic table.

You pass by what is now Saint Augustine's and Central Presbyterian. They weren't churches then. At that time they were temples dedicated to Democracy and Free Enterprise (a good enough modern equivalent for Jupiter and Apollo). You walk through a neighborhood of large houses until you come to a house owned by a Christian family. You slip in the back door of the house, and a man looks you over as you come in. (You belong to an illegal organization, and you are risking a death sentence or at least life in a penal colony by coming to this as­sembly.) The man, who is one of the deacons of your church, recognizes you and greets you.

You walk into the large living room, which looks just as it does any other day. But now it is filling up with people; the church is assembling. It is a very mixed group socially, economically, racially; there are people from every part of town. You know most of them by name, but the ones you know best are people from your own neighborhood, because you meet with them in small groups during the week for prayer, or instruction, or reflection on the writings of the apostles. (You have never heard the term "New Testament." It would still be decades until that term was devised to cover the apostolic writings. You are probably familiar with most of Paul's letters, and perhaps a few of the gospels. Chances are that you don't know all four gospels; it would still be a while before all of these writings circulated in all of the communities.)

Everyone is standing around chatting. Someone comes over to you and introduces a young couple, friends from another city. They brought along with them a loaf from last Sunday's Eucharist: the Christian community in their town asked them to bring it as a sign of unity among the churches.

You are happy to see Ned O'Neil and John Kubicek shaking hands and embracing. There are tears of happiness and relief in Judy Kubicek's eyes. The two men had gotten into a severe argument not long ago, and both had been missing from the Eucharistic assembly for several weeks. A saying of Jesus is coming alive before your eyes: "If you bring your gift to the altar and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift at the altar, go first to be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Mt 5:23-24).

At the other end of the living room sits an older man. This is the bishop of your city, the head pastor. He is dressed like any-of the other men in the room; no one wears any unusual clothing. At the moment he is talking to a few of the men who are seated near him, in a semicircle facing down the room. These are the "elders" or "presbyters" of your community, the men in charge of the community's affairs, much like a parish council. (In your community there might be some women among these presbyters. Documents from the second century indicate that women were not universally excluded from this form of leadership until later.)

The celebration is about to begin. The bishop stands and greets the whole assembly, and all of you reply to his greeting. Then you turn and embrace your neighbor warmly. Perhaps you go over and give the kiss of peace to someone whom you haven’t seen for a while (there are no pews to get in your way). This is a kiss, a real embrace. People who are risking a sentence of death in order to come together tend to greet one another with something a bit warmer than a formal handshake.

In front of the bishop is a small table. Two deacons stand in front of it (one might be a woman), one holding a silver plate and the other a two-handled silver cup. You all file up and put the bun you brought with you on the plate, and then you pour a little wine into the cup. The plate and cup are placed on the table in front of the bishop, and some water is added to the cup.

Then the bishop and elders stand with their hands out­stretched over the bread and cup. They do this in silence, letting the gesture speak for itself. It is a gesture you recognize well, this "laying on of hands." It occurs in nearly every ritual you have ever experienced. When you were preparing to become a Christian, your teacher laid hands on you at the end of every session. This commonest of Christian gestures is now being used to focus your attention on the bread and wine, which will be broken and shared in order to "speak" who you all are as

church: the Lord's own body.

Then the bishop invites you to lift up your hearts, and to give thanks to the Lord our God. You answer, sharing in the introductory dialogue which is one of the oldest elements of the Christian liturgy. His hands still outstretched over the bread and cup, the bishop then chants a short prayer, giving thanks for creation, God's care for us, and our re-creation as a new people redeemed in Christ. It is a short prayer, very simple, much shorter than our present Eucharistic prayers.

After the prayer of thanksgiving the bishop breaks one of the buns and eats a piece of the loaf. He then takes three sips from the cup. Meanwhile the two deacons break the other loaves. You watch this action in silence, aware that these pieces of bread broken from single loaves speak of the unity of Christians in one body.

The bishop stands in front of the table with the plate of broken bread. You go up to him and he says to you, "The bread of heaven in Christ Jesus." You answer "Amen," taking a piece of bread your hands. You eat the bread, and then go over to the deacon who offers you the silver cup. He says to you, "In God the Father almighty." You answer "Amen" and take your first sip from the cup. (This assembly takes its time with communion, because the action is the central thing.) You take your second and third sips after the deacon has said "In the Lord Jesus Christ" and finally "In the Holy Spirit in the holy church."

You go back to your place, and there is a pause for prayer as everyone finishes communicating. Many of you go up to the bishop again with a little silver box. He puts some fragments of the bread in the box, which you put into your pocket or purse. This is for members of your family who could not come this morning, perhaps because of illness. (This is the origin of reserving the Eucharistic bread after the celebration. The practice began not for purposes of adoration, but for the sake of the sick or the absent.)

The bishop then dismisses the gathering, perhaps with a short prayer or blessing. You return home, hoping you won't be stopped by the police and caught with that little silver box on you. You have your breakfast and then begin the working day. That evening, or some other time during the week, you will meet with one or another small group in your neighborhood, for prayer and reflection.

That's what it would have been like. The whole thing was very simple and brief, quite unimpressive to, an outsider. I do not want to romanticize the group of people assembled in that living room. They were generally very dedicated, but they had their conflicts and problems just as we have ours. Paul's letters and other early documents are reminders that there were serious conflicts and doctrinal disagreements even in the earliest communities.

But the experience of the Eucharist was, for them, different from what our modern experience has usually been. Their attitude toward the sacraments was the original Christian attitude, which can be summed up this way: The sacraments are actions, not things. They are actions which the assembly performs, not "things" which we "receive." They are something we do rather than something that is done to us.

Unfortunately, this sense of being the Lord's own body and celebrating it receded as the centuries went by. This began happening in the fourth century, after Constantine, when Christianity was suddenly no longer an illegal organization but the emperor's own religion. Your social standing and even your success in the business world came to depend on your being a Christian. If you were one of the men assembled in that second-century living room, you could not be a soldier. Soldiers have to kill, and Christians were total pacifists. But a few centuries later you couldn't get anywhere in the military unless you were a Christian. In other words, membership in the church came to be one of the credit cards you had to carry if you were to be successful in the world.

The church was originally a we, a group of people with a strong common awareness of being one in Christ. Gradually the church became an it, an organization to belong to. Note how the understanding of church and of sacrament go hand in hand:

The sacraments are actions, not things.

The church is a we, not an it.

If someone in that living room had spoken to you of "ministry," you would not first have thought of the bishop or presbyters or deacons at the other end of the room. You would spontaneously have applied the word to yourself. Everyone had a ministry, because everyone had gifts from the Lord which were brought to the service of the community. But gradually the whole sense of a corporate venture, involving a variety of gifts all contributing to the upbuilding of the one body, was lost. The word "ministry" came to be restricted to people holding full-time positions of leadership in the community. If you were not one of those full-timers, you came to think of the "church" more and more as something out there, something else, someone other than yourself.

This of course is where some Christians are today. The church is like a credit card. It is more an institution, than an assembly of believers. It is more a thing than an activity, and the word "church" itself evokes a building rather than people. If, when you hear that word, the first thing that comes to mind is people rather than a building, it is only because you have given much time and effort to the work of overcoming old attitudes.

The loss of awareness of being church brought with it a decline in sacramental practice. Communion was no longer an essential part of the Eucharistic action for most people, and the sacraments were no longer an action in which the whole assembly felt engaged. They came to be seen as the priest's action, something done to us rather than something we do.

The sacraments thus became "things" which, you "went to church" (the building) to "receive," and a whole new way of talking about the sacraments developed. In the early church (the assembly, not the building), all of the faithful were "celebrators." That was the word used in various languages to describe Christians engaged in worship. But by the beginning of the middle ages, the faithful had become simply "recipients." The thing-mentality took over entirely, and it was summed up in the idea that the sacraments will "take effect" on you just so long as you don't "place an obstacle" in their way.

How the Eucharistic turned from an action into a thing is well illustrated by what happened to the words of institution. In the middle of the prayer of thanksgiving is a story, an account of the last supper. The story appears there because it tells why we are giving thanks in just this way with bread and wine. The story is addressed to people who are engaged in doing what Jesus said we should do. But as the people became "recipients" rather than "celebrators," the words came to be addressed, by the priest bent low over the bread and cup, to the objects to be received.

Most people, when they are asked what are the Eucharistic symbols, will answer "Bread and wine." (What answer did you just give?) That is the answer that medieval theology gave. Bread and wine are the matter of the sacrament; the words of institution are the form. But the original Eucharistic symbols are actions, not things. The original Eucharistic symbols are breaking the bread and sharing the cup.

We are so affected by the thing-mentality that it is hard for us to hear the story of the last supper. "This is my body," said the Lord, and for centuries we have heard the word "this" as referring to the bread. Listen to the text again, with the attitude of sacrament as action rather than thing, and the story will have a different ring. Jesus took bread, said a blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying "This is my body which is given for you."

The "body which is given for you is symbolized in the whole action of blessing, breaking and sharing the bread. The word "this" refers to the whole action, not to the bread alone.

The New Testament gives different accounts of the last supper. Paul and Luke include the relational phrase for the bread; Matthew and Mark do not; all four give a relational phrase for the cup ("my blood which is poured out for you"). The old Roman Canon did not contain the phrase "given for you," and it did not figure into scholastic theology's concept of the essential form of the sacrament. It is for good reason that the new Roman rite has restored the phrase. Are not the relational words essential for naming the exact sense of what Jesus was doing?

Medieval stress on the things of the Eucharist changed the focus of theology and catechetics. When we who are the inheritors of the object-mentality talk about the Eucharist today, our first question tends to be "What happens to the bread and wine?" The answer is that it is changed, and we are taught that the medieval theory known as "transubstantiation" is the most fitting explanation of the change. A vast number of Catholics have become uncomfortable with this explanation because it has the ring of magic. Here I will only remark that the theory of transubstantiation is understandable in its historical context. It is a reasonable explanation in the terms of a philosophy of substance. The difficulty is that the theory is intrinsically tied to the object-mentality. As such, the theory of transubstantiation is a good answer to a bad question.

The question that eventually generated the theory of transubstantiation--What happens to the bread and wine?—does not appear in theological writings until the ninth century. The earlier Christian tradition did not think of Christ's presence or of the Eucharistic "change" in terms of the objects of bread and wine alone. For the church fathers, what is said about the objects has to be said also about the people. Their preoccupation can be put this way: "What happens to the people who celebrate with bread and wine?"

Their answer, as someone like Augustine put it, was that we must be what we have eaten. We already are the body of Christ, but we must become that body still more so. We have to be bread for others, just as Jesus is bread given for us. Christ is our pass-over, but the passover should also be happening in us. If our food and drink is the Lord himself, the important thing is that sharing this food makes us "pass over" into what we have eaten, so that "everywhere we carry him with whom we are dead, buried, and raised to life." Those are the words of Leo the Great. John Chrysostom is even more vivid. Through the food the Lord has given us, we become "members of his flesh and of his bones." We are "mixed into" that flesh, and he has "kneaded his body with ours."

Ideas like these, which fill the sermons and writings of the church fathers, express the earliest tradition of the church. What is said of the worshiping faithful goes hand in hand with what is said of the bread and wine: this body given for you. Someone once asked, in a course I was teaching on the Eucharist, why I never referred to the "sacred" host and the "precious" blood. It occurred to me that when the church fathers use adjectives of this kind—and they do it often—in the same breath they invariably talk about the sacred and precious people who are celebrating the sacrament.

The loss of awareness of "being church" brought with it a loss of this sense of our own sacredness. Theology's shift of attention from people to things both reflected this loss and fostered it. What began in medieval theology became a hardened tradition in the centuries following the Council of Trent, when Catholic theology was preoccupied with defending its tradition against Protestant attacks on it. Little theological reflection was given to the church as the holy priesthood and consecrated people spoken of in scripture and so richly elaborated by the fathers. In the writings of those centuries the sacredness of the Christian people seemed to become almost totally projected onto the Eucharistic objects of bread and wine.

There were profound pastoral consequences here. One need only think of many of our parents and grandparents who took communion very rarely, and who would spend weeks preparing for the event. Implicit here was the attitude that we are sinners who come to the sacraments in order to receive a holy thing. It is the sacrament that is sacred and holy; we are not.

The problem is not the holiness of the sacraments but rather our attitude toward ourselves. There are important insights in the medieval tradition which we can profit from, and which will be mentioned in due course. There were also moments of liturgical renewal during the centuries we have been surveying. At the moment I am stressing the negative fruits of this tradition in order to emphasize the unhappy attitudes that can be generated when theology asks the wrong questions. It should be clear at this point that for many centuries the sacramental question has been put the wrong way around. The "things" of the sacraments can make sense only if our reflection begins not with the things, but with the people and their action.