Corpus, Not Corporation
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, December 11, 2008 10:21 PM
Shepherds came to serenade our shepherd on earth at Wednesday’s audience.
Well, bagpipers, anyway.
Picking up from last week’s reflection on Christ as the new Adam and the effects of original sin, the Pope starts right in. We learned from St. Paul last week that all of history is poisoned by sin and that Christ comes to redeem history—or to start it anew.
the question is: how can we enter into this new beginning, into this new story? How does this new story get to me?...Communion with Jesus, the new birth, the new humanity, how are they realized? How does Jesus come into my life, into my being?
St. Paul’s answer? The Holy Spirit. And here the Pope asks a further question (don’t you love the way he anticipates objections):
But we must be even more concrete: this Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, how can it become my Spirit?
By three modalities, he answers: the door of my heart when the Spirit knocks and touches us; by listening to the word of God, and through the sacraments—pre-eminently Baptism & Eucharist—which literally make the Church by unifying us. I liked this way of describing how we come to faith: by a divine mission in which we later participate:
Faith is not a product of our thinking, of our reflection - it is something new that we cannot invent but can only receive as a gift, as a novelty produced by God.
Faith does not come from reading but from listening. It is not just an internal thing but a relationship with Someone. It presupposes an encounter with the announcement, it presupposes the existence of an ‘other’ who announces and creates communion.
Finally, he who makes the announcement does not speak for himself, but is sent. He is within a structure of mission that starts with Jesus sent by the Father, and goes down to the apostles - the word ‘apostles’ means ‘messengers’ - and continues in the ministry, in the missions handed down by the apostles.
The new fabric of history appears in this structure of missions, in which ultimately we hear God himself speaking, his personal word - his Son - speaks to us, comes down to us.
He spends the remainder of the talk discussing the significance of Baptism, Eucharist & Matrimony, beginning with how we become Christians. We have to receive Christianity, we don’t make it ourselves. This is true of each individual soul and of the Church writ large:
“We have been baptized” is a passive statement. No one can baptize himself, he needs somebody else. No one can make himself Christian all by himself. To become Christian is a passive process. Only from another can we become Christians. And that ‘other’ that makes us Christians, which gives us the gift of faith, is first of all, the community of believers, the Church.
From the Church, we receive our faith in Baptism. Without allowing ourselves to be formed by this community, we do not become Christians. An autonomous, self-made Christianity is a self-contradiction.
In the first instance then, this other is the community of believers, the Church, but even this community does not act by itself, according to its own ideas and desires. Even the community lives in the same passive process: only Christ can constitute the Church. Christ is the true giver of the Sacraments. This is the first point: No one baptizes himself, no one makes himself Christian. We become Christians.
Next he points out that Baptism is a rebirth, not a mere spiritual bath or cleansing.
To become a Christian is not a cosmetic operation that would add something beautiful to an existence that is already more or less complete. It is a new beginning and a rebirth: death and resurrection. Obviously, in resurrection, what was good in the preceding existence re-emerges.
(Nice to think about that latter remark in connection with heaven, isn’t it?)
It’s in the Eucharist that we’re fully re-made and the Holy Father explains the depths of meaning in St. Paul’s teaching:
Paul transmits the words of the Lord over the chalice: this chalice is ‘the new covenant in my blood’. In these words are hidden a reference to two fundamental texts from the Old Testament.
The first reference is to the promise of a new covenant in the book of the prophet Jeremiah (cfr 31,31-34). Jesus tells the apostles and tells us: Now, at this hour, with me and in my death, the new covenant will be realized; from my blood will start the new story of mankind.
But there is also another reference, in these words, to the moment of the covenant on Sinai, where Moses said, “This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his”(Ex 24,8).
In this case, it was the blood of animals. The blood of animals can only be an expression of a desire, an anticipation of the true sacrifice, of the true worship. With the gift of the chalice, the Lord gives us the true sacrifice. The only true sacrifice is the love of the Son. With his gift of love, eternal love, the world enters into the new covenant.
Celebrating the Eucharist means that Christ gives himself to us, his love, so we may conform ourselves to him and thus create a new world.
From there the Pope goes on to link Matrimony to Baptism and the Eucharist—but you have to follow the link to read how.
The Holy Father departed significantly from his prepared text this week, so Zenit has an account rather than a translation. We can work from that summary here or the transcription from the Vatican Radio podcast at Papa Ratzinger Forum (scroll to post #15939).
Enjoy!
Previous Sessions:
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9
Session 10
Session 11
Session 12
Session 13
Session 14
Session 15
Session 16
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