One my my favorite quotes. It involves Flannery O'Connor. One of the writers I'm currently fascinated by. Here's the back story and the quote:
Flannery was taken by some friends to have dinner with an accomplished author. This author departed the Church at the age of 15 and was a "Big Intellectual". Flannery didn't speak at all throughout the dinner party, "there being nothing for me in such company to say. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them." The conversation did turn to the Eucharist, which Flannery, the Catholic, felt she should defend. This author said as a child when she received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, "He being the most portable person of the Trinity" and that "now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one." Flannery's response: "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it."
I was never brought up to take part in the Eucharist, though I regularly went to church. My church, the Salvation Army, didn't practice the sacrament, one reason was the belief that "All life is a sacrament". So to set aside special "sacraments" was, in some sense, unnecessary (I'm surmising Salvationist beliefs I know. Sally's out there indulge me). In fact, I didn't receive the Eucharist (Communion, Lord's Supper, Bread & Wine, etc.) until a college chapel service. And I did so not fully sure of the practice myself. The next few times it was offered, I refused it. Until, that is, I came across the subject in theology classes.
Now I won't get into consubstantiation and transubstantiation. Actually, I don't think I could anyway. But what the Eucharist has become for me is a deep spiritual experience. It is not an experience weighted in liturgy or concerned with intinction. It is an experience shrouded in the mystery that is the presence of God, the presence and reminder of Christ Himself, of His Sacrifice. I am utterly moved by the sacrament of Communion.
Back to Flannery. Perhaps I have not betrayed my Salvationist upbringing quite as much as I had once thought. Perhaps Catherine Booth simply said "to hell with it" because it had become a symbol. Even today, Christians have symbols they erect -- in some cases: the sacraments; in others: devotions; Christian music; the books Christians may read; the mission trips they go on. Events partaken in because they are to be the "symbols" to the world of the faith.
Then I say: To hell with them. For if they are JUST symbols -- then it is nothing; "it is all straw".
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Because, quite often, little of what I say is of any lasting value. Though in rare occasion, may I invoke your illative sense. Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.
7 comments:
you lost me at "Big Intellectual"
i need some help. I need help on proving that God or another powerful deity is real, by supposing that God doesn't exist!
Ok I know that sounds confusing. It was confusing writing it.
But if you could help that would be nice.
"If there were no God, there would be no atheists."
Email me. I'll certainly help you as best I can.
An interesting journey into the 'act' of taking communion. Certainly there is the realm of church history one can explore to understand its depth of purpose, not all beneficial to a seeking heart. While you are in awe of communion, I am in awe of baptism, not the act, which in itself carries more weight than communion, but in what is received beyond the material. By this I refer to the 'baptism of the only Spirit,' sanctification in some arenas of theology. But back to communion, it is also identification with the divine, Jesus, at the point of the Last Supper--'Do this in rememberance of me. What part of 'me' do we remember in the communion? That is a question to be asked and answered.
To Sam,
What do you mean by real? Can experience sense it? Can feelings define it? Can we even perceive it on our level? Is God real or another powerful deity? Perhaps you can start with what you know rather than from doubt (aka DeCartes).
What part of 'me' do we remember in the communion? That is a question to be asked and answered.
Anon-- you are certainly asking the right questions. Briefly, here is what is for me.
Look at the atom and how small it is and yet the destruction it is capable of. The same is true for these small articles of bread and wine. Yet behind them and, perhaps, in them, lies the whole force of Christianity. Perhaps I will be accused for being too mystical in that belief -- again, though, if it is anything less, to hell with it. For me, in the remembrance of Christ it is of His death and resurrection, it is the incarnation itself-- that God should become man and why (again, we see, in something so small as man, something so large and with such force behind it was contained). It is, indeed, the whole power of Christianity.
As for baptism, that is another sacrament I was not brought up on, per se. And one I have given thought to but may very likely never fully embrace -- and yet, I see it in the same things and I am awed.
Again, grasshopper, your deep understanding is far beyond your years. Perhaps it is time to study Job.
I'm comming late to the party, but as a non catholic christian that was raised with communion and baptism I'll throw my shekels into the ring.
Aarong I agree with you on communion, "do this in rememberence" as in what I have done for you, wipe your sins away. Each time you take the waffer/body I broke my body on the cross and then with the wine/grape juice/blood it was spilt as a spotless lamb to be the sacrifice for your sins. It could be called just a symbol, but one that is suppose to remind a christian why they are one and give you time to reflect on life.
Ok I'll stop preaching now... I must of channeled my dad the ex-minister for a few minutes there.
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