Whenever Christians celebrate the Eucharist, breaking bread and sharing the cup, they celebrate fullness of life. . . but with reference to death, with reference to a bloody agony in which faith conquered fear. The Eucharist is a challenge to follow Christ from fear to faith. The courage it takes to receive life even under the image of death—that is the courage of faith, the courage of gratefulness: trust in the Giver.
BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST, Gratefulness is the Heart of Prayer
This week I made visits to three different hospitals. It was a striking coincidence that as I walked up to the entrance of each hospital I saw young couples carrying newborn babies out into the light of sun for the first time. The parents looked weary but joyful, excited but cautious as they buckled their tiny bundles into car seats and began what would no doubt be a very careful and slow drive home.
Then I went inside, and walked the corridors in search of the patients I had come to visit. I passed room after room in which there were people making very different sorts of journeys from those newly born parents, journeys through injury, illness, and some, through death.
Birth, life, death, all in such terribly close proximity. Perhaps that is why hospitals are sometimes difficult and challenging places for us to be, because there we are confronted with the truth of just how close life and death always are.
As David Steindl-Rast writes, it does indeed take courage "to receive life even under the image of death," and to receive it with gratitude, with "trust in the Giver." From moment to moment this is how we receive life, with death as a close companion. There is so much in this culture and age of ours that would tell us this is not so and that death must be held at bay, avoided and eluded. Our fear of it grows with the extent of our evasion.
I live in fear of my own dying, and the impenetrable mystery that lies beyond. I live in fear of the beloved ones in my life dying, and the agonizing void that would inevitably follow. How would I ever survive such loss? I live in fear of all the "little deaths" that must happen in my life in order for me to live truthfully, wakefully and faithfully.
Those disciples long ago must have felt fearful as they sat at the table with Jesus and watched him break the bread, give thanks for it, then hand it to them with the words, "Take and eat, this is my body broken for you." They had no way of knowing this would be a "last supper," but perhaps they felt something of the fullness and finality of the moment when Jesus then took the cup of wine and said, "Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."
Take . . . eat . . . drink . . .
Whenever we gather and break the bread and share the cup in the church, I am reminded as I look around the sanctuary that this is much more than a reenactment of an ancient moment, or simply an exercise in remembering. We come together as a many-storied people who are birthing, living, dying and resurrecting our way through this life. We bring all of it into the moment of communion, and this meal bears the shape not only of Christ's life but the shape of our lives as well.
And with courage we take, eat, drink, and trust in the Giver to move us from fear to faith.
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