The Eucharistic feast

Irian Jaya is the western Indonesian half of the island more popularly known as Papua. Michael Rockefeller disappeared in its jungles while on a natural resource expedition, suspected of having shared his bodily substance over the communal bonfire.

Captain Cook visited the islands of Tonga and named it the Friendly Islands. Cook’s company was feted lavish food beyond their girth’s normal intake. They were to stay a full moon but decided unannounced to leave early, much to their host’s dismay.

The “friendly” hospitality tendered by the natives was to fatten the sailors for an eventual sacrificial date at the dining table. That would have been one orgy savored around the world!

“Cannibal” is our pejorative term of folks who delight in adding the human flesh to their culinary options. The evolution of our humanity has declared the practice a heinous crime though we would be dishonest if we do not acknowledge our quiet siding with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter of Jodie Foster’s 1991 Oscar-award winning movie, The Silence of the Lambs, in its last frames as the famed psychiatrist prepared for his dinner. There is also the Tonga story, not uncommon in the Pacific islands, that speaks of poor parents visited unexpectedly by the island’s sovereign, taking their only daughter to the sacrificial fire so the sovereign may feast.

We often look down on “primitive ignorant pagans” who indulge in the practice, until we partake of one of Christendom’s highest religious rituals and hear with discomfort uttered words such as, “this is my body and my blood, for you; eat, drink, all of it, in remembrance of me.” OK. There is the transubstantiation and consubstantiation debate but that is theological hair splitting. Reformation Europe tried sugarcoating the ritual by declaring it as just a symbol, but Rome’s orthodoxy did not let go of “the real body and blood” claim, deciding that the elements of the Eucharist are the actual physical presence of the Christ Jesus.

We do not deign navigate the reefed terrain of them waters, but “cannibalistic” is not a common reference term in any basilica, yet I heard it used in West Africa against the oft-repeated Western missionaries’ accusations of sensual uncouthness!

Indeed, unembodied love is nothing but sentimentality. Philosophy in the Flesh is more than just the title of a book. Spirit of the hairy-fairy variety is figment of the imagination. Life sans physicality is no life at all. “Existence precedes essence” is an oft-quoted philosophical phrase, and the Judaic word for “spirit” is the very real and sensual ruah, the wild wind of the desert!

The unconditional giving (liturgically called “sacrifice”) of one’s self, promoted in the Holy Week story of the Jesus Christ journey as a human model worth replicating, has been the essence of the Christian faith since Christmas replaced Rome’s bacchanalian orgy, consecrating in its place the common meal of the “breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine.” I grew up with the image of the trembling priest raising the elements with much holy dread. The act symbolizes nothing less than the sacrifice of one’s total life’s expenditure on behalf of another. “No love is greater than this…” is the scriptural line.

We’re moving away from our carnivorous dietary habits and definitely frown on its cannibalistic expressions, but we have also become anti-sensual in our transcendence. We sided with Queen Victoria’s Frenchified fragrant earlobe cover-ups as missionaries draped the Pacific islanders with long bales of cotton to hide the feminine ankle and veil the masculine torso.

The Seder meal of that long ago Passover dinner in the upper room in Bethany is unequivocal in its singular message: “This is my body…this is my blood.” It is the sense experience of embodied sight and hearing, taste and touching, smell and the whole gamut of sensuality that constitute the core of human existence, and the treasure that we share unconditionally one to another!

The economic pole is foundational in the social process, preceding political organization and cultural significance. Its iterative dynamic of resource utilization (natural, human, and technological), engaging human means, force, systems, and created technologies to produce goods and services that are distributed to effectively meet needs, constitutes our humanity. The intrinsic value of human survival and the willful expenditure of physical existence supersede the current addiction at the altar of monetized virtues and values foisted under the sovereign rule of our financial institutions, with the collusion of our legislative bodies and the bolstering of our educational fountains.

Irian Jaya students live in my building but I have not noticed them sitting much around any bonfire. In fact, I caught one of them humming Amazing Grace in the elevator.

The lifted Eucharistic elements in the meandering river of consciousness across the wide expanse of the land of mystery inviting us to the mountain of care while navigating the sea of tranquility hold the summm bonum of our being: “This is my body, this is my blood, that is given for you.”