Msgr de Vereteuil

I suppose the claim could be made for other passages but I think 1Corinthians 11: 17-34 has possibly been the most overlooked of all biblical passages. But, as St Paul reminds us, we ignore it at our peril.

This passage is the earliest reference we have to the celebration of the Eucharist. In this section of his letter St Paul is writing to the Church in Corinth to correct a certain liturgical abuse he has heard takes place in their celebration of the Eucharist.

This abuse, he tells them, is so serious that it makes what they are doing “not the Lord’s Supper”. (v 20). What is this abuse, this thing that is so liturgically incorrect, that it negates the purpose of their gathering?

Let us look at the passage. St Paul has heard of their celebration and at the start of his response puts his finger on the abuse – division and lack of care for one another in the community (“there are factions among you” v 18- 22). At this point in liturgical history the Eucharist was celebrated in the context of a full meal.

People would arrive with their food and drink, the quantity and quality of which would depend on the faction’s wherewithal. Eating and drinking would commence with little regard for who might not have or who might be embarrassed to open their first-century equivalent of Crix and mauby in the face of another’s smoked salmon and pinot noir (one person goes hungry while another is getting drunk…making poor people embarrassed – vv 21-22).

Liturgical abuse

This lack of care for one another has serious consequences for the celebration of the Eucharist—“what am I to say to you? Congratulate you? I cannot congratulate you on this ” (v 22); “anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be behaving unworthily towards the body and blood of the Lord” (v 27).

Verse 29 underlines Paul’s point: “A person who eats and drinks without recognising the Body is eating and drinking his own condemnation.” What is this “body” we are called to recognise? Because of the Church’s understandable emphasis after the Council of Trent on the Real Presence, this “Body” St Paul calls us to recognise was understood by many as meaning the Real Presence of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine, but it is very clear from the context that St Paul here is not referring to this Body but the body that is the People of God.

For example, in the immediate context of the chapter that fact of our oneness in Christ is his point, and the fact that they do not recognise that together they make up the Body is their downfall; in the context of the preceding and following chapters Paul uses the “body” to refer to the people of God. In chapter 10: 17 he refers to those celebrating the Eucharist as “one body”, and in chapter 12 he gives the famous analogy of the body of Christ made up of the baptised – “now you together are Christ’s body”.

The Corinthians’ problem is that they are celebrating without recognising that those gathered with them are their brothers and sisters, celebrating without recognising the unity that exists among them because they are one in Christ.

What is on display in their celebration is selfishness and disunity --- and this is the deepest liturgical abuse of all because it is a denial of who they are and what they are supposed to be doing --- proclaiming the total love and self-giving of Jesus and deepening the unity that exists among them as the Body of Christ.

An unfortunate result of the emphasis on the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice to the exclusion of all other aspects was the possibility that one could attend Mass without reference to another person –sacrifice after all is between the offerer and a god with the possible mediation of a priest.

This allowed a very individualistic attendance at the Lord’s Supper, a participation in the Mass that demanded nothing in the way of community, of care and unity.

Very ancient Eucharistic praying included a prayer for unity among the people at the Lord’s Supper. The Didache (late first-century or early second-century) prays: “Just as this broken loaf was scattered over the hills and, having been gathered together, become one, so may your church be gathered together.” The Apostolic Tradition (early third century) is the basis for Eucharistic Prayer 2’s “May all of us who share in the Body and Blood of Christ be brought together in unity through the Holy Spirit.”

Eucharistic Prayers 3 and 4 all contain a prayer for unity, for example, “Grant that all who are nourished by His Body and Blood may be filled with His Holy Spirit and become one body, one spirit in Christ.” Before the Second Vatican Council, the only Eucharistic prayer used  -- the Roman Canon -- did not include a similar prayer, nor does Eucharistic Prayer 1, a modified version of the Roman Canon.

This prayer for unity among the assembly in the Eucharistic prayers reminds us that the ultimate reality as it were of the Eucharist is the unity of all who receive the Body and Blood of Christ. As Nathan Mitchell puts it, the purpose is not to change the bread and wine but to change us who receive it.

St Paul instructs us that the purpose of the Eucharist is not just personal communion with the Lord but that communion with the Lord also means communion with all who share in the Body and Blood of Christ (1 Cor 10: 16-17). Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, talks of vertical communion [with the Lord] and horizontal communion [with one another]. “Christ unites us one to the other while uniting us all to Himself.”

We cannot separate the two bodies [Christ’s body and blood in the blessed sacrament and Christ’s body the Church] and accept one without the other. Cantalamessa speaks of someone full of fervour for the Lord at communion but who is not in union with his brothers and sisters as someone who kisses a friend on the cheek while mashing his toes with nailed boots at the same time.

Unfortunately days of division and lack of care for one another are not over and, in a world, a country, where disunity and indifference to others is sometimes plain to see, it is the Church that must stand as sign of care and unity, for after all, the kingdom we serve is the kingdom of love, peace and unity. This means to me that 1Corinthians 11: 17-34 must be taken very seriously.

Radical unity

St Paul teaches us that as Christians we are one because we are the Body of Christ. “We though many form one body because we share in the one loaf” (10: 17). It is a radical unity into which we come through the waters of baptism and which is deepened in the Eucharist.

St Paul writes in the Letter to the Galatians that the community must be one in which there is no division --- no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, no male or female. A community in which there is no Indian or African, no rich or poor, no  “charismatic” or “non-charismatic”, no young or old, no conservative or liberal, no people our blood takes to or not, no people we refuse to talk to or bad-talk.

This obviously does not mean we all have to think alike  – in our diversity there is unity as in the various parts of a body, and as the masthead of the Catholic News reminds us every week – “In essentials unity, in non-essentials tolerance, in all things charity.”

We are one, we are the Body of Christ; our baptism demands unity, and as St Paul reminds us, so does our celebration of the Eucharist. In this year of St Paul may we all strive to put into practice even more a celebration of the Lord’s Supper for which St Paul will be able to congratulate us.