Eucharist and the Redemption of Time

I write this post in response to a recent conversation about the 'emerging church' in the West. At the outset, I must admit that this phenomenon is only hearsay for me. Far from ever attending an emergent service, I have never even read anything by Brian McLaren. However, I did once hear Rob Bell give a talk. Still, at this point I am quite ambivalent about what is being called the emerging church. While I do not intend this polemically, I just don't know in what sense it is a church and what it is emerging from. My recent conversation did little to help me in this regard.

In this discussion, I heard about a group of Christians in a suburban area who desired authentic community while continuing to engage their secular neighbors. They comprised a loosely organized amalgam of small home churches who decided to meet regularly each month as a combined fellowship. To their credit, they did not attempt to create a community ex nihilo; instead, they drew upon the liturgies of the Church (particularly the Anglican version) when they met jointly. Nevertheless, I think this well-intentioned bunch seriously failed in one respect: they relegated the Eucharistic celebration to two observances per month, even though they meant to worship together more often.

Why is this so important? Before building my case for the centrality of Eucharist in Christian worship, let me start by clarifying a few issues with the sacraments. First, the sacraments are not about controlling the masses through ritual, multiplying canon law, and solidifying the authority of a human hierarchy. As instruments in God's hand, the use of sacraments is a channel of grace. Yet, performed insincerely, legalistically, or perniciously, the practice of sacramentalism is obviously a stumbling block.

Second, the sacraments are not about human efforts to gain God's favor. As any sacramental theology must admit, God is not bound by the sacraments; He bestows grace on His elect, whom He has predestined. Nevertheless, if Christians believe that the Word became flesh in order to save humanity, it is fitting for them to receive this salvation by a union of word and flesh, the visible signifying the invisible. This sacramental response to God incarnate was instituted by the Divine Man as a way to perfect human worship of a mysterious God. For us to willfully ignore the sacraments robs us of the grace He makes available so readily, and it begs the question: Why do we worship?

I do not intend an exhaustive treatment of this question here. I only hope to provide a sketch of what must constitute a sine qua non of Christian worship. In order to correctly approach the phenomenon of worship, it is necessary to do some archeology, uncovering what modern culture has buried. For, worship is properly situated between a subject and a king. More to the point, worship is the constitutive act of the subject with respect to the sovereign. What this means is that, apart from worship, the king does not have a kingdom. And, whenever subjects offer worship, they are not merely signifying, but enacting the king's sovereignty. Two conclusions follow: First, subjects know who they are based on whom they worship. Second, in the perfect act of worship, the subject and sovereign are united in the reality of the kingdom being fulfilled in their midst.

Now it becomes clear why the Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship. In the sacrifice of the altar, Christ makes Himself available to us as the only offering suitable to the Father. What is more, by feasting at this table, we celebrate Christ's victorious kingship as He unites Himself to us, and as each of us is united to the others by His Spirit. Thus, the Church (inasmuch as it is Christ's kingdom on earth) is most fully manifest when it communes in the Eucharist.

For this reason, a community of Christians who gather for corporate fellowship and claim to take the sacramental tradition seriously should not neglect to celebrate around the Lord's table. Still, having argued for the importance of Eucharist, the original problem remains: How often should Christians practice it?

To respond to this question, one must inevitably utilize some measure of time, whether day, week, month, year. So, another quandary arises. How ought Christians to measure time?

As we mark experiences in our lives, the way we measure time has an impact on our souls, often a subtle influence but for that reason very insidious. Note how people are generally more cheerful on Fridays, stressed at the beginning of a month, festive at the new year, morose at the beginning of April, or what have you. Especially within modern society, time consciousness is a tool for disciplining political and economic subjects to be more pliable and efficient citizens/consumers. Thus, the calendar is not an indifferent structure for organizing life; it affects what we think about and what we value. This is one reason why Jews and Muslims retain their own dating systems. If Christians are concerned about engaging their culture for Christ, they must not focus merely on spatial constructs (neighborhoods, cities, schools, businesses). They must revive an awareness of Christ's kingdom as a temporal reign, one which transforms our very experience of life's flow.

The traditional way of embodying Christ's kingship in time was not merely to devise a calendar with different dates. More than this, Christians through the ages have intetionally re-narrated their lives in terms of Christ's own story, effectively redeeming our measures of time, marking every day as a day under the reign of Christ. In this way, nature's seasons give way to liturgical seasons, each year recalls a new advent, epiphany, temptation, passion, resurrection, ascension and pentecost. Likewise, monks used to intone the Psalter on a montly cycle, renewing their songs to the Lord with each new moon. And, for its most important feast of all, the Church set aside each week as a memorial to Christ's passion with its culmination on Sunday.

The symbolism of a weekly feast is apropo given the historical meaning of the weekly cycle. Rather than basing time on the motions of bodies (with its pagan tendencies), the idea of a seven-day period, according to its biblical origin, signified God's intimate relation to the world as its Creator. And now, for those in Christ's kingdom, the resurrection means that there is a sense in which every week is a Holy Week, every Thursday is a passover, every Friday good, every Saturday we wait expectantly, every Sunday we are surprised by abundant grace. We now live beyond the original creation and are witnesses to God's new creation in Christ Jesus.

As witnesses to this reality, we must engage our culture in every aspect that would deny Christ's victory. This entails not only spatial awareness, but a temporal consciousness, too. Christ is not only King at home, at work, and in schools; He is also Lord over the second, the minute, and the hour. Lest we forget this or the world ignore it, Christians proclaim this truth every week when they remember the new life offered through God's Paschal Lamb. In this light, intentionally forgoing an opportunity to celebrate and enact our birth as a new people is more than naive; it begs one to wonder whether Christ claims our full allegiance, or whether we are content to live another week under the dominion of secular time.

Requiem for Lent

Though I did not intend to, I gave up blogging for Lent. No, I had no great spiritual qualms or moral machinations regarding my weblog. I just couldn't find the time to write, or even think enough to write, for that matter. My daughter taught me a lot of valuable lessons during the past season. For example, I've learned that my unconscious decisions reveal more about myself than my most thoughtful efforts. By intention, I stopped drinking coffee during Lent. Without meaning to, I stopped blogging, and I think this was the more significant hiatus. Before explaining why I think this is the case, I must say a few more words about Lent.

For whatever reason, I've reflected a lot about the meaning of Lent this year. More than one person I know has admitted to me that their Lent was not very Lenten. At least one has confessed that they believed their Lent to be a failure. What could this mean? Someone tells themself that they won't eat chocolate, and they indulge a few times...therefore, Lent was a waste?

Absolutely not. The spirit of Lent is not one of moral or spiritual achievement. I think we've lost the plot when we make Lent about our efforts to be better by not doing X or by doing more of Y. For of course, our frailty does not impact the success of Lent. In fact, Lent begins with our self-recognition that we are but dust. But, we are dust on the way to redemption.

For this reason, during the forty(-six) days prior to Easter, we open ourselves to God in preparation for the work of His resurrection. Abstaining, fasting, praying, and alms-giving are all means to let God effect His resurrrecting power within us. They are not the point of Lent. Rather than focus on these spiritual disciplines, we should see through them, into the deepest, weakest cracks in our souls, and learn where God will begin working next.

However, too often we think that Lent is about being better than we usually are by making a more concerted effort. So, in preparation for Easter, we become more stressed, slightly edgy (due to caffeine withdrawal), crankier (no more sweets), inattentive (from the hunger pangs), and/or just plain hot and bothered. And this is if our ascetic endeavors succeed! If they fail, we become morose, self-pitying, cynical losers. Obviously, I exaggerate here for effect. But the point is, when we experience any of these sentiments, we know that we're off the mark.

I don't think Lent is supposed to be a more spiritually hectic time, or a season of last-minute efforts (save the strain for Christmas, thinks a sardonic Christian). On the contrary, we should recall that Lent is about giving up. In other words, give something to God so that He can use it to teach you; offer your weakness in order to find God's strength; cease your busyness and receive God's peace. This is why my break from blogging was so revealing to me: I enjoyed resting, not worrying about keeping some artifical schedule to post another entry. (As an aside, this was spiritual rest more than physical...my daughter still keeps me quite active.)

And so I have entitled this post, "Requiem for Lent." Yes, I am laying Lent to rest in a sense. But I also want to call to mind that we should be seeking rest during Lent. Certainly this does not mean a passive, inattentive rest (like the disciples in Gethsemane). It is the kind of repose that led Christ to pray, "Not my will, but yours be done."

Some reflections on life upon the occasion of my daughter's first month

My daughter is almost one month old. During this month, many of my thoughts about life have been challenged. Sleeplessness and frustration are a crucible that quickly burn away facile assumptions such as: life is
fun; or even cynical reflections like: life is boring. What remains of my most basic beliefs about life? Here are few nuggets.


Life is surprising. It probably doesn't come as a shock that I did a bit of reading to better plan for being a father. Though I'm glad I had some weathered parents to give some advice, nothing adequately prepared me for my first encounter with my daughter.

This is what Levinas and his postmodern disciples mean when they speak of the human other, always partially hidden, never totalized by the gaze. No amount of theorizing can replace experience, as this is the horizon where one can escape oneself (though not entirely); this is where one must live.

Let me make clear that I have no romantic delusions about surprises: not all are pleasant or desired. Some surprises interrupt our plans, and they always add uncertainty when we forecast the future. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of surprise holds the only promise that something might exceed our expectations, which are more often lower than they ought to be. As the possibility for testing ourselves and (im)proving our character, I relish surprises as a necessary experience in life.

Life is messy. I don't just mean that life sometimes involves messes. Based on my experience and reflection, I mean to say that life is (essentially) messy, so that where one sees life, one finds a mess. If life then mess. And for you logicians, let me state the modus tollens: No mess, no life. To escape all messiness would be nihilistic, or at least inhuman. Which reminds me. What did the nihilist say to the hypochondriac? "The ontological void may be terrifying, but hey, it's clean."

Perhaps I should clarify this a bit since 'mess' is not a very technical term. When I connect mess and life essentially, I do not mean to exclude order from the relationship. To my understanding, a mess is not contrary to order; rather, a mess is what results when an order meets with what I described above: surprise. A mess is an untotalized order; an unexpected experience; an unforeseen change; an uncontrolled and nonprogrammable organization.

In this sense, a mess is not chaos, which would be contrary to the unity and good of any being. Likewise, messiness is not some evil necessity of being. Instead, messes are the way that life allows for growth; they are the imprints of the past and the inchoate future. What I'm talking about here is what physicists call entropy: In order to have life here, there must be disarray somewhere else. Or, more crudely, for my daughter to continue developing, she must go on pooping.

Even the creation account in Genesis implies something like this. God created a garden and placed man in it, but He didn't create self-trimming hedges with pre-arranged landscaping. Man's task was to cultivate God's beautiful, but messy, work. Still, the relative disorder of messes is always overshadowed by the wondrous order of life.

Tears are good. It was Gandalf the wizard who reassured the hobbits, "I will not tell you not to cry, for not all tears are evil." We all know about tears of joy, and most would agree that these are welcome if rare swells of emotion. And I've seen a lot of these in recent weeks. But what about tears of sorrow? I have come to think these are good, too.

Simply put, my daughter could not communicate her needs without the aid of a few cries of pain. Though she knows no human language, she can still reach out for help. Amazingly, sometimes our bodies can communicate for themselves what our souls are unable to express. And there are times when even the best poet couldn't capture our pain any better than a few well-earned tears.

Silence is also good. St. Augustine of Hippo taught that the universe is a cosmic poem set to divine music. From this point of view, noise is never merely random sounds. Everything is either in harmony or dissonant. And the Christian belief is that all dissonance resolves in the melodic theme of Christ's death and resurrection.

These are nice ideas, but music seems an unfit analogy for life with an infant dominating the scene. She is just so noisy. It will take some perspective on my part to hear her screams as harmonic pulses in the song of life. But I will say this, if life is musical then the silences between tones really are just as important and necessary as the sounded notes. (Also, decrescendo is probably my favorite dynamic at the moment.) So the next time you find yourself in the quiet, and you're tempted to feel bored or antsy, try to absorb the silence, if only for my sake. Don't mistake silence for dullness.

Sleep is precious. A rare gem, really. Why do children hate to sleep? Doubtless, the world is full of wonder and one is loath to miss some new experience. But let us never forget, in our go-go yuppie lives, that rest is truly good. Slowing down is difficult in our caffeinated culture. Yet, we gain more from days lived on a good night's sleep. So, if you tend to be hyperactive, try to remember this: sleep is an important activity; it is not the opposite of activity.

Pain is not evil. I'm not much for theodicy, mostly because I think it is unnecessary, and problematic, to try to justify God's actions. At any rate, when it comes to the existence of pain, I believe that it is good and that God created annoying bodily aches and fatigue for our benefit. Though etymologically the word pain is derived from the Latin for punishment, I prefer to view physical pains as prelapsarian. As I see it, fleshly weaknesses are not a punishment for sin or some unfortunate oversight in God's plan. Imagine the world without pain. I don't mean spiritual or emotional pain (these almost always coincide with real evil), but regular bodily pain. Anyone who has studied medicine will tell you that a world without pain would soon be a world without life.

For example, suppose my daughter learned how to roll over one day, but she found herself laying face down on a couch and couldn't roll back. As she suffocated, she would feel burning pain and scream, hopefully loud enough to attract attention. Now, if she didn't feel that pain, she might have died.

Pain is our bodies' way of teaching us our own limits. We can often be fooled about how smart or good-looking we are, but it is much harder to think that you have extreme physical prowess when you can't lift the suitcase in front of you. As I watch my daughter struggle with many pains of her own, I am learning to appreciate pain as a great tutor in my own weakness and dependency.

And finally, most of all this past month, I have learned that life is a gift. Some philosophies try to reduce life to a given, or at least the result of determinate, albeit accidental, cosmic laws. Contrary to this, I maintain that even the supposedly immutable laws of the universe are gifts, not givens, and that the very existence of continuity (if not of material, then of process) in the cosmos attests to an immutable First Being. And somehow, all of this has led to the gratuitous birth of my beautiful daughter. Some days life may not feel like a gift, but I will never again fall prey to the poisonous falsehood that existence is a given, or worse, that it is a burden.

Love's Legacy

Recently I was reading Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae when I came across this article: "Should a man love his wife more than his father and mother?" (For the modern reader, let's just pretend that he asked "Should anyone love their spouse more than their parents?" The inclusive wording does not change the question substantially, at least not for Thomas.) Now, immediately, I was startled that one should even consider such a possibility. How can one choose between parents and spouse? Ought one to love them differently, or does 'unconditional' summarize all true love? Click the following to read Thomas' treatment of the topic:

Summa II-II, q.26, a.11

As Thomas often does, he affirms what is in line with the best authority, but he then proceeds to qualify his own peculiar position. In this case, he responds that one should love one's parents more than one's spouse, objectively speaking (i.e., with a view to the object of love). However, considered subjectively (i.e., with a view to the subject loving), love for one's spouse is greater than that for parents. So, he effectively posits two scales for measuring love: one measures vertically the degree of reverence, the other registers horizontally the intensity of union between two equals.

Now, this is the part where I explain why anyone should care about Thomas' argument. At this point in my life, such musings are more than merely theoretical abstractions. Allow me to set the scene before I attempt to make Thomas relevant.

I live over five thousand miles away from my family. In a few days, I will be reuniting with them for the holidays. During the two months I will be home, my wife will give birth to our first child. Packing and preparing for such a trip has set all sense of order aside. And yet, I often pause and consider that the next time I'm sitting in this chair, maybe my daughter will be here with her magical giggles and harrowing screams. So, amidst the hustle and bustle, I find myself quietly contemplating the mystery of love. What exactly is the mystery?

Well, when a man meets a woman, and they really love each other...

As I see it, the mystery of love is identical with the mystery of the Trinity, and this is what Thomas has helped me to understand. The Trinity is mysterious in that three Persons exist in perfect unity of nature. Such an idea may seem preposterous to some, but I think lovers can perhaps accept such a proposition more readily. Something about fierce love provokes the lover to transcend herself, to exceed her own limits. Ecstasy is precisely the condition of true love. This being the case, an infinite God, of unsurpassed power to love, can quite reasonably be believed to actually transcend Himself, so much that He is Father and Son, united by the ever-gratuitous self-giving of the Spirit.

There are two key moments in this notion of love: First, an activity that transcends oneself, giving one's whole person to another with unrestrained and uncontainable effect. Second, in this reciprocal action, a unity of excess pours forth, such that the totality of love is not a mere exchange that leaves all accounts balanced. Instead, in its most perfect form, the unity of love always produces a surplus. And, since this surplus is shared by all, everyone gains from this ever-increasing economy of grace.

Having such a concept of God's love, the creation and order of the world become a reasonable consequent. We were created by and for love, because love is exactly that, being from nothing. And so, if humans are modeled after God in some way, it is fitting that the love between a man and woman, and by the unity of their flesh, another human should come into existence. This unity of marriage is, very literally speaking, a love that cannot limit itself to a closed pair; to the contrary, this is the basis for growth into a community. A love that produces newness and life overflows from the abundance its source.

Here we come back to Thomas, for he helps to define the two moments of love that are necessary for community to flourish. First, there must be an intense unity so that all members of the community are intimately connected and equal sharers of the benefits of membership. Yet, since this unity exceeds itself, the community is not static. Instead, it is outwardly open, expanding nonviolently by welcoming strangers, especially those newly born to members of the community. Thus, second, a hiercharchy is necessary so that neophytes are fully initiated into membership. For, since the love in such a community is dynamic, it changes those who receive it, enabling them to transcend themselves and achive a supernatural end. In order for this initiation to succed, new members must honor their elders as the only source of their life in the community. Likewise, elders must care for their charges by living the truth and teaching what is good.

As I see things now, this is the crux of true community, especially in its manifestation as a family. If Thomas is right (and he almost always is), children owe their parents loving reverence because a father and mother have always already given the child more than can be ever repaid; viz., life itself. Nevertheless, with this honor comes a natural corollary. Parents can never (morally) cease giving themselves to their children. By honoring, a child is well disposed to receive of her parents. But a parent must not hoard reverence greedily. Rather, the hierarchy of family is perfected in a love that strives to equalize, shaping the children after the best the parents can offer.

In this way, perfect love is its own legacy. It is always given, always improving, uniting past and future through those who learn to revere their betters and teach their lessers. To be honest, as a child I have often refused to honor those who deserved it. Now I must fill the role of a parent...I hope that my daughter will forgive me when I fall short of her love, failing to give myself entirely to her.

On the democracy of nowhere

When Thomas More imagined an idealized place, he called it Utopia; that is, no-place. Following the lead of one John Milbank, I am going to state baldly that the internet is precisely the utopia of the modern world. In a sense, it is idealized community. But one must never forget that it is not a place, but a non-place.

So what?, you may wonder. Just this: inhabiting a place involves being confronted with an other, a stranger/neighbor who can surprise as well as harm. Space is the possibility of being near, and with time, the possibility of true friendship. I agree with Aristotle that friendship implies a wish to live together, to share a common life, and it is only within friendship that one can cultivate and practice the fullness of human virtue.

Because the internet is no-place, people can always turn their backs on those physically proximate to face those virtually present. At its best, this can be a convenient suture for friendships that otherwise might be lost by distance. However, all too often, I can avoid loving my neighbors by escaping into an electronic world of my own creation. And, because I have created it, it is not truly an other. Instead, my online persona becomes the commodification of my identity, the packaging and advertising of my own experience for entertainment and consumption.

Under such conditions, the web's illusory democracy of ideas meets its dialectical negation: the tyranny of the yuppy. If abstract (i.e., not concrete and not placed) community allows the democratic reign of ideas and opinions without the baggage of social status and cultural prejudices, this same realm produces the ultimate marketized individual. In the security of his/her domain name, he/she can dictate the terms of virtual life to almost infinite detail. Appearance literally is everything here, and choice is the only way to exist in this reality. Incoming communication can easily be moderated and ignored. And, if he/she advertises well, he/she may earn an income from this online personality.

Thus, if one's virtual life eclipses one's interactions with real neighbors, the otherwise democratic utopia of the internet may cause a person to maintain a tyrannical hold on their individuality, lacking the habits of patience and hospitality, an openness toward what is unexpected and even undesired, that are necessary for true human community. Even liberal virtues like tolerance and respect for privacy are not necessary for the electronic individual.

The great cause for hope and perseverance is that the above scenario is posited upon a hypothetical. Such tyranny is not a necessary by-product of e-life. For this reason, I am not guilty of hypocrisy by posting this essay on my own weblog. Nonetheless, I post cautiously because I may be susceptible to my own critique and become the one I despise.