I say mass in a little side chapel of the church; there's
about a dozen of us. I'm facing away from them, facing the cross. I pick up the
paten and the chalice as usual. 'This is my body ... This is my blood'. But
it's more than that. This is mangled and broken flesh, scattered blood among
fragments of glass. It's all the blood shed from the first murder onwards, in
one little silver cup. And I can hear sounds in my ears that almost drown out
my own voice, even though I know the words better than I know anything else I
ever say.
Jesus said the blood of all the murdered ‘from the blood of
righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was killed between the altar and
the sanctuary’ would come upon his generation. He meant that moment was the
crux of all human history. As he was the one through whom all was created, so
when he was nailed and killed it was the nailing and killing of all creation,
and whenever his brothers and sisters suffered, or would ever suffer, so would
he. ‘What you did to the least of these, you did also to me’.
And that means that every time I lift the chalice I lift all
the pain of the world, past and future. Through him, I’m linked to all of it. I
was warned about that, years ago, but I don’t always feel it. Which is just as
well.
No comments:
Post a Comment