The Universal Incarnate Presence
As if eating his body weren’t enough, Jesus pushes us in even further and scarier
directions by adding the symbolism of intoxicating wine as we lift the chalice
and speak over all of suffering humanity, “This is my blood.” Jesus then directs
us, “Drink me, all of you!” Pause for a moment and try to step outside the
domestication of the Eucharist that has occurred in the churches. Remember,
contact with blood was usually ritual impurity for a Jew at that time. Is it just
me, or is this beginning to have a Count Dracula feeling? Or is it supposed to? Is
it supposed to be scandalous and shocking?
One of the things I’ve learned from studying male initiation rites is that
startling, vivid rituals are the only ones that have much psychic effect—things
like symbolic drowning, digging your own grave, rolling naked in ashes, or even
the now outdated slap that the bishop used to give at Confirmation, which
shock us into realization. Anything too tame has little psychic effect, at least for
men, but I suspect for women too. There’s a real difference between harmless
repetitive ceremonies and life-changing rituals. Scholars say that ceremonies
normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of
things (think of a Fourth of July parade), whereas true ritual offers an
alternative universe, where the shadow is named (think of a true Eucharist). In
the church, I am afraid we mostly have ceremonies. Most masses I have ever
attended are about affirming the status quo, which seldom reveals and often
even denies the shadow side of church, state, or culture.
Many mystics and liberation theologians have further recognized that
inviting us to drink wine as his blood is an invitation to live in bodily solidarity
“with the blood of every person whose blood has been unjustly shed on this
earth, from the blood of Abel the Holy to the blood of Zechariah” (Matthew
23:35). These are the first and last murders noted in the Hebrew Bible. In the
act of drinking the blood of Christ at this Holy Meal, you are consciously
uniting yourself with all unjust suffering in the world, from the beginning of
time till its end. Wherever there was and is suffering, there is the sympathy and
the empathy of God. “This is all my blood!” Jesus is saying, which sanctifies the
victim and gives all bloodshed utter and final significance.
I think of this often as I pronounce these same words looking out over a