EUCHARIST AND MINISTRY IN SMALL CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES
XAVIER JAMES
INTRODUCTION
The Eucharist is the climatic divine expression of sanctification in Christ and worship that humankind offers. In the Eucharist, the mystery of redemption is recalled. It is the source and summit of Christian life. It makes present the saving grace earned by Christ to everyone. According to the Dogmatic constitution on the Church (Vat II) there are three essential elements in the nature and activity of the Church: the Proclamation of the Gospel, the service of the world and the liturgy. Liturgy plays an important role in the life of every Christian. Sacrosanctum Concilium nos.48-55 speaks of the importance of the regular and total participation of the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist.
It is not the festivity that gives rise to the Eucharistic assembly, but it is the Eucharistic assembly that creates festivity. We need to realize that meeting and greeting one another in the celebration of the Eucharist is the source of greater joy. Hence, it is the people who make the celebration of the Eucharist meaningful. It is a good custom in the rural parishes of Gujarat that people meet and wish each other after the Eucharistic celebration.
No: 1325 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the Eucharist as “the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the people of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit”.
In this paper I would like to bring out the relationship between the Eucharist and the Small Christian Communities (SCC). Both are very important for the Christian life and together they make our faith fully alive and meaningful. When I reflect on my observations I see there is a dichotomy between life and Eucharistic celebration among many people. Many have taken the Eucharist as only a ritual that we need to attend or perform daily, once a week or occasionally. Life is very much different from the worship and they do not correspond to each other. There are many people who are contented with only the celebration of Eucharist in the church and do not relate it to the life outside. Here I would like to draw out the values, which derive from the Eucharist and how it is meaningful to live a Christian life through the means of Small Christian Communities. If the Eucharist is celebrated for the celebration sake then it is meaningless. The real mass occurs in the life that we lead.
1. ORIGIN AND IMPORTANCE OF SCC
In the first few decades after resurrection, the Eucharist was not merely a symbolic reality, as we know today. Rather it was celebrated as part of or in conjunction with a full meal which all would share in common. Everyone was to bring enough, so that all might share (Acts.2:42-47,4:32-35). This was done in conscious communion with Jesus’ own practice during his lifetime and especially in memory of the final meal, which he celebrated with his disciples. The memorial of that meal is what we commemorate as the continuity fact of our salvation. At the Lord’s Supper everyone shared the one bread of Christ, which made the participants one body, one community of love and salvation. To Jesus’ mind the Eucharist was essentially action-oriented. The Eucharist was also to be the bond of the new community he was establishing in his new spirit. The Eucharist had an important place in the life of the early Christians, who had personal knowledge of Jesus. The life of the early Christians was in sharing their goods with fellow followers and was intimately related to this fellowship.
At this juncture we need to say something about the historical origin of SCC. It was Latin America where the whites tortured, suppressed and deprived the blacks of their rights when the suppressed group read and reflected the liberative Exodus passages and derived divine strength from them to fight against the injustice done to them. The Latin Americans used to gather in small groups to reflect on the Word of God and relate it to the life-realities. They used Reflection and Action method, which helped them to face life and go ahead in life with new zeal and vigour. It was this coming together which made their bond with one another very strong and their life meaningful. Each one shouldered the other in his/her difficulties to face injustice. It was their solidarity with one another that gained them moral support to live life cheerfully. Such re-reading is important to our Christian life.
For Jesus, Eucharist was the supreme symbol of his self-offering unto death. But over the centuries the Christian tradition has largely diluted or neglected this aspect. The earliest community of believers understood very well the call of their master to commit themselves in giving which multiplies the given and satisfies the needs of all. This was the community which Jesus himself envisaged (Act.4:32-35). Early Christians were very generous in giving, sharing and partaking in the pain and suffering, joys and sorrows of men and women of their time. Today Vatican II also has reaffirmed this fact of solidarity with the men and women of our time (G S.1).
2. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EUCHARIST
The Passover of the Jews recalled the great saving event in the history of the Israelites when God came to their rescue and entered into a very special relationship with them. This saving event was celebrated year after year as Passover. It was the commemoration of liberation and Covenant with God. We need to note down that the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt was a political, social and religious act. The Passover was for Israelites a ritual into which they entered as an ongoing process, identifying vividly with the people of the original event, sharing that experience as God’s great intervention here and now. The Christian Passover has now become the deliverance of the new people of God from the slavery of sin through the waters of baptism in union with Christ. Passover lamb was replaced by Christ. In sharing this meal we enter into greater intimacy with Christ and with one another. Passover meal was a memorial; an institution annually recalled the deliverance granted by God to his people (Ex.15). Jesus reinforced their attachment to the God of their liberation in the Eucharist as a new memorial. He transformed the Passover meal into the Eucharistic meal.
The Jewish Passover, which supplies the liturgical framework for the Eucharist, has a long history of religious tradition, culture and custom. The Passover recounts the transformation of a people. The Exodus is the story of struggle of the people of Israel for freedom and liberation. The last supper looks back at the Jewish Pasch and looks forward to the cross for its completion. Passover has to be celebrated with sufficient number of people. This provides a way for the communitarian aspect of the meal and celebration. By its very nature the Eucharist is a community act, a celebration of the whole people. Every Eucharist is an echo of the Paschal mystery of Christ. To celebrate Passover in our lives: passing over evil to good, death to life, darkness to light slavery to freedom. Eucharist is a sacrament of memorial of the Passover of Jesus.
From the synagogue service there emerged the celebration of the Mass. Mass is basically the celebration of the Passover rite. The earliest account of Eucharist we have is of the year 55 C.E. This was inscribed by St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthian Christians (1Cor. 11:20-26). Ignatius of Antioch provides the first explicit testimony to the role of the bishop who presides over the Eucharist. Justin the Martyr mentions that the president prays and gives thanks according to his ability i.e. spontaneously. There was no fixed formula for the Eucharistic prayer till this time. The first fixed one is by Bp. Hippolytes in 225 C.E. i.e. the present second Eucharistic prayer.
The Eucharistic meal has been a gathering that has characterized the followers of Jesus. Throughout the centuries believers of Christ have met to break bread and worship God in and through Jesus. They have done so under many different conditions. The Eucharist was offered in the catacombs of Rome when Christianity was persecuted. Later, it became the symbol of triumphant Christianity when it was celebrated at the high altar of the grand Roman Basilicas. Hundreds of millions of believers meet every Sunday all over the world to ‘do this in memory of me’.
During the early centuries of Christianity, the Eucharist was a corporate Public worship of the whole community of believers. Only one Eucharist was celebrated in a particular area, through which an intimate bond between the people and the celebrant was established. The mass was more dialogical, participative and communitarian. In 1100 C.E. drastic changes took place in the Liturgy. Eucharist was privatized and clericalized.
The need for reform of the liturgy was felt ever since the Tridentine Council. The break through for a pastoral liturgy came with Pope Pius X (1903-1914). He encouraged the active participation of the faithful and frequent reception of the Eucharist and lowered the age required for first Holy Communion, so that all people may get a share in the liturgy in order to make it participative. The second Vatican Council made that the liturgy one among the three components of self-expression of the Church, the others being preaching and service to the world. Vatican II helped very much toward the updating of the Eucharistic liturgy. It made possible alternations in the language of the liturgy. The Council invited a greater participation of the faithful in the Eucharist. It encouraged the adaptation of the liturgy to the custom and culture of the peoples.
Thus, the Eucharist evolved gradually and systematically stressing the core of the Eucharist that can be seen in its various aspects. There is first of all the meal, the celebration of the Jewish Pasch, the festivity that recalls the liberation by God (Ex.15). Second is the presence of Jesus, for he said, “This is my body”. Jesus invites to our own response to his sacrifice in the form of commitment to the society of our time. Third, related to these, the Eucharist is the memorial of his passion and death. Fourth, the Eucharist is a renewal of the covenant. “This is my blood of the Covenant shed for many” (Mk. 14:23). When the Eucharist originated, it was a meal. So the fellowship meal was given more importance and coming together was of paramount significance. As the days passed it took the nature of sacrifice and sacrificial aspect became very prominent. When the communion was prescribed to distribute to the sick, the importance shifted to the aspect of presence. Following this, there began Eucharistic adoration, Benediction, etc. According to Fr. Ishanand Vempany, ‘take and eat’ vanishes and ‘look and adore’ comes into prime importance.
3. BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS
There is growing interest among the believers to study the sacrament of Eucharist to recapture of the spirit of the early Christian celebration and to re-appropriate the saving effect of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. When we see the Biblical foundation we have the earliest documents in 1Cor.11:23-26 and Mk. 14:23-25. Today biblical scholars look at the institution narratives in the light of the other meal stories in the New Testament, which involve Jesus. His meal with sinners had brought about relationship of communion (Lk.5:29-32). The multiplication of loaves (Mt.15: 32-39) had brought the compassion, which he had for the people who were hungry and also brought the people together as one community of sharers. New Testament proclaims the presence of the love of God made visible in Jesus, to a broken people even to our day.
Like any human communities the Christian communities also had lapses. Paul had called his erring Corinthian converts to task by telling them the story of Jesus’ words and action. In 50s there were some intolerable behaviours at a Christian community celebration of the Supper of the Lord (1Cor. 1:23-26). The fact that Jesus asked his disciples to have such a meal ‘in remembrance of me’ (Lk.22:19) seems to have led to the creation of a regular gathering of Christian disciples that included a meal known as ‘the Lord’s supper’ where the events and significance of Christ’s death on the cross could be recalled (1Cor. 11:20-21). Paul recounts the story of the Lord’s supper on the night of Jesus’ arrest in Jerusalem. It affirms that at this early stage the Christian church had formulated an account of the events of that night as it gave meaning to the act of holding a Lord’s supper as a commemoration of that event. Paul’s version of the events is similar to that which appears in Luke’s account (1Cor. 11:23-25, Lk. 22:19-20). The covenant recalls the Exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt, marked by the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood of the lambs (Ex. 12) but it also looks back to the original Covenant made with Abraham, who would be a blessing for all people (Gen. 12:2-3). The New Covenant picks up the prophecy of Jeremiah (31:31-33) where the Lord says that he ‘will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts (31:33) this ‘New Covenant’ was important to the early Church.
It will be remarkable to analyze the first letter to the Corinthians to draw a deeper understanding with which Paul narrated the institution of Lord’s Supper. There were many problems that had arisen in the community of Corinth. There are divisions among members of the Christian community (1Cor. Chs.1-4), members of the body that does not respect its Christian importance (5:1-6:20), problems concerning sexual relations in marriage (7:1-9), divorce (7:10-16) and changes in social and sexual status (7:17-40). Living in a pagan world, the Corinthian Christians have divided opinions about which food one should or should not eat (chs. 8-9). Some are over confident in their abilities to judge what is of value or not in joining pagan cultic celebration and thus they are offending the scruples of the weak (10:1-11:1). Having dealt with problem that arise from participation in the cultic celebration of the pagans (chs.8-10) in chapters 11-14 Paul addresses some divisive problem that were arising with the Corinthians’ liturgical assemblies: dress (11:2-16) the Lord’s supper (11:17-34) and the use and abuse of the gifts of the Spirit (Chs. 12-14). Paul finally looks in to the problem of the resurrection of the body also apparently causing division in the early Christian communities (15). The Eucharist is food for ‘the body’. This means that the celebration of the Eucharist maintains and strengthens the union between the believers and Christ that they become together, the community that belongs to him. While remembering involves gratitude, it is above all an acceptance of the responsibility to prolong the saving work of Christ. The Eucharistic table is not only for the privileged and any attempt to make it so must be exposed and corrected. In this context the first account on Eucharist was written and it was very relevant to the Christians of Corinth. It is also relevant to our own days.
Our focus here is that the Corinthian community gradually lost the sense of communitarian aspect of the Eucharist. There were divisions, disharmony and fraction in the community. Paul wanted to say that if the Eucharist is not celebrated in the community in unity then it is an abomination and insult to the body of Christ. If we have the divisions as poor and rich among us, then how can our celebration of Eucharist be having an important effect? In some parishes, parishnors are obsessed with their status and ego and do not get themselves mingled with the people of low status. Do they really celebrate the Eucharist in the Biblical sense? If the Eucharist has to be celebrated in and with the community then why are some priests possessed with private mass when the whole congregation attends and celebrates the Eucharist together?
Mark’s theology of Eucharist is closely related to his theology of discipleship i.e. to his understanding of the church itself (Mk. 6:31-44, 14:22-26). It is a message about the central need in the Church for a radical dependence upon the person of Jesus. Life won’t be always safe and successful. There will be failures and unfaithfulness and ups and downs, but still we need to have Jesus as our Centre. Vocation to live through the mystery of failure, depending only upon the greater mystery of the love and power of God shown to us in Jesus stands at the heart of Marken understanding of the Eucharistic presence of Jesus in the Church. Matthew portrays the failing disciples because though they have the knowledge still fail to commit themselves. Eucharist as presence of Christ is empowering broken people. Luke depicts the Eucharistic presence of the Lord in the midst of broken people. Jesus had meals with people to teach and reconcile them. John describes that at the last supper Jesus chooses and sends the ignorant and failing disciples (13:1-38). John avoids the cultic form but centering and important witness in the testamentary form (13-16). The love Christians have for one another is real and symbol of Christ’s presence in the world.
When we read the Acts of the Apostles we note that the early Christians lived gladly in the company of each other and there was no needy person among them. When talk about needs we generally limit ourselves only to material needs. While these are most obvious and perhaps the most demanding. Today more than ever we see so many deep psychological and emotional needs. The aged and sick who feel lonely and unwanted, the divorced or single parent, the unemployed, the drop out, alcoholic or drug addicts, the aids patient, children from broken homes who receive very little love etc. are all in need. In Christian community that lives out its Eucharist, there should be ideally be not a single one who is in need (Acts. 2:43-47, 4:32-35). The characteristic must distinguish the conduct of Christians towards members of their community (1Thes. 5:13-22).
Fellowship and spending time together regularly to deepen relationships and serve one another is a significant challenge facing the church, especially the larger communities of heavily populated area. Work schedules, the pull of entertainment and the various aspects undermine community. The result is that believers sometimes feel disconnected, uncared for and unloved. Many Christians, even see the church as something that you go to only once a week. At this point we really need to recall the life of early Christians. They developed a strong sense of community. They spent much time together, shared with one another and participated in a common vision and purpose (Acts.2:42-47). They had everything in common (44). Their commitment to Jesus and the work of the Spirit in their lives produced in them a completely new attitude to their property. No longer were they motivated to amass wealth for themselves but they now view what they have as resources for the cause of Christ and for the care of his people. Extraordinary generosity and a caring sensitivity to the poor characterized the life of early church. Those virtues are quite contrary to our natural tendency to focus on ourselves. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit that prompts a desire to give. This giving we derive from the Eucharist. Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in transforming the limits of these new believers and shaping this new community. Unity, generosity and powerful witnessing are some of the key characteristics of this group (Acts. 4:32-37). Their basic needs were met through the generosity of other followers.
4. THEOLOGY OF THE EUCHARIST
All sacraments are celebration of divine – human encounter. All sacraments are celebration of the paschal mystery of Christ. It has Christic stamp. Eucharist is the Sacrament of all the other sacraments, sacrament of love par excellence, supreme expression of God’s love for the world. In Eucharist Christ gives himself to the believers in total self-gift and the believer receives the Lord and responds in faith and love. The encounter is personal, intimate, profound and tangible.
There were many controversies about the Eucharist especially about Transubstantiation that was made clear in the council of Trent (1562) in its 22nd session and also in Vatican II (S C 48). In the following paragraph I would like to focus on some of the aspects of the Eucharist.
Eucharist is the memorial not only of Jesus’ redemptive sufferings and death but also of his entire life of obedience and self-emptying. He was concerned about the choice he made to be a servant. God desired all be saved and still desires. He wants this to be embraced by all. We commit ourselves to do our part to continue his mission on earth. In the Old Testament (Jer. 31:31-34) we read about the New covenant, which God wanted to establish with his people. This New covenant becomes a reality in the Eucharist.
Eucharist is not some ritual action that we offer to God; it is the life of Christ, which God offers to us. Jesus lived and died for others. We, who are baptized and share his body, need to live ‘for others’. We celebrate self-gift in the Eucharist; Jesus’ life and self-gift is capsulated in the Eucharist. The gift of self is therefore the basis for openness to God. It is part of the process of abnegation that roots the Christian life in charity. Jesus himself is described as undergoing a kenosis i.e. self-emptying (Phil. 2:5-11) and we too must undergo a similar process of detachment, abnegation. The gift of self is a loving and total gift of one’s entire self that pleads the Father to send his Spirit to transform us.
Worship is not something that we give to God as much as it is something we get from Him. The gifts of Bread and wine that we offer at the Eucharist transforms into the life-giving presence of Jesus and offers back to us as God’s ultimate gift. We are the ones who benefit.
We must understand that the fully energized Lord of the Eucharist is not some godly figure in the sky but the slain lamb who stood outside with the downtrodden and the marginalized and was punished for it. As St. Paul says, “We carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that life of Jesus may always be seen in our body” (2 Cor.4:10). Thus every celebration of the Eucharist should be a prophetic call to us to live the paschal mystery of sacrifice and service by transforming ourselves and society in view of the kingdom of God, which was designed by God for humankind.
Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life implies that it is the daily life we live. As source the Eucharist should occupy a central part in every Christian life. It should influence the life that follows the celebration so that gradually all our values, ideals and daily life choices are derived from the Eucharist. Jesus’ Eucharistic presence is situated within a whole network of relationships, a matrix of interconnected presences in and for the community. Depending on the depth and reality of our own Christ-life, we actually condition the possibility and reality of Christ’s presence in our world. Eucharist is Jesus’ gift to his brothers and sisters, to the members of his own body, the church. This gift is offered to those in whom he already dwells by his spirit. It is the summit of all the other modes of presence. It is given to nourish life already begun.
It is sometimes said that ‘Man is what he eats’. Because of the Eucharist, a Christian is truly what he eats. Leo the Great puts rightly that “Our part-taking of the body and blood of Christ tends only to make us become what we eat”. Jesus who held the bread and said, “This is my body” was saying it also for the poor. Hence commitment to Eucharist means commitment to the poor and needy. Eucharist is a community meal shared among women and men who through faith and love are the Body of Christ. In taking the broken bread, the body of Jesus, believers pledge to become what they eat: to assimilate his lifestyle and follow his teachings.
Mother Teresa once said, “We begin our day trying to see Christ through the bread and during the day we continue to see him hidden beneath the torn bodies of our poor. To see him in the poor we must see him through the Eucharist. The Holy Hour before the Eucharist should lead us to the Holy Hour with the poor. Our Eucharist lacks something if it does not lead us to love and serve the poor”. Participating in the Eucharist and serving the poor and the needy are interrelated. Pedro Arupe notes, “We cannot properly receive the bread of life unless at the same time we give bread for life to those in need wherever and whoever they may be”.
The Eucharist is the celebration of the self-abnegation and self-giving love of God. In the Eucharist we celebrate the mystery of the total self-gift of the triune God in the incarnation of His Son. Our sharing in this self-gift of God in the Eucharist inspires and demands a response of our self-gift to God’s cause of building up of His kingdom i.e. building up a common brotherhood, justice, freedom and love. It demands an active socio-political commitment to integral liberation. This commitment is an essential constituent of the celebration of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we witness the generosity of God in the full measure of his magnanimity. As participants in the Eucharistic sacrifice we are called to make a gift of ourselves, generosity beyond all selfish considerations. This will be a great and valuable witness of our devotion to and participation in the Eucharist. Laity must take initiative to make celebration of the Eucharist vibrant, meaningful and participating.
5. EUCHARIST AND RECONCILIATION
Eucharist has fabulous power to transform the individual community and human society. Eucharist has an energy and endearing power in transforming our relationship. The Eucharist should set us from all that is dehumanizing, all that holds us in bondage. Its through the Eucharist God touches and transforms, renames and recreates the world. The one who celebrate the Eucharist meaningfully and effectively cannot remain the same. Eucharist has power to change us. Jesus touched those who encountered him. He transformed those who touched e.g. Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, woman at the well, woman caught in adultery, leper, possessed, blind.
To transform is to change the shape, nature or quality of something. Change is constant in life. To change is necessary in order to grow. There is in us lot of resistance to change. We have the power within to change our lives. Eucharist has the power to change us. The word ‘metanoia’ means to return we need to return to ourselves, to our brothers and sisters and to God in relationship. Sacrament of reconciliation and renewal should bring about transformation. It strengthens us to transcend and transform ourselves, brings healing and wholeness to our broken personhood, reconciliation and renewal to a fragmented community. To celebrate the Eucharist, reconciliation is very essential. If our broken relationships are not put back together then we cannot celebrate the Eucharist meaningfully. This is why Jesus insists on reconciliation before this great celebration or any offering we make (Mt. 5:23-24). Modern psychologists and science have proved that reconciliation makes the person whole, and if there is no reconciliation or forgiveness then there are possibilities of psychosomatic disorder in the person.
6. EUCHARIST TODAY
There was a time when the Eucharist was seen as the priest’s offering of the sacrifice of Calvary. It was the priest’s action, offered for the sake of the people. Vatican II theology changed this perception. Eucharist is the people’s action. It is communion (koinonia) with Jesus and with members of his body. For some people Eucharist is still just a ritual, obligation, monotony that does not have any relationship with life.
Today fortunately, we see a return to the deeper meaning of the Eucharist, at least among some Christians. The emphasis is from the number of masses to depth commitment of oneself to the values of Christ. The Eucharist is challenging the life style especially of the affluent. They begin to feel uneasy with the way they live. Now they have become more concerned with values such as love, sharing, friendship, justice, truth, peace, freedom, liberation, struggle, suffering, joy and resurrection. A meaningful Eucharist requires freedom and spontaneity.
We all celebrate Eucharist with humility, knowing that we always fall short of the self-gift, which it implies. Eucharist is an important social ritual in which all share. Jesus also taught at meals. He used them especially to teach about God’s mercy. We can see that a deeper understanding of the values of a meal highlights several important points. The first is the forgiveness and reconciliation implied. The second is the notion of solidarity - the love and friendship that bind together those at the same table. The third is the sacrificial dimension, which Jesus gave to our meal of fellowship to live for others as Zecchaeus did. Jesus envisages a society where all can live together in peace and friendship (Isaiah.11:6). If our own Eucharistic celebrations are to reflect the actuality of our lives, we must learn to extend our reach beyond its present limits. Frequent sharing at the Lord’s table should fill us with a desire to bring all men and women within the range of Christ’s action. It means not being blinded by the sociological homogeneity of our present parish structures. We who share at Jesus’ table are expected to extend his concern and love to all who need it. The sign of the Eucharist lies in the human experience of a meal wherein is an experience of friendship and community. It is a mystery of love and compassion.
Generally, the Catholics are not yet ready for commitment. It is more likely that they do not feel challenged by an active sense of commitment on the part of those who do celebrate the Eucharist. Eucharist is the obvious expression of an ongoing Christian gift of self. It celebrates our willingness to place our lives on the love and concern for others. This will attract others.
7. MINISTRY IN SMALL CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES
Church must be a community that translates its faith into love. Faith must be expressed in service to others, for only in this way can we serve God. The first Christian community manifested its faith in Christ in its being a community of love and sharing. Our impact on others as a religion is not very impressive. We need to project a new image, which is the classical image of the Church: a community of love and sharing. It will be a community that acts as a leaven in the midst of the wider human community, continually trying to enter into relationship of love and understanding with all peoples.
In the course of his public life Jesus gathered a group of men around him. They were his personally picked up disciples who were to form the nucleus of community that was to flesh out values of God’s kingdom. Jesus took great care to nurture the group over a period of time by teaching and examples. To deepen the bond of union, he offered himself in the Eucharist for the life of the community that would grow out of this group. In the tradition of many cultures, eating a meal together deepens personal relationships. Table- fellowships signifies unity, love, sharing.
We need to sharpen our perception and gaze beyond the Church to behold Christ’s living presence in the community and our consequent responsibility as a community to make real his presence in the world. Therefore the liturgy must be related to the people. It should be action oriented. Small groups should come together and discuss and decide on some action plan in order to eradicate evil from the community and society. Many people find smaller community celebrations and meetings more meaningful. Keeping this in mind many dioceses in India have begun and are successful in forming of Small Christian Communities.
The desire for community is a strong urge in our day. Human solidarity is seen as an urgent need. The media brings us the news of lack of brotherliness and sisterliness in the relationships among persons and nations. Within a small group such as a parish, an action group, a religious community or a small Christian community, there is a desire for understanding each other. To be accepted by others, to be cared for, to be able to love and care for others are basic human needs. Modern civilization, while being technologically extra ordinarily advanced, is utterly inhuman in its concern for others and for nature. We are highly civilized barbarians. We can destroy nature and exterminate animals. We produce weapons, improve them and systematically use them for genocide. We are selfish, greedy and gluttonous. We have enough food for all men and women on earth. Yet few of us grab this food for ourselves. We feast while others starve to death. The Eucharist as a sacrament of unity should build togetherness or at least tend towards it. Eucharist thus, should be a remedy against selfishness both individual and social and help in the struggle for building the new human society on earth. The renewal of the Eucharist can come about only with a growth of the commitment of believers to the fundamental message of Christ. This in turn possible only through a process of death to consumerism, to the seeking of power and prestige, and to organized selfishness.
I have had a fruitful experience in both forming and working in the SCC. It brought about a lot of richness to the ministry and still does. Here we take the lay people into confidence, trust and respect their participation towards the growth of Church and community as a whole. I have always had a happy experience of giving the responsibilities to the lay leaders and animators with proper guidance and training.
8. RELEVANCE OF SCC TODAY
The early Church was only too aware that it could not look backward forever to the past work of Jesus; it had to shoulder the responsibility he had left. For Jesus’ memorial to be truly meaningful and effective, the disciples knew that they must give continuous expression to his attitudes, words and action. In this way a historically significant action could be given ever new life in liturgical celebrations, which reflected the ongoing practice of the community. For the Eucharist is not just a source of grace enabling us to live our Christian lives, but encloses and includes us in what we celebrate. The more authentic our commitment to mission, to sharing the broken bread, the more will Christ’s presence be recognized. United in breaking of the bread Christian communities’ oneness as a group was not only expressed in worship but also was lived in their daily lives. They shared gladly, held everything in common and none was in want. When it was corrupt St. Paul rebuked them (1Cor. 11:20-21). Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their Eucharist, which was not worthy to be called Eucharist. Their lack of love and concern for others both struck at the root of the Church and threatened the reality of the Eucharist. If the community dimension is lacking, the Lord’s Supper is not realized.
The Eucharist has an extraordinary potential for bringing about personal and global transformation. If ever it is vitalized into being a sacrament of communion through effective personal sharing, it can successfully challenge the comfortable cultural values most people blindly accept. If Christians ever begin to practice what Jesus has taught and exemplified when he took, blessed, broke and gave bread to be distributed, many of the global problems would be solved at both personal and institutional levels. A true Eucharist is never a passive, comforting moment alone with God, something that allows us to escape the cares and concerns of our everyday life. But it is active and affective both individually and in community.
‘Small Conscious Communities’, which reflect and act, help the desire to create such Small Christian Communities (SCC). To this awareness is of utmost significant. A community which is Church i.e. which makes possible the effective and life giving encounters with Christ our Lord. Community is the only indispensable means of giving meaning and values to the life of the individual. Community is dynamic. In it all bear with one another’s burden. Community is formed to that extent that members acquire a sense of belonging which leads to solidarity in the common mission and participative life in the community. It is a new way of being a Church although old in the biblical traditions.
Family plays an important role in formation of small christian communities. A healthy family is a fountain of renewal for the community. Pope John Paul calls family as ‘domestic church’. Family is a fully-fledged christian community in time, which strives to reflect the church. It is the church in microcosm. This means that the community in the neighbourhood is primarily missionary, outreaching, serving (Apostolic) Christ-centered (Holy) in communion with the parish and the whole church (One) excludes no one from its membership (Catholic). Family is a basic unit of the life of the parish, hence enough care is to be taken to nurture the family life and the small christian communities will help to achieve this goal. We need to become conscious of the fact that no group of people can become fully human unless they transcend, tribe, caste, clan, region and language to accept people as brothers and sisters and live in harmony and tranquility. Unless our families lose their lives in Small Christian Communities, they will not be able to find themselves (cf. Mt.16:24-25).
When the Synoptic and Acts are assembled and reviewed we find that discipleship is closely connected to sharing food with the hungry. Early Christian communities were minorities and were challenge to act. Christian community is a group that comes together primarily to critique the lives of its members. It examines its deficiencies in the area of their lives. The members of the community pray together and act in unity following the example of the Early Christian communities (Acts. 6:3-5).
9. EUCHARIST AND SCC
We have come a long way from the early church. Then there was only one Eucharist in any location and all gathered for the common celebration. The whole community was involved. The liturgy was the bond of union among the believers (Acts.2:42-47, 4:32-35). Each Eucharistic celebration being an expression and celebration of the community’s commitment to live for others and to give of itself for the life of the world, it becomes simply a recalling of Christ’s own life apart from any ongoing effect for his body, the Church. Thus celebration becomes an active sign to better living.
The sign of the Eucharist goes beyond the bread and wine. They are the bread, which is broken and shared, the wine poured out in reconciliation; the entire giving-event signifies Christ’s Eucharistic gift. If Jesus is the only one doing the giving, if the rest of the community is wrapped up in selfish isolation with hands out only to receive rather than give, we are stripping the Eucharist of all real meaning; we are reducing it to an impoverished ritual. Eucharist thus strengthens and reaffirms the basic baptismal commitment of living and dying for others. Eucharist prevents us from being complacent and closing our eyes to those conditions around us which prevent people from really living.
The early Christian community was an ideal one. They truly understood the interrelatedness of the Eucharist and community living. We must comprehend that Christian communities cannot celebrate the Eucharist meaningfully if it does not share its goods. The sharing of food and drink is a symbol of sharing life. A community that does nothing to share its goods with the poor has no right to celebrate the Eucharist; its Eucharist will have no meaning. Eucharist must give Christian this sense of community and solidarity. Eucharist is a symbol of equality of all. Nowadays Eucharist has become merely an act of devotion and symbol of union with God in and through Christ. Its social dimension is ignored. If the life of the people does not correspond to what the people celebrate, then the celebration becomes meaningless and ineffective. Sharing a meal is a humanizing act in which caring for the other becomes important. The emphasis is not primarily on the food but on the relationship and company of the other.
The concern for Justice and seeing to it that the Eucharist is truly the bread broken for a new world of brotherhood and peace lies in our hands. If we do not commit ourselves for others in this way, our Eucharistic celebrations are little more than an empty mounting of words whose meaning is long since forgotten.
The existing world order or disorder is contrary to the values of the Eucharist. Poverty, hunger and suffering are unfortunate facts of life for most of the world’s population. The world system is greedily exploitative, whereas the Eucharist implies loving and sharing. World relations destroy persons and peoples whereas the Eucharist builds Community. World is compartmentalized, whereas the Eucharist is universalistic. Eucharist being the sacrifice establishing the new covenant challenges us to transcend, selfish, profit-motivated, consumerist, power-seeking culture of today to live a life of altruism based on the values of sacrifice and self-denial blossoming of the kingdom of God.
The symbols of bread and wine point to the fact that the community built around the Eucharist are not a painless affair. The members of the community have to die to their selfishness, pride, greed, self-seeking, narrow chauvinistic feelings of caste, community, nationality, race in order that the community in Christ may be born. The seeds of above mentioned values are nurtured and are abounding in the Small Christian Communities.
The Basic Christian Communities appear to be the first and foundational cells of the Church, which within their environment become responsible for the riches of faith. Therefore these little communities are centers of evangelization, agents of human development and progress. They have high consciousness of reality, a deeper understanding of the word of God. In terms of evangelization this small communities seek to attain ecclesial objectives: deepening of faith, communication of faith in the apostolate, translation of faith into the language of day today life.
Jesus’ action during the last supper can draw many lessons for us. In order to follow Jesus one must serve the least – the poor, needy, hungry. Real service involves direct participation in the process of relieving the suffering of others – the twelve primarily handed bread to the poor. Certainly there must be leaders in the community but they must use the power gently and avoiding dominating and controlling the group’s thinking and actions. All the members of Christian community must collectively reflect in Jesus’ actions and words and then convert that reflection into actions of sharing and service. The Eucharist infuses these values into Christians’ life. To emphasis the point of sharing Paul recalls the way Jesus celebrated the Eucharist and its implications (1Cor. 11:20-24). He shows Jesus as an example of sharing and loving even in the face of betrayal. Paul is convinced that eating Christ’s body is and infinite sharing and that the communicants become one body (1Cor. 10:17). Paul compares the interdependency of the communicants with the body (1Cor. 12:26). Paul’s concerns were not only for sharing within the local church but also extending to the people in need in distant places.
CONCLUSION
Community building is not a painless affair as it involves the crushing of the mind and body like crushing of the grains and grapes for preparing the Eucharistic sacrifice. As the bread and wine are transformed and made sacred, so are we transformed and made sacred, if we unite ourselves consciously and prayerfully with this symbol of sacrifice.
We need to be ready for personal transformation. We need to let go of our ego, prejudices, pride etc. and trust people and be humble enough to seek assistance from others in order to establish a vibrant church. Our own attitudes and mind set to the celebration of Eucharist change from passive to active if we understand the magnanimity of the Eucharist. If so, we can no longer sit back and do nothing about injustice or societal structures, which perpetuate poverty and oppression. We will be profusely involved with struggle of the people. Eucharist will provide a focus and a measure for continued growth and commitment besides challenging us to a specific action and concern. Knowing others of like-mind makes the effort easier and prevents discouragement. If Eucharist is ever seen as the celebration of an active and continuous concern for others, one won’t have to worry about the peripheral changes ordinarily assent with liturgical renewal. The interior change will be so great and so obvious that everything else will fall into line. As such, it is noteworthy to acclaim that Eucharistic celebration involves the whole community. And it is through the Eucharist, as the Church tells us over and over again that the communal nature of Christianity is best expressed and celebrated. The celebration of the Eucharist has to be opened to the signs of the times, to the cry of the poor, to the need for a global social justice, and to the victimization of cultures, persons, women and minorities. Within the congregation, a place is to be allowed to the voices of prophets who know how to acclaim the gifts of Christ’s body and of the Spirit. Eucharist is the celebrated and lived expression of a love so great that we have never been able to match it.
In this regard there is no doubt that the relationship between the Eucharist and the Small Christian Communities is efficacious.
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