Before we look at the Eucharist as a symbol, it may be helpful to consider the difference between symbol and symblic action. A symbol is different from a sign. A sign often refers to an object in an arbitrary manner. We call an animal ‘cow’. The same animal is called by different names in other languages. There is no special reason why it shoulod be called ‘cow’. It could have been called by some other name. There is however a more organic link between a symbol and a thing symboloized. Fire can symbolize anger or love as it refers to the ardour that animates both.
Sacrament as Symbolic Action
A symbol is different from a symbolic action. Let me illustrate it by an example. What is the symbol of Baptism? Is it the water? Or the candle or the white dress that is given to the baptized person? Is it the washing with the water or immdersion? The rite of Baptism is the admission of a new member into the community of the disciples of Jesus. This admission is a symbolic action of the community. This symbolic action has a three level structure. At the centre is the community that is admitting a new member. This admission is symbolized in various ways. The person is welcomed by the community, represented by the parents, the God parents, the minister and others present and initiated into its ways of life. The initiation may be preceded by a preparation. The initiation itself is ritualized by many symbolic actions like washing with water, the giving of a white dress and candle, anointing with oil, etc. By becoming a member of the community of the disciples of Jesus, the person is also becoming a child of God through a gift of the Spirit. The structure of the rite can be symbolized as follows.
Mysteric level: becoming a child of God by the gift of the Spirit
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Social level: becoming a member of the community of the disciples of Jesus
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Ritual level: Washing with water, anointing, holding a candle, etc.
The central element of this structure is the social level of becoming a member of the community of the disciples of Jesus. This social event is the symbol of the mysteric event, namely becoming a child of God, reborn into a new, divine life. The social event is celebrated in celebrated in a number of symbolic actions at the ritual level. The rituals symbolize the social event. A person may become a child of God and receive the Spirit without becoming a member of the community of Jesus’ disciples. On the other hand a person may go through all the ritual and become a member of the community without becoming a child of God because s/he is not really disposed. The ritual actions may be repeated in other contexts – a person bathing in a sacred river, for example – without having the same social and mysteric consequences. Any ritual may be sufficient to indicate the admission of a new member into the community. A particular ritual may be chosen by the founder of the community or determined by the community itself. The rituals may also symbolize the mysteric meanings of the symbolic action. Washing with water symbolizes purification and new birth, anointing indicates consecration, the new white dress the new life, the candle illumination. In the rite of immersion, Paul saw a symbol of dying (going into the tomb) and rising.
If we want to talk about Baptism as a symbol, we should realize first of all that it is not merely a symbol, but a symbolic action of a community. Secondly, while taking the symbolic action as a whole we must distinguish the three levels: ritual, social and mysteric. Thirdly we must avoid focusing narrowly on a particular symbolic action or one or more of the elements, taking them outside the context of the whole symbolic action. With this, rather brief, analysis of sacraments as symbolic actions, let us look at the Eucharist as a symbolic action.
Misplaces Emphasis in Analysing Symbols
Perhaps it is better to start with ways in which we should not look at the symbolic nature of the Eucharist. The first way is is to look at the elements and then seek to fit them into the totalo symbolic action. We take the bread and wine, look at their becoming the body and blood of Christ and and then see them as being offered to the Father. Some can even be more elementary looking at the bread and wine as symbols of unity because they are made of many grains and grapes. That the grains and grapes are ground in order to produce bread and wine makes them symbols of the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist. We can note similar symbolizations in the official rite itself when the water mixed with the wine is seen as symbolizing the humanity and divinity in Jesus. I do not say that such symbolization is meaningless. They may help devotion. But they do not constitute the basic symbol of the Eucharist.
A second way that we should avoid is to focus on the mysteric level and seek to symbolize it directly from the ritual level, ignoring the social level. We believe that the Eucharist is a sacrifice and reactualizes the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. Basing ourselves on this belief, we tend to down play the social dimension of the symbolic action of the Eucharist which is after all a shared meal. People who talk about the Eucharist as a meal are accused of simplifying the symbol and ignoring its sacrificial aspect. But no one seems to bother about exaggerations in the other direction. In some the Oriental Rites, for example, the sacarificial aspect is even symbolized visibly by piercing the consecrated host with a small silver of golden spear. Once the basic social ritual is in place some attempts at symboizing the mysteric meaning is inevitable. For example, in Baptism, after the washing with water, the meaning of the event is symbolized by the new white dress or the candle. But we would go too far if, leaving aside the ritual of washing with water, the meaning of the sacrament is elaborated focusing mostly on the secondary rites.
The Basic Symbolic Action
The basic social symbolic action of theEucharist is a shared common meal in which the community eats and drinks in memory of Jesus’ paschal mystery as it was symbolically expressed in his last supper with his disciples. This meal is preceded by a reading of the Word of God as a preparation. The meal itself starts with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving as it was customary with the Jews. This prayer spells out the meaning of the symbolic action. The meal follows the prayer. This is the social level. Reading, prayer, the breaking of the bread, and eating are the ritual action. This ritual action itself may be surrounded by other minor ritual actions to express forgiveness by a sprinkling of water, to honour the bible, the gifts and the altar by incense, to express the solidarity of the community by exchanging a greeting of peace, by various gestures of honour to persons and objects, etc. At the mysterical level, as the community celebrates the memory of Jesus, he himself becomes present in various ways in the symbolic action. He is present as the (invisible) head of the community which celebrates, symbolized by the minister. He is present in the Word of God which is read. He is present bodily in the bread and wine. His salvific sacrifice on Calvary is also made present. The centre piece of this complex symbolic action is the community sharing food – bread and wine – in memory of Jesus.
It is important to note the change in religious awareness and symbolism that this represents.
The central ritual symbolic action of Israel is the sacrifice. There were many kinds of sacrifices: communion, thanksgiving, expiation, etc. The ritual-spiritual life of Israel was centred round the temple. The temple had a special body of priests. People went on pilgrimage to the temple once or more times in the year. Sacrifice, except when it was a holocaust, was followed by a sacred meal. The sacrificial gift, having been accepted and sanctified by God, was now mediating God’s grace to the people who were participating in it. If Jesus’ last supper was the meal of the paschal feast, the lamb eaten at that meal must have been sacrificed to God at the temple. Jesus brings in a revolution in this tradition. He proposes the meal itself as the main symbol and asks his disciples to repeat it in his memory. The meal consists of bread and wine, not of sacrificial meat. There is no sacrifice preceding it. The meal itself is sacrificial. The bread shared is the body of Jesus broken; the wine drunk is the blood of Jesus poured forth in sacrifice. The whole community sharing the meal is a priestly community. There are some ministers who serve the community. But they do not come between God and the community for any sort of mediation.
The unfortunate thing is that this important shift that Jesus makes is progressively ignored by the Christians. Once again a special class of priests emerges. The Eucharist is seen as a sacrifice in which the Church offers Jesus to the Father. The communion is seen as a sacred meal that follows the sacrifice. This means that the newness of the ritual instituted by Jesus is (mis)interpreted through the old prism of the cult of Israel.
What we have to recover from the tradition of Jesus is that the shared meal in memory of Jesus is itself sacrificial. Jesus’ sacrifice in the Eucharist consists in offering his own own body as food and his own blood as drink. The community is re-enacting the sacrifice of Jesus by breaking his body and pouring out his blood in the act of eating and drinking. The Eucharist is not a sacred meal following a sacrifice. The sacred meal is sacrificial. This is the new ritual Jesus institutes. The ritual of a shared common meal has a sacrificial meaning and reference because the community celebrates in memory of Jesus’ passion-death-resurrection. The ritual is not required to imitate what happened on Calvary. It is a meal with a specific meaning celebrated by a special community in a specific context of faith. Every effort to misinterpret it in terms of older categories must be discouraged and resisted. We are not saying that the Eucharist is only a meal, not a sacrifice. We are saying that it is a sacrificial meal. We are denying that it is primarily a sacrifice, followed by meal, almost as an optional gesture. We are saying that the meal itself is the sacrifice.
A ritual happens in time: symbolic action follows symbolic action. Communion follows the Eucharistic prayer. But they constitute one overall action. The communion is not a follow-up on the Eucharistic prayer. Rather the Eucharistic prayer is a preparation for the communion. Jesus at the last supper did not say: Take this bread, sacrifice it or offer it in sacrifice and then eat it. He simply said: Take and eat all of you, this is my body. The breaking of the bread is not the merely its material breaking, but the sharing of it. The shedding of blood is the sharing of the cup.
Just as an insistence on the sacrificial dimension of theEucharist may be detrimental to the meal dimension, overstressing the real presence of Jesus’ body and blood in the bread and wine can also lead to a misconception of the symbolic action of the Eucharist. Jesus did not institute the Eucharist as a means of perpetuating his bodily presence in the world. The main function of the Eucharistic action is not to make Jesus present so that he can become an object of our adoration. Jesus becomes present in the Eucharist as our food and drink. In the early Church the consecrated bread was only reserved and sent to people who were not able to participate in the celebration of the community because of sickness or another reason. Today one would think that the primary purpose of the Eucharist is to make Jesus present in bread and wine. Jesus did not say: “This is my body; keep it as a memorial and worship it”. He said, rather, “Take and eat, this is my body.” To speak of the Eucharist as a meal is not to deny Jesus’ real presence. We only affirm that Jesus becomes present to become our food and drink, not an object of worship. Once we believe that Jesus is bodily present in the bread and wine, there is no problem in honouring it. But that presence is not the primary meaning of the Eucharistic symbolic action. The presence must be interpreted in the context of the meal and not vice versa.
TheEucharist is therefore a community meal. The focus of the Eucharist is not Jesus, but the community. In the Eucharist, the community becomes the “Body of Christ”. It is in making the community the body of Christ that the bread becomes the body of Christ. Jesus, by his presence, builds up the body of Christ and promotes its communion. The Eucharist is celebration of community.
The Eucharist and the Kingdom
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is a community of freedom, fellowship and justice. The reality of the kingdom of God is the community of the humans. The egoism and selfishness of the humans lead to division and fragmentation in the human community. By preaching selflessness and reconciliation Jesus is promoting community. When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus suggests two: Love God and love your neighbour. But when he gives his own new commandment, he merges them into one: “Love one another as I have loved you.” It is like saying, “Love God in the other”. I do not have the space here to elaborate on this change. Given the reality of selfishness and conflict, love involves forgiveness. In his miracles and parables Jesus presents God as a loving and forgiving Father. When he teaches his disciples to pray, he tells them to ask God: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Promoting reconciliation with each other merges with promoting reconciliation with God. They are not the same thing. But one cannot be done without the other. They mutually involve eath other. Similarly one can love God in the other and the other in God. As a matter of fact, one cannot say that one loves God while hating one’s enemy, as John reminds us. Jesus tells us the same thing whe he says: “Whatever you did to one of these least ones, you did it to me.”
On the last day of his life onthis earth, Jesus comments on his new commandement in two ways. First of all, he washes the feet of his disciples. To love the other is not to dominate the other, but to be his/her servant. Secondly, to love the other is to share all that one is and all that one has. Jesus celebrates this self-gift in the last supper. He shares his own body and blood as food and drink. He shares life, because food is the symbol of life. He makes the disciples one body with him. The Eucharistic meal celebrates this communion of life. The Eucharist therefore is the celebration of life in communion. It builds up the community of the humans as the body of Christ. It becomes the symbolic realization of the kingdom of God, as a community of the humans who forgive and love each other and who show their love in mutual service and sharing. If this reality is not there, the Eucharist becomes an empty symbol.
The Eucharist therefore marks the ongiong realization of the kingdom of God. We see this in the early Church. Positively, the early Jeruslem community tries to live this ideal. We read in the Acts of Apostles:
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. (Acts 2: 44-47)
Exegetes suggest that the phrase ‘break bread at home’ refers to the celebration of the Eucharist. This means that their Eucharist mirrored and confirmed their sharing of all things. This ideal did not last too long. There were complaints of malditribution and the Apostles had to appoint seven Deacons to look after the distribution. (Acts 6:1-4) We see a similar tension in the Church at Corinth. The rich and the poor eat separately, while they come together for the Eucharist. St. Paul protests very strongly and calls their Eucharist meaningless. (cf. 1 Cor 11:17-32) The Eucharist then takes on an eschatological role. It is not merely the expression of a community that exists already. It is the symbol of a community that is being built up. The celebration of the Eucharist can help in this building up. We do not say that the community should be perfect before the Eucharist can be celebrated. But if the people are not making efforts to become a community, then the celebration of the Eucharist will be a meaningless symbol. If the people are making such an effort, the Eucharist can be a great help, since Jesus becomes present to encourage and energize their efforts at community building.
All the scramental rituals are celebrated by the community to mark important stages in the life of the individuals in their relationship to the community. But the Eucharist is the celebration of the community itself as community. It is a sacrament of community. What does this imply in the contemporary context? I would like to point to three directions in which the Eucharist can become a meaningful symbol in our contemporary communities: justice and equality, community and openness beyond borders.
The Eucharist and Equality
The characteristic of real community is equality. When we invite some one to share our table we recognize that the other is equal and related to us. Refuse to sit at table with someone is to refuse relationship and to affirm superiority. In the hierarchical caste system in India and similar social discriminations elsewhere inequaity is lived and affirmed by refusing table fellowship and inter-marriage. Sharing a meal is therefore a good symbolic action affirming equaity and relationship.
When we emphasize the vertical dimension of worship and sacrifice in the Eucharist to the detriment of the horizontal dimension of a shared meal there is a danger that people are so taken up with their relationship to God that they do not bother about how they relate to the other next to them. People carry into the ritual the exisiting social inequality and discrimination. For example, the Eucharist, instead of being shared among the people, is received from the priest. Following the local social custom a hierarchical order in which the body of Christ has to be received may be established, formally or informally, in a particular place. In India, the Dalits will have to follow the others; perhaps even receive the body of Christ in a separate place. The community that is celebrated in the ritaul is denied in practice.
It is very difficult to describe social equality. Political equality can be exercised by voting in the elections. We can also speak of a formal equality of human rights: every one has a right to freedom. In practice we know that all people do not have the same natural endowments. They do not work hard in the same. Their creativity and effort differ. What does equality mean in this context? We can say that every one has the right to have his/her basic needs of nourishment, habitation, work, basic health care, etc. met. There must also be equality of oportunity: access to education, jobs, etc. Every one has a right to be respected as a free human being and have the possibility of exercising his/her freedom. All have a basic human dignity, being created in the image of God. The rights of some correspond to the duties of others. Rights and duties are reciprocal. People also are called to live together in community, to love and serve each other. Every one is born into the community of the family. S/he is enculturated in a cultural group, exercises and claims his/her rights in a political community and realizes his/her fellowship in the religious community.
A group of people cannot celebrate the Eucharist meaningfully if it does not promote community which involves a basic equality of all the people. The Eucharist is also an indication that this community is not primarily hierarchical. The community is the celebrant of the Eucharist. The priest has a role of leadership, recognized by the community. A certain charism or special grace corresponds to this role. But this role does not set him apart and above the community. It is a role of service, not of power and status. In prayer he is the voice of the community. He ‘collects’ the prayers of the community. He leads the community from within. The Oriental Churches stress the role of the Spirit of God in the celebration of the sacraments. The minister is really the servant of the Spirit and of the community. The Latin tradition focuses on the priest as the representative of Jesus. This theological perspective may have to be revised. The agent of the Eucharistic action is Christ and his body, the Church. The Spirit is the power behind the action. Any representation can only be at a ritual level. Too much focus on this may weaken our focus on the community, Jesus and the Spirit. Oriental theology offers a different way of looking at the sacramental action where the role of the priest is to invoke, in the name of the community, the Spirit who is the active agent. We need therefore to restore the role of the community as the principal agent of sacramental action. The Eucharist is celebrated by the community presided over by the priest. It is not celebrated by the priest in which the people are present. They participate in the celebration. This is a manifestation of the equality of all Christians before God, whatever be the differentiation of roles within the community. This is what Paul tries to tell the Corinthians when he spoke of the different gifts of the Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Cor 12:4-7)
The Church is said to be a communion. This identity is celebrated in the Eucharist. But it is denied when the communion is qualified as hierarchical and hierarchy is interpreted in terms of power and status, not service.
The Eucharist and Community
We looked at community from the point of view equality in the earlier section. Let us now look at community from the point of view of sharing and fellowship. The modern world is characterized by individualism and consumerism. We are living in an era of globalization. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing both nationally and internationally. Unjust trading and banking practices are accumulating wealth in a few hands, making the majority of the people poor. A lot of wealth is produced. But it is not distributed in a just manner. There is an attempt to remake the people as consumers. The media and advertisement are used to promote consumerism. The consumerist attitude to the world is exploitative. It not only monopolizes the earth’s goods. It also pollutes and destroys them by over-exploitation and deprives coming generations of nature’s resources.
By choosing the sharing of food as the central symbol of the Eucharist Jesus focuses on sharing and life. To celebrate the Eucharist meaningfully is a declaration against individualism and consumerism. Building community is more important than individualism and competition. Sharing with the needy is more urgent than trading for profit. By associating the body and nature we also pronounce ourselves against their exploitation and destruction. Respecting nature is more necessary than destroying it. The fact that Jesus becomes bodily present in bread and wine gives nature a dignity that we cannot imagine. Nature is sacred. It is not something to be despised. It is capable of becoming the body of Christ. The dichotomies that we make between the spirit and the body, between the humans and nature and between the divine and creation disappear in the celeberation of the Eucharist. There is a mysteric communion of al reality. The human community is now set in the context of cosmic community, which in turn is integrated with the divine community. The Eucharist not only fulfills the prayer of Jesus “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21), but also becomes the symbol of the ‘gathering of all things’ (Eph 1:10) or the ‘reconciliation of all things’ (Col 1:20) of which Paul speaks. Theilhard de Chardin proclaimed this when he celebrated his Eucharist on the world.
From Sacred to Secular
TheEucharist also indicates an important shift from the sacred to secular. In the sphere of religion the relation to the divine if often limited to specific sacred spaces and times. Temples and Churches are built. A special priesthood is established. Particular liturgies are developed. The atmosphere is made ‘sacred’ with incence, bells, chants, etc. Jesus breaks this up. He had foretold the cahnge to the Samaritan woman: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:23) The sacramental rituals are community symbolic actions that depend for their meaning on intention and context than on sacred spaces, times and agents. The Eucharist is a community meal. In the early Church these comunities gathered in the houses of people. The leader gave thanks to God as he could and recalled the memory of Jesus and the people then shared the meal. The sacred had become the secular. Or rather the secular acquires a sacred meaning in a particular context. Not every meal is a Eucharist. But it becomes a Eucharist when the community expresses its intention of sharing a meal in memory of Jesus, obeying his command: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19). Slowly this social symbolic action gets ritualized. Once again sacred spaces, times and persons take over.
This secularization of ritual corrersponds to that other secularization that I had referred to earlier, where God is encountered and loved in the other. The story of Jesus about the final judgment makes this very clear: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Mt 25:40) The community then becomes the place where God is encountered and experienced. I think that this relativizes all sorts of mystical experiences. People make great efforts and employ various methods to experience God in a special way. We can appreciate them. But the same God can be encountered by every one in the world and in the others.
Here secularization leads to a new openness. If God can be encountered in the other, especially in the poor, then every one who loves and serves the poor can encounter God. One does not have to be a Christian to do so. The sacraments too stand relativized. We do encounter God in the sacramental celebrations. But they are not the only means of divine-human encounter. The poor may be a more authentic means of encountering God. We can go a step further. If we do not encounter God in the poor, our attempts to encounter God in sacramental celebrations may be fruitless.
This ‘secularization’ of the Eucharist also throws a new light on questions of sharing it with other Christians or with members of other religions. The Eucharist is not simply a meal where any one can just join in. It is symbolic action of a community. But this community need not be thought of a rigid group. Any one who is ready to do so in memory of Christ may qualify to participate in it. So there could be an openness at this level regarding participation. On the other hand, if a community of intention is not there, even if the community eats and drinks together it is not the same symbolic action. Even then, however, sharing a meal can have a value, even a spiritual value, though it is not a Christian Eucharist. It can still be a ‘sacred’ meal where God is encountered, provided one is open to such a perspective. We should not say that every meal is a sacred meal. That would be an exaggeration. But every meal can be a sacred meal, provided there is an intention. Every sacred meal need not be a Eucharist, since this is a meal taken in memory of Christ. On the other hand, a Eucharist can be an empty symbol, if it is not a celebration of love, sharing and service.
Conclusion
In conclusion, let me summarize my main observations. The sacraments are community symbolic actions. The Eucharist is a shared meal taken in memory of Jesus’ paschal mystery. It celebrates and builds community. Love as sharing and service is the way in which the community is lived and expressed. Equality and integration are characteristics of community. The commuity goes beyond the humans to include the divine and the cosmos. In the Eucharist the secular becomes the sacred.
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
Institute of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions, Chennai, India.