Fr. Henry O’Shea:
The dripping blood our only drink
The bloody flesh our only food
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound substantial flesh and blood.
T.S. Eliot
If the crowds gathered all over the world, and particularly in Europe and the United States, in the second week of November, 1918, were agreed on anything, it was on the phrase, ‘Never again!’ This is a natural reaction to the shock of what civilized people did to other civilized people in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
But now, in the second quarter of the twenty-first century – and several ‘never-agains’ later – we who imagine ourselves to be civilized people have nearly exhausted our capacity for astonishment at the ever-developing inhumanity of modern warfare in whatever form it takes. Too great an exposure to scenes of violence, be that violence, domestic, continental or in video-games accessible to the youngest children – this exposure is blunting our capacity to imagine, our ability, to grasp the reality, the horror, of it all. Too much reality, real or virtual, is bad for my health, or more likely, shrugging out shoulders, bad for my peace of mind and comfort.
Except, perhaps, when the anaesthetic of the soundbite wears off, when the avalanche of facts and statistics becomes ripped-open-flesh in the face of a person one might have known in a shot-down plane. Except, perhaps, when someone one knows is prevented from returning home because he or she is a Christian, Except, perhaps, when one experiences the trauma of a priest who sees 200 of his parishioners blown up in front of his church. Except, perhaps, when we see the devastation of the neighbouring family who have lost a loved one through suicide, perhaps when we read the annual statistics for abortion every year.
Then, there are the realities of our own society’s dealings with the most vulnerable – and this in every period of our history. Women, perhaps, unmarried mothers, perhaps, orphans, perhaps, the homeless, perhaps, believing and practising Catholics, perhaps.
Most awfulnesses remain other peoples’ awfulnesses, remain at a remove, until, or even after, we come into contact with them.
This is one reason for feeling a certain reserve, a certain reticence, about today’s second reading from St Paul to the Romans. It can be too easy, too glib, to proclaim to the distraught, to the traumatized, to say to those who have been or really are put to the test, that theirs are the trials through which we triumph, by the power of him who loved us.
But, this reticence, or reserve does not make it any less true that, ‘… neither death nor life, no angel, prince…can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Expect, perhaps ourselves. Except we who claim to believe in him, to love him, to be the only hands he has.
With his unerring instinct for popular Marxist trivialization and profanation, Berthold Brecht, in his Threepenny Opera makes one of his characters sing, Erst kommt das Fressen dann kommt die Moral or: Grub first, then morality. Eat your fill – and not just of food – and then you can think about other, even higher, things – poetry, music, even love. For all his mockery and cynicism, Brecht has a point. We all need to eat, we all need a minimum of security to live truly human lives. But, having one point does not mean missing another, missing every other.
Clearly, the disciples in today’s gospel were not thinking in a Brechtian sense when they came to Jesus with advice about the catering arrangements – or lack of them – for the crowds that had followed him to the lonely place. Remember that Jesus went to that lonely place when he had heard of the swinging party in Herod’s palace, with wine, dancing – think of Salome – and, as the climax of the entertainment – John’s beheading, even if this had been part of the original programme for the evening. What kind of banquet can there be in a lonely place? The disciples are practical people.
As usual, Jesus is good for a surprise. The New Testament contains six stories of Jesus feeding the crowds. In every case, Jesus involves the disciples. In every case, Jesus instructs them to organize the crowds and to feed them. In every case, Jesus gives thanks over the loaves and fishes – that is, blesses them – in some cases raising his eyes to heaven, and then tells the disciples to distribute from the resulting abundance.
The reference in these accounts of feeding to the Eucharist, to the Mass, to what we do at every Mass, is unmistakable.
Unmistakable, too, is Jesus’ entrusting to his disciples the task, the duty of feeding the crowds. Is it purely by chance that most accounts refer to there being twelve baskets of leftovers from this Eucharistic superabundance, all having eaten as much as they wanted? Twelve baskets, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve tribes of the new Israel, the Church, twelve apostles. Us.
The first reading from the Prophet Isaiah is one of the classic texts of the kingdom to come. Brecht might mock and, yes, food is mentioned, its importance is not denied – why spend money, the prophet asks, on what is not bread. But what, in the long run is bread? What fails to satisfy? The same Lord who feeds the five thousand says, ‘Pay attention, come to me, listen and your soul will live.’ This me, this I, who am calling, who am promising, is word and bread.
In all our living, there is a spiral of poetry and prose. Prophecy and promise have to be rooted, have to be made concrete in response and responsibility. Prophecy and promise have to be made real in attentive, fruitful, action. Concrete response and responsibility have to be inspired by the poetry of the everlasting covenant made out of the favours promised to David.
We are called, commissioned to become shockable, to be astonished, astonishable, once more, called, commissioned, to fertilize the prose that we have become with the poetry of a loving, hoping, believing doing. ‘Never again?’
How many say: I would like to see his face, his clothes, his sandals!
Well, here you see it, here you touch it, here you eat it.
He is given to you not just for you to see,
But that you may touch it and receive it within you.
St John Chrysostom