Monday, July 29, 2019

Gustavo Gutierrez on the Eucharist and Human Brotherhood




The first take of the Church is to celebrate with joy the gift of the salvific action of God in humanity, accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ. This is the Eucharist: a memorial and a thanksgiving. It is a memorial of Christ which presupposes an ever-renewed acceptance of the meaning of his life—a total giving to others. It is a thanksgiving for the love of God which is revealed in these events. The Eucharist is a feast, a celebration of the joy that the Church desires and seeks to share. The Eucharist is done within the Church, and simultaneously the Church is built up by the Eucharist. In the Church “we celebrate,” writes Schillebeeckx, “that which is achieved outside the Church edifice, in human history.” This work, which creates a profound human brotherhood, gives the Church its reason for being.

In the Eucharist we celebrate the cross and the resurrection of Christ, his Passover from death to life, and our passing from sin to grace. In the Gospel the Last Supper is presented against the background of the Jewish Passover, which celebrated the liberation from Egypt and the Sinai Covenant. The Christian Passover takes on and reveals the full meaning of the Jewish Passover. Liberation from sin is at the very root of political liberation. The former reveals what is really involved in the latter. But on the other hand, communion with God and others presupposes the abolition of all injustice and exploitation. This is expressed by the very fact that the Eucharist was instituted during a meal. For the Jews a meal in common was a sign of brotherhood. It united the dinners in a kind of sacred pact. Moreover, the bread and the wine are signs of brotherhood which at the same time suggest the gift of creation. The objects used in the Eucharist themselves recall that brotherhood is rooted in God’s will to give the goods of this earth to all people so that they might build a more human world. The Gospel of John, which does not contain the story of the Eucharistic institution, reinforces this idea, for it substitutes the episode of the washing of the feet—a gesture of service, love, and brotherhood. This substitution is significant: John seems to see in this episode the profound meaning of the Eucharistic celebration, the institution of which he does not relate. Thus the Eucharist appears inseparably united to creation and to the building up of a real human brotherhood. “The reference to community,” writes Tillard, “does not therefore represent a simple consequence, an accidental dimension, a second level of a rite that is in the first place and above all individual—as the simple act of eating is. From the beginning it is seen in the human context of the meal as it was conceived in Israel. The Eucharistic rite in its essential elements is communitarian and orientated toward the constitution of human brotherhood.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation [trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985], 262-63)