Our Response to Violence - A Eucharistic Perspective

Topic: Our Response to Violence - A Eucharistic Perspective.

Venue: St. Patrick's Crypt, Church Hill, Sydney

Date: Saturday, 20th May, 2006; 10am - 3pm.

The first session of the day focused on the two poles of 'outward show' and of 'managing guilt' as the two extremes whereby the Eucharist could be emptied of its challenge to 'be what we eat and drink'. The session explored how these two extremes, 'outward show' (whose chief manifestation was intolerance) and 'managing guilt' (an escape from this world to a world of one's own making) are both an expression of fear with violence being the human reaction to fear. The session explored how the Eucharist could be used to cement my place or standing, excluding and rejecting all that may threaten my position or status as a 'proper, righteous Christian' (the 'outward show' dimension), and how the Eucharist could be used to invent a place or standing by an escape from this world into a 'safe, secure and religious' world of my own making (the 'managing guilt' dimension).

We looked at how these two poles, 'outward show' and 'managing guilt', could ritualize the violence of 'intolerance' and 'make-believe' by putting the blame on some thing or some one, thus giving birth to the scapegoat, and how this ritualization through the victimization and demonization of the scapegoat leads readily to the justification of violence (obvious or cloaked) toward what is scape-goated. By labelling the scapegoat as dangerous and evil, such labelling could be used to justify any means to destroy the scapegoat as one's 'righteous' duty to purge what is deemed evil. This tendency to violence, to create scapegoats, to demonize, is in all of our conscious or unconscious dealings with the fear of anything or anyone who might threaten our 'comfort zone', and, paradoxically, the greatest threat to that 'comfort zone' is the Christ of the Gospel, hence the need to revisit the Christ of the Gospel and the Christ of the Eucharist whom we worship and whom we are called to become.

The second session focused on a 'return' to the Christ of the Gospel and the Christ of the Eucharist. The session began with a reflection on the Emmaus Story as elucidated by the theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet in his book, Symbol and Sacrament. The reflection took the approach of a 'return' to the Scriptures: only through the constant and renewed mediation of Christ as the Word of God could the hearts of disciples burn with expectation and the possibility of receiving the newness announced by the Risen One. This re-proclamation of the Word is followed by a manifestation of that same Word enfleshed through the action of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing: the symbol of the 'Breaking of the Bread'. Word and Sacrament are inseparable.

The taking, blessing, breaking and sharing of the Eucharist is THE pattern of our own lives offered in union with Christ. But it is a union often dogged with the temptation to forget the 'scandal of the cross', that is, to forget that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, Christ was crucified as a criminal, a blasphemer. This scandal of the cross would become the stumbling block and the foolishness early believers had to contend with in their proclamation of Christ to the nations. This reflection led, in turn, to an awareness of how this 'scandal of forgetfulness' continues to show itself whenever believers forget Christ's dying and rising for us and so to forget the demand and the challenge to die and rise for others most intimately signified in the giving of the sign of peace before Communion in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Through in-put, time for personal reflection and group participation, participants were made aware of how intolerance and guilt is played out though fear and violence in our own lives and how the bread and wine that is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ reminds, challenges and gives us the wherewithal to change into what we eat and drink. It is this change that must be seen to be believed in our lives, in our families, in the family of our parish and Church. When this change is at work in our lives, then our relations with others can/will change. To be the leaven of the peace of the crucified, risen Christ is witness and the full meaning of 'Do this in memory of me' - Eucharist is a 'living memory'.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do we see our Parish as ONE family or a bunch of families? Are we 'Catholic' in name only? Are we divided by ethnic, cultural, national or social differences? At the Sign of Peace who do we include? Exclude?

2. How do we overcome the fear of differences? Can we admit our difficulties? (easy to condemn the Cronulla riots as we are not involved but what about our own neighbourhood? Gossip? Backbiting? etc. How do I bring hope to people?

3. Are we guilty of the scandal of forgetfulness? Do we forget that Jesus was despised, unwashed, crucified as a criminal? (1.Cor.1:26-28)? We are so desensitized to the scandal of the cross (1 Cor.1: 23) that even Jesus crucified must be rendered 'acceptable' to our Christian sensibilities. Then it is only a small step to making anything which 'offends' our Christian moral sensibilities 'unacceptable' therefore 'making God in our own image'

4. In what ways do we act as a catalyst for transforming our Parish? Community? Only when change takes place in our own lives will relations with others change and we are able to witness to the love of God in deed and in truth.

Reflection Day November 2011

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