Being Gift
Many have been extremely impressed, and I think very rightly so, with the work undertaken and completed for the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris following the catastrophic fire in 2019. To have organized a large team of architects and other experts, working together, sourcing material from the same locations as the original, rebuilding the cathedral in a like for like manner, not only brought the Catholic world but people from all over the world, believers and non-believers alike, together with the common purpose of restoring one of France’s most beautiful Cathedrals and iconic buildings. This is a project truly to be admired, not just for the beauty of the end result, but for the beauty of the true community of people offering the gifts of their talents in mutual cooperation. It is a pointer to how the Church is meant to be as the Body of Christ – one Body in Christ. Sadly, the same cannot be said for another project from the same city of Paris, the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The parody presented on the painting of the Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci – also a work of genius – has shocked the world of Christians at large. This was a project of divisiveness, a mockery of the very heart of Christianity, the Holy Eucharist. How can we have such a diverse opposition of works, in the one beautiful city of Paris, capital of the country once known as the elder daughter of the Church?
The Book of Genesis describes how the human race, in our first parents of Adam and Eve, were created in a communion, a unity with God and with one another. They were naked but without shame. They could look to one another as human persons, being gift to one another, not as objects to be used but as persons, made in the image and likeness of God, to be loved. But then there was the temptation by the Evil One. The Scriptures describe how they were enticed by the fruit on the tree in the midst of the garden, the one God had commanded them not to eat from. They saw that the “tree was good for food, and a delight to the eyes”. A delightful food, in their midst, tempted them and they fell for it. We cannot say precisely what the true nature of the temptation was. But perhaps we can describe it simply as a failure to offer true worship to God. The consequence of the Fall is that a rupture occurred in the relationship between God and man. This rupture is at the deepest level of man, between his body and his soul. No longer is our lower nature completely subjected to our reason. Pride and concupiscent lust have entered our person. We now struggle to be gift to one another. Sin and death, which is the separation of the body from the soul, have entered the world.
But God did not and never does abandon His people. The Old Testament describes a series of Covenants, sacred family bonds between God and His people. One after the other they were broken. In one way or another, His people failed again and again, through their pride, to offer a true worship of God. We have failed to offer a true gift of ourselves both to God and to one another.
St John tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His Only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. His plan is to undo the disunity caused by the Fall in a parallel manner. Christ is the New Adam. Mary is the New Eve. Our first parents broke the bond of unity, through a temptation of forbidden food, thinking they could then be like God Himself. Jesus, through His death on the cross and resurrection restores the broken Covenant in a total self emptying of Himself as pure Gift. He continues to offer Himself as Gift through the super-substantial Gift of the Sacred Food of Holy Eucharist, truly the Presence of His own Body, Blood Soul and Divinity. In the same Divine Movement from the Cross, in the person of St John, He gives us the special gift of His own mother to be our mother too. She is to become the bond-member and Mother of the Church. She gathers her children into one through the power of her Divine Spouse, the Holy Spirit.
We need Faith to believe in these mysteries. Faith is also a Sacred Gift from God which we can ask for, which we need to be open to receive. Our Lord moves very gently in drawing His disciples into the Sacred Bond of Unity He establishes between Himself and them, ultimately drawing us into the Unity between Himself and the Father, the Unity of the Trinity. First there was the miracle of the loaves and fish we heard last week. The disciples at first only see this on an earthly level and want to make Him a King – they won’t have to work for food anymore! But in a similar way in which he engaged with the Samaritan woman at the well, He draws them gently into the mystery, seeks to raise their understanding from a natural one to a supernatural one. “Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life.” He is undoing the fault of our first parents who thought they could consume the food from the forbidden tree and be like God. The Food of the Holy Eucharist, provided we receive this Food in True Worship and belief does indeed open the door for us to Eternal Life. We enter into the greatest unity of all by becoming partakers of the Divine Nature, as St Peter wrote in his second letter. We become gift. This is what it means to be a human person. In His treatise on the Holy Trinity, when St Augustine wanted a relationship title for the Holy Spirit to mirror that of ‘Father’ and ‘Son’, he chose the name ‘Gift’. In being gift, we become more and more like the bond member of the Church, our true mother and model of unity, the Blessed Virgin Mary. We can take into our hearts and make our own the prayer of Pope St John Paul II:
Immaculate Conception
Mary, my Mother
Live in me
Act in me
Speak in and through me
Think your thoughts in my mind
Love through my heart.
Give me your dispositions and feelings.
Teach, lead, and guide me to Jesus.
Correct, enlighten and
Expand my thoughts and behaviour
Possess my soul.
Take over my entire personality and life.
Replace it with yourself.
Incline me to constant adoration and
Thanksgiving.
Pray in me and through me.
Let me live in you, and keep me
In this union always. Amen.