The Core of Life of The Spirit

I am reading a brilliant book at the moment by a man named Robert Benson. The book is titled "Living Prayer" and, as I read a chapter last night, I found myself caught by the deep truths of what he was saying, and the ways in which those truths are speaking to my current experience of life.

He writes about the prayer that seems to universally accompany the Eucharistic service, regardless of denomination or creed, “On the night in which He was handed over to suffering and death, He took the bread and He gave thanks for it and He broke it and gave it,” and suggests that in this prayer is the core of the life of the Spirit – “taken, blessed, broken, shared.” (pg. 39)

He goes on to write:

It is the broken part that I do not care for very much. It is the broken part, however, that makes everything else about the Eucharist worth making over. The lesson is that Jesus of Nazareth – the most chosen and most blessed and most shared one of us all – was the most broken of us all.

The prayer of the Eucharist is the prayer that reminds us that if we are to be the Body of Christ, then we are to suffer the fate of Christ – we are to be broken that we might be shared…

…We too must be taken, blessed, broken, and shared. We must somehow stop offering ourselves in prayer and begin offering ourselves as prayer…

…But it is rare to hear anyone pray to be broken. We pretty much pray to be chosen and blessed and then press right on ahead to the part about being shared; that is where the glory would seem to be, and it is certainly what seems right for us chosen ones…

…I am convinced that there is a connection in there somewhere as to how little, it often seems, we are truly shared. We are not meant to be taken, blessed, and multiplied. We are meant to be taken, blessed, and broken. “It is not the religious act that makes the Christian,” wrote Bonhoeffer in his prison cell, “but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.”

It is our brokenness, perhaps even our willingness to be broken, that holds the key to whatever it is we have to share…

…Frederick Buechner once said, “To be a writer, one must be a good steward of their pain.” I think that is true as well for those who would pray. To be such a steward creates the possibility that others might be healed by your witness to such a thing, that others might see the mercies granted to you in your suffering as evidence of the compassion of God for those who are broken. This gift of our brokenness is often the only gift that we can give or receive with any real honesty and with any real hope and with any real power. We do not demonstrate our faith when we live in the light, we show our faith when we live in the dark.

To embrace one’s brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one’s healing, and then that one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed. To avoid one’s brokenness is to turn one’s back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another. It is to turn one’s back on another, one for whom you just might be the Christ, one for whom you might, even if just for a moment, become the Body and Blood… (various pages, chapter 3, Living Prayer)

I don’t know, in fact, I couldn’t even begin to guess at what the purpose of the brokenness that I have experienced this year will be. I do know that Benson’s words resonate deeply within my soul as I think about the year I have experienced, and as I pray for the redeeming hand of God to be present amidst that.

It is the essential pattern of the Eucharist – taken, blessed, broken, and shared – and Benson is right. I don’t think any one of us would has as our first inclination to invite brokenness, but I pray that because of the brokenness I’ve experienced I will be shared, and healing and redemption will come.