From Henri on Eucharist, and the Church

It's been a while since I shared any bits and pieces from Henri Nouwen, but I found a few good ones sitting in my inbox on my arrival home from holidays, and thought I'd take the opportunity to pass them along.

A Place of Vulnerability and Trust

When we gather around the table and eat from the same loaf and drink from the same cup, we are most vulnerable to one another. We cannot have a meal together in peace with guns hanging over our shoulders and pistols attached to our belts. When we break bread together we leave our arms - whether they are physical or mental - at the door and enter into a place of mutual vulnerability and trust.

The beauty of the Eucharist is precisely that it is the place where a vulnerable God invites vulnerable people to come together in a peaceful meal. When we break bread and give it to each other, fear vanishes and God becomes very close.

The Church, Spotless and Tainted

The Church is holy and sinful, spotless and tainted. The Church is the bride of Christ, who washed her in cleansing water and took her to himself "with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless" (Ephesians 5:26-27). The Church too is a group of sinful, confused, anguished people constantly tempted by the powers of lust and greed and always entangled in rivalry and competition.

When we say that the Church is a body, we refer not only to the holy and faultless body made Christ-like through baptism and Eucharist but also to the broken bodies of all the people who are its members. Only when we keep both these ways of thinking and speaking together can we live in the Church as true followers of Jesus.

Believing in the Church

The Church is an object of faith. In the Apostles' Creed we pray: "I believe in God, the Father, ... in Jesus Christ, his only Son º in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." We must believe in the Church! The Apostles' Creed does not say that the Church is an organization that helps us to believe in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, we are called to believe in the Church with the same faith we believe in God.

Often it seems harder to believe in the Church than to believe in God. But whenever we separate our belief in God from our belief in the Church, we become unbelievers. God has given us the Church as the place where God becomes God-with-us.

3 From Henri

Three thoughts from Henri Nouwen surrounding baptism and eucharist.

Baptism, the Way to Community

Baptism is more than a way to spiritual freedom. It also is the way to community. Baptising a person, whether child or adult, is receiving that person into the community of faith. Those who are reborn from above through baptism, and are called to live the life of sons and daughters of God, belong together as members of one spiritual family, the living body of Christ. When we baptise people, we welcome them into this family of God and offer them guidance, support, and formation, as they grow to the full maturity of the Christ-like life.

Baptism, a Call to Commitment

Baptism as a way to the freedom of the children of God and as a way to a life in community calls for a personal commitment. There is nothing magical or automatic about this sacrament. Having water poured over us while someone says, "I baptise you in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," has lasting significance when we are willing to claim and reclaim in all possible ways the spiritual truth of who we are as baptised people.

In this sense baptism is a call to parents of baptised children and to the baptised themselves to choose constantly for the light in the midst of a dark world and for life in the midst of a death-harbouring society.

Eucharist, the Sacrament of Communion

Baptism opens the door to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the sacrament through which Jesus enters into an intimate, permanent communion with us. It is the sacrament of the table. It is the sacrament of food and drink. It is the sacrament of daily nurture. While baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime event, the Eucharist can be a monthly, weekly, or even daily occurrence. Jesus gave us the Eucharist as a constant memory of his life and death. Not a memory that simply makes us think of him but a memory that makes us members of his body. That is why Jesus on the evening before he died took bread saying, "This is my Body," and took the cup saying, "This is my Blood." By eating the Body and drinking the Blood of Christ, we become one with him.

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.

Baptism and Eucharist: Spiritual Pillars

Another great thought from Henri Nouwen...

The Pillars of the Church

The two main sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, are the spiritual pillars of the Church. They are not simply instruments by which the Church exercises its ministry. They are not just means by which we become and remain members of the Church but belong to the essence of the Church. Without these sacraments there is no Church. The Church is the body of Christ fashioned by baptism and the Eucharist. When people are baptised in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and when they gather around the table of Christ and receive his Body and Blood, they become the people of God, called the Church.

When a Eucharist of Humility is Rejected

You need to read this. "When a Eucharist of Humility is Rejected." It took my breath away.