6. The Eucharist and Eternal Life (3)　 (Modified in Mar. 2020)

God granted every living thing the faculty of memorizing what they experienced according to their ability. Human beings, who ate the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and obtained knowledge, make the knowledge (the memory of knowledge) a recognition based on the memory that they actually experienced. The knowledge that one got is proved through an experience (or an experiment) and becomes a recognition. This recognition is shared by many people, and the sharing of recognition has brought about great progress and evolution to humanity. A recognition is the union of the memory of knowledge and the memory of experience. 

Eternal life is the recognition of becoming the one who lives forever. God, in order to give people this recognition, did not simply give them only the knowledge of God but arranged for their memory of the knowledge of God to be united with their memory of actual experience. He arranged for the knowledge that people had to become a recognition being backed up by their memory of actual experience, that is, looking, touching, smelling, tasting and hearing. First, God tried to give man the knowledge of becoming the one who lives forever as a fruit of a tree (cf. Genesis 3:22). Then, he intended to give people God, the one who lives forever, as a man, and finally the presence of God as bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus, that is, he planned to make people have the recognition of becoming the one who lives forever, namely eternal life, uniting the memory of knowledge and the memory of experience. 

Jesus chose some men and made them Apostles so that the Holy Spirit would produce the Eucharist into the world with their cooperation. In Genesis God took one of the ribs from man and made the rest of the man a man, closing up its place with flesh (cf. Genesis 2:21). The very memory of the place closed up with flesh is the sign of the one who co-operates with the Holy Spirit for the Eucharist to be produced. Then, God said to Adam (the man), “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19) The bread in this phrase suggests the Eucharist in the future. Those who shall eat bread in the sweat of their faces are those men who were taken out of dust of the ground, namely the New Testament priests. 

When God foretold to Adam (the man) the future New Testament priesthood in this way, he had not yet had sexual relations with Eve. God gave him this notice when he was still virgin (cf. The Estuary of Theology issue 5). From this we can see that God did not want a priest, who holds in his memory the word of God which is living by the will of the Holy Spirit to produce the Eucharist and is responsible for the body of Jesus in which God is present, to be a father at the same time because a father holds the minds of his children until they become adult and is responsible for them. However, on the other hand, for God, who ordered, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), it was a matter of course that a man becomes a father as Adam did. 

In this situation, Jesus, to realize the foretelling of Genesis, told the disciples, particularly married Apostles, “Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Matthew 19:11-12). It is clear that “those to whom it is given” in this phrase mean the male disciples, whether single or married, judging from the dialogue preceding this scene (cf. Matthew 19:3-10). Jesus said this so that the male disciples, as “those to whom it is given,” would make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, become the adopted sons of Jesus’ mother, who remained virgin throughout her life, take up her position and become the bond which makes the Holy Spirit and the Church become connected like a mother and a child. God gives the same relationship as that between the Father and the Son to the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Church, which are connected by this bond of the new priesthood (cf. To the Estuary of Theology issue 4). 

A New Testament priest, who has become the adopted child of the mother of Jesus and was imparted the authority of celebrating the Eucharist and of forgiving sins (cf. John 20:21-23), has an artery (the sacrament of the Eucharist) and a vein (the sacrament of reconciliation) like a placenta, an organ that connects a mother with her baby in her womb, and becomes a bond between the Holy Spirit and the Church which is growing up to be the body of Jesus in the body of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus, in collaboration with the Holy Spirit, the mother, nurtures “my church” (Matthew 16:18), which he, like a womb, covered with the blood and water that he shed on the cross. 

Jesus says to disciples, “When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:21-24) 

The supreme thing that a priest asks of the Father in heaven is that the bread and the wine become the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit responds to this request of the priest, the Eucharist is born, and Jesus’ word, “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice,” is fulfilled. When the priest raises the Eucharist and says the word of Jesus of the institution of the Eucharist, he is granted the living Word with the intervention of the Holy Spirit, and his “joy may be full.” Priests are granted the special gift in their Church life by the Holy Spirit and bear the role of the mother of Jesus in the mystery of the Incarnation. And just as her request became the motive of the first sign of Jesus who made the water into wine (cf. John 2:1-12), so the request of the priests becomes the motive of the Holy Spirit who, by the word of Jesus, makes the bread and wine into Jesus’ body and blood in which God is present. Just as those who knew that the water had been made wine were Jesus, the mother of Jesus and “the servants who had drawn the water” instructed by her, and the disciples, so those who know that the bread and wine were made Jesus’ body and blood in which God is present are the Holy Spirit, the priests and the people who take the Eucharist. 

In the same way that the Father in heaven had prepared the mystery of the Incarnation for the Son, Jesus has prepared the Eucharist, the new mystery of the Incarnation, so to speak, for the Holy Spirit. In the case of the mystery of the Incarnation, when the angel announced the name of Jesus as the name of the Son, this name has become revelation, and the one who was both perfectly divine and human was conceived. In the case of the new mystery of the Incarnation, so to speak, which Jesus brought about, when he called the bread and wine by the name of his body and blood, this name has become revelation, and the divine life came to dwell in them. These things which are simply man-made and without mind, come to live as Jesus’ body and blood with the word of God “I AM” dwelling in them (cf. John 8:58). God’s “I AM” is eternal life. Therefore, the Eucharist is eternal life. God’s new reality in which God and people act in combination is already beginning in the Mass. Jesus’ word, “I am leaving the world and going to the Father,” tells us it is the Holy Spirit that prepares for the fulfilment of the Passover in the kingdom of God with us. 

“I have said this to you in figures; the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures but tell you plainly of the Father. In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” (John 16:25-28) 

To be continued. 

Dec. 2019 in Hiroshima

Maria K