by Father Robert Lauder
Lately I have been thinking a great deal about the Eucharist. It is, of course, one of the great mysteries taught and celebrated in the Catholic Church.
Celebrating the Eucharist devoutly and intelligently is a marvelous way to reach some of the most important truths about God and about ourselves.
Our desire for truth may be the strongest desire we have. My guess is that many of us, because we are pragmatic and practical Americans, may not immediately or easily realize how important truth is in our lives. We may have the opinion that thinking about truth is a speculative activity. Perhaps it is too academic. Perhaps it is an activity that should be reserved for the classroom.
Knowledge Seekers
I disagree with that opinion. How could we live without truth? To be human is to be always asking questions. We cannot stop asking questions. As you are reading these words, you may be asking, “Is Father Lauder right? Is it true that we cannot stop asking questions?”
We might hear some beautiful story, but immediately we want to know if it is true. In our relationships with others, we want to get beyond the appearance of people and come to know what they are really like. We want to know the true meaning of the great classics of literature, the stage and the screen. We want our knowledge of ourselves to be genuine knowledge and not self-deception.
Some truths, perhaps the most important truths, are not easy to reach. It’s as though there is a price tag on a truth. If we are not willing to pay the price to make the commitment, to reflect as honestly and deeply as we can, then we may have to live without that truth. Besides our desire for truth, we have many other desires, and these sometimes conflict with our desire for truth.
Seeking Refuge in Illusions
In his book, “What Is God?: How To Think About the Divine” (New York: Paulist Press, 1986, pp. 143, $14.95), John Haught reflects on why we often seek refuge in illusions instead of the truth. He writes the following:
“Perhaps the reason is that the desire for truth is not the only passion governing our conscious and instinctive lives. Only a little reflection is needed to remind us that we are composed of a morass of drives, desires, longings, cravings, wishes and hopes. Curiously the inhabitants of the jungle of desires are often in conflict with one another. One part of us might want sensual gratification, another security, another power, another meaning, another approval. Furthermore, one desire may be superimposed upon another, so that their disentanglement seems nearly impossible. It is often hard to determine which of the desires is dominant or to which of our various inclinations we should entrust the course of our lives. … Perhaps a serious pursuit of truth is one of the last of our desires to be accepted as a dynamic force in our lives because there is so much competition from other urges that are quite content to live with illusions.” (pp. 92-93)
Some of the great mysteries that confront us in our lives are the mystery of freedom, the mystery of love, the mystery of death and the mystery of God. A celebration of the Eucharist includes all of those mysteries, and they are presented and confronted within the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection and the mystery of God’s love for us.
If we celebrate the Eucharist intelligently and devoutly, we have an opportunity to discover or to delve more deeply into our identity and into God’s identity. At the beginning of every Eucharist, we admit publicly that we are sinners, that we have failed in the past. This confession is made before the entire community. We can face the most unattractive truths about ourselves because within the celebration of a Eucharist, we are reminded of God’s infinite and unconditional love for us.
Unconditional Love
A Eucharist can remind us and strongly impress upon us that we do not have to win God’s love, earn or merit God’s love or be worthy of God’s love. When we are living as Christians and successfully avoiding temptations to sin, God loves us unconditionally. When we are surrendering to temptations and failing in our obligations as followers of Christ, God loves us unconditionally There are no “ifs” tied to God’s love – no conditions or requirements that we have to fulfill in order to be loved by God.
The love that God has for us is pure gift. We are called to respond to the gift, but whether we respond or not, God still loves us.
Father Robert Lauder, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, writes a weekly column for the Catholic Press.