Transubstantiation.
Big word.
The word goes back
to medieval theology and the term "substance," which in turn went
back to Aristotle. The "substance" of a thing is that which makes the
thing what it is, regardless of the trappings which surround the thing (the
trappings were called "accidents").
The substance of a
table is tableness. The accidents are the color of the table, the number of
legs it has, its weight, its use, what kind of a top it has, and so on.
The medieval
theologians used those terms to describe the Eucharist. The substance of the
Eucharist is the person of Jesus Christ. The accidents are his body, but could
also be the accidents of bread: its color, texture, and so on.
I don't want to
scrap that theology. Not just because I would get excommunicated if I did, but
because we no longer think in terms of substance and accidents. Those terms no
longer speak to people today.
The
story of an idea
I got to where I
am today by reflecting on the scientific belief that most of the cells in the
human body get replaced regularly. Only a relatively small number of cells that
were in my body a year ago are still there. That caused me to ask, "then
who am I?" I came up with the idea that I am really the history of my
cells, and of the molecules and atoms that have made up my cells. A history is
a type of story. I am the story built on what has been done by the cells in my
body during the time they were part of me. Once they leave me, they are no
longer part of my story, but my story
remains.
A story, of
course, requires a story-teller. I am one of my story-tellers, but others have
been telling my story ever since I was conceived. Others are still telling my
story. We know from psychology that we are often not the best judge of how our
stories should be told. We know that others can tell our stories in ways that
are harmful to us, or they can tell our stories in ways that build us up.
A
digression on junk
An heirloom is
junk with a story attached. Once a physical object loses its story, it becomes
junk. I have a tiny ivory emblem owned by my grandfather, who was a cooper, a
barrel-maker. The ivory object was the symbol for the craftsmen who made
barrels. I know what that little piece of ivory means. It has a story. If I
discard the emblem, it will lose that story. Someone else may attach a
different story to it--they may not know that there was an occupation called
"cooper," and that the ivory is a symbol of that occupation--but that
story is not the story that makes it important to me.
Junk goes to the
landfill. The valley of Gehenna was Jerusalem's landfill. So when I read in
Matthew 10 that I should fear the one who could cast me into Gehenna, I thought
of Gehenna as the place where my story would be forgotten.
The
Last Supper
Jesus took bread
and wine and said "This is my body, this is my blood." He was
attaching his story to bread and wine. That is not so different from people
attaching my story to the particular set of cells that make up my body. But
Jesus was doing more than that. He was saying that when his followers gathered,
and used bread and wine that way, he became part of their stories. They became
part of him. We are all part of the story of Jesus.
To be a Christian
means to accept your own personal story as the story of Jesus, death and
resurrection included.
So when I take the
host and the wine at Mass and repeat the words of Jesus, I see those physical
things as tied to the story of Jesus every bit as much as his story was
attached to his physical body two thousand years ago. That way of thinking
about the Eucharist is more meaningful to me than the language of substances
and accidents.
Idols
I could not take
this line of thinking very far without being faced with the phenomenon of
idols. An idol is a physical object with a story attached. It is not a huge
leap to think of a particular image as having a story that could be threatening
to me, or beneficial to me, and therefore that I need to take seriously. The
issue is, what kind of story.
There are
religious movements that forbid the use of images for religious purposes. In
Christianity they were called "iconoclasts"--icon smashers. I think
Islam has a similar prohibition. Some of the Protestant reformers accused
Catholics of worshipping idols because we had statues. The issue is, what kind
of story is linked to the object.
This is all pretty
poetic. I am too far along in life to get tangled in philosophical speculation
and try to defend the ideas I just presented. Look at the ideas as poetry. The
label "poetic" covers a multitude of sins.
I confess that I
have never read Teilhard de Chardin. I was too much of a dutiful Catholic, and
the Pope said his writing was dangerous. But the little I knew of what he wrote
led me to conclude that he was mostly writing poetry with scientific language.
Maybe that is all we can do in a scientific age.
My soul is my
story. I tell my story. You tell my story. God tells my story. When my cells
give out, God will remember my story, and will tell it some day in the most
loving way possible--the Last Judgment. The Apostles Creed has the phrase
"the resurrection of the body." That suggests that some day God will
attach my story to another set of cells. The book of Revelation describes
heaven as a city. That emphasizes the belief that we are all in this with other
people. I would like to think of heaven as this present beautiful world, and
all of us in it together. Since that is hard to visualize, perhaps those
theorists have it at least partly right when they describe heaven as a single
"now," without time, a resting in the reality of God and others in a
perpetual instantaneous moment.
But if my body is
resurrected, there will have to be time and space. And when you say time and
space, you say mountains and streams and birds and fish and animals. Otherwise
what kind of fun would it be? And if Scripture tells us anything, it tells us
that eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love
God. Surely heaven will include beagles.
