BROKEN AND SHARED IN THE EUCHARIST

BROKEN AND SHARED IN THE EUCHARIST

Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua

The interview of Archbishop Felix Alaba Job, the Catholic Archbishop Emeritus of Ibadan was published in the Nation Newspaper on Saturday November 3, 2012. In one of the questions, he was asked if he encountered any challenging periods in life.” The Archbishop responded: “In my life of over 74 years, I can say that I had a few ugly periods. There is the challenge of people not accepting your sincerity and of people not accepting you for who you are.” [1]

We live in a world where some people are not comfortable with excellence; a world where good, sincere, hardworking and dedicated people are perceived by others as a threat. This competitive attitude has caused a lot of calamities in the world. Herod killed the innocent children just because he heard that a new king had been born. Jealousy and greed for power often lead to egocentrism which is the worst evil in our world today. St. Paul admonished the Philippians: “There must be no competition among you, no conceit; but everybody is to be self-effacing. Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so that no body thinks of his own interest first but everybody thinks of other people’s interest instead (Philippians 2, 3-4). 

The attack on the places of worship in Nigeria and elsewhere today is not just an effort to wipe out Christianity from the face of the earth but an effort to prove the superiority of a sect and a religion to the others as if God is a private monopoly. On Sundays, faithful Christians go to Church in some part of Nigeria with a serious act of faith and hope that they may return home safely without the scourge of a bomb, while many Christians still believe that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church which Christ himself has founded on a rock (Matthew 16, 18).  Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is the priest and the victim who offers himself daily for the living and the dead under the appearances of bread and wine. He made himself the bread broken and shared and the wine poured forth and shared that we may have eternal life.

Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist in the context of the Jewish Passover which is also called the feast of unleavened bread (hag hamatzot) in the Hebrew Bible. The commandment to keep the Passover is recorded in Leviticus 23, 5. The Passover reminded the Jews of their slavery and suffering in Egypt. In every Passover, the Jews remembered their salvation history; that God was good to them, that he is still present with them and that he will abide with them in the future. The phrase, “breaking of bread” appears four times in the New Testament (Luke 24:35; Acts 2:42, 2:46, 20:7). The act of breaking is not pleasant. This indicates the sacrifice of self giving which was instituted at the Lord’s Supper and consummated on the Cross of Calvary. 

In Greek language the Lord’s Supper is called (Κυριακὸν δεῖπνον) in the sense of sharing a meal together. The Greek noun for the Eucharist is εὐχαριστία (eucharistia), meaning “thanksgiving”. St. Paul testifies to this in his first letter to the Corinthians. “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is given up for you. Do this in memory of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24). The gospel of John, recounts how Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, the prophecy of the betrayal, which set in motion the events that would lead to the cross, and his long discourse in response to some questions posed by his followers, in which he went on to speak of the importance of the unity of the disciples with him and each other (John 6). 

The name Holy Communion is derived from the Latin word “communion”, meaning “sharing in common”. This translates the Greek κοινωνία (koinōnía) as reported by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (10, 16).  The Eucharist is a Sacrament in which the species of bread and wine made from flours and grapes are outward signs of the inward grace which we experience after consecration.

Transubstantiation denotes what is changed and not an explanation of how the transformation occurs. The Church teaches that “the signs of bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ”.  The main basis for this belief is the words of Jesus himself at his Last Supper: “This is my body” … this is my blood” (Matthew 26, 26-28; Mark 14, 22-24; Luke 22, 19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25). In 1551 the Council of Trent definitively declared: “Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread  (John 6, 51), it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood”.

The Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 affirms that Jesus Christ is truly present in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine.  Pope Paul VI in his 1965 encyclical letter Mysterium fidei also affirms this. In his 1968 “Credo of the People of God”, he reiterated that Christians should genuflect to the consecrated host in the tabernacle in order to acknowledge respectfully the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

We call on all Christians not to be afraid.  In this year of faith, we pray for all those who have been killed in the process of making this offering and worship to God and to those who are afraid to go to Church on Sundays, do not let your heart be troubled (John 14, 1).  “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword (Romans 8, 35)?  God is still faithful to his promise. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46, 10)

WHAT JESUS DID FOR A TERRORIST

Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua

The character of a person is moderated by environment. This sometimes gives a limited and fixated horizon. Some people grow with manipulated ideas that cloud truth and values that could enhance life. Sometimes, people obey customs and traditions to such an extent that one wonders whether culture is a creation of the human person or the other way round.  In the past, human beings grow in cultural and religious milieus that do not tolerate questions. Some people find themselves doing unreasonable things in obedience to the customs of the land. In the past, people have died in circumstances that were dictated by the gods and deities. The story of Lesley Hazleton about Abd al-Muttalib (ca. 570 AD) is understood in this context.

Hazleton has reported on the Middle East from Jerusalem for more than a dozen years. She got this story from the writings of Ibn-Ishaq and al-Tabari. She narrated this in her book, “The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad (New York, Riverhead Books, 2013).  Abd al-Muttalib had made a vow which demanded the sacrifice of one of his ten sons to Hubal. To decide who to sacrifice, he needed to consult the totemic icon of the Quraysh tribe: the sacred stone of Hubal, which loomed alongside the Kaaba and acted as a kind of consecration stone. Hubal expressed the will of God – al-Lah, the high one, the great lord of the sanctuary, who was so remote and mysterious that he could be consulted only through intermediaries. Hubal spoke through arrows (Lesley Hazleton, page.15). There were ten arrows, each inscribed with the name of the ten sons. The arrow that pointed toward Hubal was the one marked with the name of Abd al-Muttalib’s youngest and favourite son, Abdullah.

The father was not happy and so needed another opinion. The option left was to consult a Kahin (seer). They consulted the Kahina, the priestess in the oasis of Medina. The spirits that spoke through her were those of the Khazraj. She went into her trance and thereafter asked: What was the customary amount Meccans paid in blood money, the compensation for taking a man’s life? Ten camels, they replied. Go back to your country, she said, bring out the young man and ten camels in front of your sacred stone, and cast the arrows anew. If they fall a second time against the young man, add ten more camels to your pledge and do it again. If they fall against him again, then add more camels and do it yet again. Keep adding camels in this manner until your god is satisfied and accepts the camel in lieu of the young man. They did as she had said, adding ten camels with every throw of the arrows against Abdullah. Time and again, the oracle ruled against him, finally, accepting the substitution only when one hundred camels had been offered (Lesley Hazleton, pages 17-18). This indicated the worth of the life of a person. Abd al-Muttalib celebrated the life of his son Abdullah who would latter be the father of the Prophet of Islam.

Akin to the story narrated by Lesley Hazleton, the life of every human being is so sacred that any attempt to destroy it would amount to fighting God the author of life. In Nigeria and elsewhere, millions of innocent human beings have been slaughtered and killed in the name of religion. This contradicts the very essence of God who is love, merciful and compassionate. The terrorist operation in the world today has made religion a dreaded phenomenon with an attendant question, if the concept “religion of peace” exists in practise. That the terrorists actually think they are fighting for God further justify this question. Jerry Rassamni falls into this group. He narrated his experience as an ex- militant in his book, “From Jihad to Jesus: An Ex-Militant’s journey of Faith. He was born in Liberia, West Africa, of Lebanese parents who were Druze Muslims. The Druze is a small monotheistic group that was founded out of Ismaili branch of Shi’a Islam by Al Hakim, the sixth Fatimid caliph (AD 996-1021). Even as a nominal Muslim, he grew up believing that his faith was the only way of salvation and that everyone not believing it was doomed to death and hell.

Later, his parents decided that his mother should move the children to Lebanon, their ancestral land, so that he and his siblings could attend school there (Jerry Rassamni, page 6). In Lebanon, Rassamni became a full blown militant and terrorist.  His mother found it difficult to control him and his brother.  Jerry says, “We were the product of our surroundings. Filled with hatred, we became desensitised to violence and death. I saw dead men lying on the street in pools of their own blood, no better than dogs. I saw the banality of evil that we each are capable of. I saw the dark hearts of humankind. I saw the darkness in my own soul and it was changed by the horror of it (Jerry Rassamni, page 12).  Jerry became more angry, ruthless, and fearless. He bore arms in his jihad to defend his people against the infidels”. His code name was Astro. He became addicted not to drugs but to gun powder, AK47 assault riffle, B7 (RBG) antitank, B10 mounted artillery, grenade, land mine, sniper rifle and a hand gun (Jerry Rassamni, page 9). At a point, he asked himself: “Why have we become instruments of darkness? Where did we lose our humanity? Why have we become worse than beasts in the jungle? At least beasts kill to eat, but a human kills to satisfy his hatred and thirst for blood” (Jerry Rassamni, page 12).

His mother had to take him away from Lebanon. While in Houston, Texas, he met Jennifer who convinced him to attend Bible lessons even if he would not want to be a Christian. He accepted but with the hope of using the opportunity to find errors in the Bible to use against Christians. The truth he encountered rather changed his orientation to life. He encountered the truth that Jesus is the true peace of the world. Jesus demonstrated his perfect and unconditional love by not raising arms or killing any single human being. Even as a Muslim, Rassamni was not exposed to the true Islam that promotes peace. The only Islam he knew was a call to fight and become a martyr. He discovered haven read the Bible that most people take inherited beliefs at face-value and allow them to form who they are” (Jerry Rassamni, page 2).  For the militant Rassamni, it was either you accept Islam or you die. He said, “I could have lived and died as a slave to ideas I had cherished much of my life, if, like Pilate, I had not taken the time to look beneath the surface of those beliefs. Thankfully, I chose to examine the evidence in search of the truth.”  

This search for truth is what the world today needs in dialogue. This search should not be limited only to the sacred books of our religion. We need to be objective and rational in all forms of dialogue that must point to the value and dignity of the human person. Like Jerry Rassamni, we need the courage to think freely, unencumbered by our traditions and idealism. He confessed: “What I saw changed me forever. I now know that I was once deceived into looking within for answers and redemption, but I am now redeemed into looking at Him who formed me and who knew me before He laid the foundation of the world” (Jerry Rassamni, page 3). 

Fr. Prof. Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua is the Director of Mission and Dialogue of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Abuja and Consultor of the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims (C.R.R.M), Vatican City

 

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[1] The Nation Newspaper, (November 3, 2012) p. 20