| Ecce nunc benedicite Dominum, omnes servi Domini, qui statis in domo Domini, in atriis domus Dei nostri. In noctibus extollite manus vestras in sancta, et benedicite Dominum. Benedicat te Dominus ex Sion, qui fecit caelum et terram. | Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord In the courts of the house of our God. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary by night, and bless the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion. who made heaven and earth . |
Two aspects of Psalm 133 particularly arrest me. The first is its insistence upon praise:
Ecce nunc benedicite Dominum, omnes servi Domini.
Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord.
The second is its final line:
Qui fecit caelum et terram.
Who made heaven and earth.
The phrase caelum et terram signifies more than two separate regions. It embraces the wholeness of existence. Consciousness is our awareness of that wholeness—and also the brief time granted to us in which we may respond to it. Psalm 6 asks what praise can come from the grave: in inferno autem quis confitebitur tibi? Praise belongs to the living because only the living can recognise, celebrate and give thanks.
The elevation of the Host may therefore be understood, before anything else, as an act of praise: a celebration of life. This accords with one of the central sayings attributed to Jesus:
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
To receive the Host is to affirm our commitment to life and hope. It is to acknowledge a goodness—Dominus—which permeates all things: “the Lord, the giver of life.” The act is truly one of communion: not merely communion with a church or a doctrine, but with life itself, with humanity, and with the whole order of caelum et terram.
Jesus is reported as saying:
“Do this in remembrance of me.”
The central purpose of the Last Supper was not to establish a perpetual memorial of death, but to give Jesus’ followers a symbolic act by which his life and message might remain present among them. “Do this in remembrance of me” means: remember what I have lived for; continue it; embody it. The Eucharist is not a recollection of sacrifice; it is an affirmation of life.
At the heart of that life and message lies Jesus’ command to his followers: “Love one another.” Yet this simple injunction has too often been obscured by doctrine, authority and exclusion. It transcends the differences between us and unites us as expressions of the same life upon this planet. To love one another is therefore not merely a private virtue. It is an acceptance of our responsibility to care for each other and for the world that sustains us.
As human beings, and precisely because we are animals, we are not detached observers of existence. We participate in it. We receive the world through the senses, through food, relationship, memory and consciousness; and what we receive calls forth a response. Communion is this vital interchange between reception and response.
The familiar words express it simply:
“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”
Thanksgiving does not end in passive, unresponsive gratitude. Consciousness receives the world inwardly, but seeks to return its response in physical form. Art in all its forms is one such irresistible response: the expression of our awareness of beauty, life and existence. Whether or not we possess artistic gifts, the Host is, for those who believe, the focus of that creative urge. We receive; we give thanks; and then we answer.
The deepest sequence is therefore:
life received — consciousness awakened — praise offered — communion enacted — creation answered.
That seems to me the true force of the Eucharist as I understand it.
This is not the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do I claim authority to replace one doctrine with another. I do not understand the Host as the transformed body of Jesus or the Eucharist as the renewed presentation of his sacrifice. What matters is not my interpretation but the words attributed to Jesus himself: “Do this in remembrance of me”; “Love one another”; “I came that they may have life.” Understood in that light, the Host gives physical form to thanksgiving: an affirmation of life, communion with others, and commitment to the love and care that Jesus taught.
