Published in four parts in Spirituality
Vol. 8, November / December 2002; Vol. 9, January / February 2003;
Vol. 9, March / April 2003; Vol. 9, May / June 2003

Listening to the Wind in the Wheat

A Meditation on the Eucharist
[Luke 9:11-17]

Sometimes good theology is as hard to come by as a good meal. But like a fish fry originally planned for a dozen that ends up feeding over 5,000 with enough leftovers for the next day’s chowder, so too, good theology often shows up in strange places and under unusual circumstances. Antoine de Saint Exupery’s classic, The Little Prince, is just such a place where surprisingly we find delectable bites of wisdom that tease a palate dulled by being served the same old theological fare when it comes to the eucharist. Perhaps these morsels will tease our hearts as well.

You might recall that the little prince comes from a tiny planet no bigger than a house. There he lives all alone, except for three knee-high volcanoes and one beautiful but rather proud rose. It is due to his frustration with this rose that the little prince sets off on his interplanetary travels, which eventually bring him to earth. Toward the end of the story the little prince meets up with a very foxy fox. The fox, being a fox, and thus made up of equal parts wildness and wisdom, proves himself to be not only a very good fox, but of all things a very decent sacramental theologian as well.

My aim in this article is to use the sly but sagacious words of our furry philosopher as a catalyst for a fresh look at matters significant but so familiar as to have become impotent and incidental. By doing so I hope to shift our attention away from what happens to the bread and wine at eucharist and instead ask what happens to us, to you and to me who share the bread and pass the cup? Or what do we mean by sharing in the bread and wine? And what happens to the world because we have broken bread and passed the cup? I realize the risk and irony involved—viewing a Christian mystery of such ultimate consequence through the lens of a seemingly puerile tale. But I believe it will help challenge our childish notions and anemic praxis of the sacrament we too casually call the source and summit of our faith (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, n.10). I will use four snippets from this simple fairy tale in the hope of triggering a deeper reflection on and a fuller response to the sacrament of eucharist.

Establishing Ties

The first lesson is that eucharist calls us to establish ties.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”
“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”
“. . . What does that mean— `tame’?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties . . . To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”
“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me—like that—in the grass . . . and you will say nothing . . . But you will sit a little closer to me every day. . .”

From the moment of our conception, deep connections exist between all of creation and us. Modern scientific study indicates that the very universe we are born into has been mysteriously born into us as well. Furthermore, by virtue of our humanity we share ties with all people. Both in our blessedness and in our brokenness we partake in the universal human condition. More specifically, as Christians we establish ties with the community called Church through the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and eucharist. These sacraments commission us to establish ties with the orphan and the widow, the infirm and the aged, the neglected and the abused, the lonely and the forgotten, the rejected and exploited, the discarded and the devalued. By its very nature the Church necessarily entails relationship and connection. Yet like children suspicious of strangers or adults intimidated by diversity and difference, we keep our distance from one another, forming opinions or prejudices or enemies. Where will we find the patience, the courage, and the suffering love to sit closer to each other every day, to rile up our tamed hearts and to tame our wild misgivings so that we can tame each other in the realm of companionship?

In an unparalleled way, it is in the eucharist that all the ties mentioned above are established, commissioned, and confirmed forever. The more deeply we discover the mystery of the eucharist, the more it connects us to the smallest intricacies and the grandest mysteries of the universe. The more truly we embody the mission of the eucharist, the more it unites us to each unique human person throughout the world, and reveals our common story of pain and promise, memory and expectation. The more fully we live the meaning of the eucharist, the more it joins us to others yearning for the meaning and hope that resides within the redemptive plot of this divine-human drama.

Catholics talk colloquially about “going to communion.” But communion is not something we line up for and “go to.” By communion we do not mean merely the consecrated bread and wine. Nor does it refer to God per se. That Jesus is present in the eucharist does not mean communion automatically happens. Jesus is present in the eucharist so that communion will happen. Communion is the actíon de grace the community creates in response to and with God. By responding gratefully to the gratuitous love of God made present in the body and blood of Christ, we create not an exclusive club, or a private organization, but rather a holy communion. This is the heart of eucharist. Holy Communion involves cooperating with the movement of grace so that we come-into-union with ourselves, our neighbor, the created world, and the hope of God. For this reason, it would greatly benefit our understanding and practice of eucharist if we talked less about going to communion and did more actual communing. It is easy for us to “line up” and “go to communion” while neglecting to do the actual work of communing to which the eucharist calls us and for which it commissions us. The eucharistic mandate, “Do this in memory of me,” is a call to prophetic imagination, to move away from abstraction or parochialism toward concrete acts of establishing ties with others and expanding our small circle of friends.

The eucharistic life is not one of rugged individualism or of private piety. At the communion table no one eats alone. As the Jesuit mystic and scientist, Pierre de Chardin, makes clear so eloquently in his meditation “The Mass on the World,” there is no such thing as a private Mass. The eucharistic life is a life of interdependence and interconnectedness. By living it we discover our need of one another, learn to appreciate the absolute uniqueness of each person, establish eternal ties, and practice the exchange of love on earth as it is in heaven.

Grateful Remembrance

The second lesson is that eucharist invites grateful remembrance.

“If you tame me,” said the fox to the little prince, “it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all others
. . . Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields yonder? . . . You have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat. . .”

From our Jewish forebears Christians inherit the conviction that ours is a God who forever keeps us in mind. Should God forget humankind even for a fleeting moment, we would cease to exist. Thus, God’s intimate and personal care is contained within the notion of divine memory. Isaiah records the seriousness of God’s commitment to remember God’s people:

Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name. (Isaiah 49:15-16a)

The idea of God’s remembrance of us is so fundamental to the nature of God that the German mystic, Angelus Silesius, dared to turn the above theological maxim on its head and said: “If God ceased to think of me [God] would cease to exist.” The Christian understanding of eucharist is dynamically related to the experience of grateful remembrance. The God we re-member ourselves to is the God who never stops remembering us. In particular, the Christian notion of memory is rooted in the belief that God’s most vivid act of remembrance is Jesus himself. Jesus is the string of hesed (steadfast love) tied tightly around the thumb of God and we are God’s dearest memory. In Jesus, God does not simply call us to mind, but enters into our lives as personal involvement and loving concern. The incarnation, the supreme act of divine remembrance and solidarity, reminds us of our sacred origin and the need to be connected to our life source (one possible meaning of the word religion). Thus, eucharist (Greek, thanksgiving), is not merely a memory-evoking event, but also an event that evokes humility and gratitude in those who participate wholeheartedly in it.

For Catholic Christians the consecrated bread is the golden grain that brings us out of our private burrows, brings us back the thought of Jesus and one another, and elicits gratefulness. But as we listen deeply to the “wind in the wheat,” to God’s Spirit (ruah) present in the bread and moving in our lives, the eucharist does not merely bring us back the thought of Jesus. It brings the life and ruah of Jesus forward to us. Inherent in the eucharist is the invitation and expectation to re-member ourselves to Jesus. In particular to recall the saving act of Christ’s dying and rising. This act of remembrance derived from the Hebrew notion of zikkaron, and the equivalent Greek term anamnesis, signifies ‘active remembrance.’ What we celebrate in the eucharist is not nostalgia. It is not merely reminiscing about the past. Intentional engagement on the part of those remembering involves a movement not simply from the present to the past, but also from the present to the future. This is why eucharist is at once a celebration and an ethical action. It is a remembrance and a requirement, a divine donation and a human obligation. Anamnesis involves re-connecting ourselves to a person and an event in such a way that the presence of that person and the power of that past event are unleashed into our immediate situation, impacting the present and altering the future. A Hassidic tale recounted by Martin Buber illustrates this more poignantly:

My grandfather was paralyzed. Once he was asked to tell a story about his teacher and he told how the Holy Baal Shem Tov used to jump and dance when he was praying. My grandfather stood up while he was telling the story and the story carried him away so much that he had to jump and dance to show how the master had done it. From that moment, he was healed. This is how stories ought to be told.

The eucharistic action always moves us “back to the future.” Through words, symbols, and gestures, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church‘s anamnestic ritual transports a past event into the present moment whereupon the community is commanded to translate into action here and now the meaning of that original event. By joining Jesus in the dance of communion, we show how the master did it. But the mandatum, “Do this in remembrance of me“ recommends neither mimicry nor private ecstasy. By telling the story, by putting it into action and by giving ourselves entirely to its movement, we are carried away not into ethereal rapture but into gracefully grounded lives patterned after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The challenge is to transpose it into our own unique circumstances and life situations, attentive to our particular passions, talents, and temperaments and responsive especially to the pressing needs in our communities and world. To dance the dance of eucharist is to experience and then imaginatively extend the liberating presence of Christ in our historical place and time. When communities “tell” eucharist as it “ought to be told” (and can it be told any better way than by jumping and dancing?), the result is always the same: healing and hope, new freedom and deep faith, justice and forgiveness, quiet assurance and jubilant laughter, self-giving love and communal creativity.

A New Responsibility

When we apply the fox’s next lesson to our discussion it reminds us that eucharist calls us to a new responsibility.

“[Humans] have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible forever, for what you have tamed.”

Anamnesis is the antidote to the amnesia that comes with ingratitude, self-absorption, indifference, and greed. As a defining and redefining community ritual, it acts as a “dangerous memory” and antidote to the plethora of isms that poison our world: materialism, sexism, racism, classism, clericalism, militarism, consumerism, and nationalism to name only the most obvious and deadly. But the antidote comes not as a magic pill shaped like a host, but rather as a new and radical way to live, as a curriculum vitae to be practiced. By understanding remembrance in this way, eucharist can never be reduced to “my daily medicine” or “my weekly shot in the arm” nor turned into a private adoration session between “me-and-Jesus.” It can never be diminished merely to thinking kind thoughts about others or to pitying people or even to praying for them.

Simply put, eucharist means more than giving thanks. Eucharist is what we do with our gratefulness. The most convincing testament to the transformation of the bread and wine into the real presence of Jesus are persons and communities transfigured into the healing presence of Christ. That the ineffable God becomes present in the humble stuff of bread and wine is not a scientifically verifiable point. But human lives radically changed and generously lived, and communities characterized by compassionate care are difficult to deny. The greatest witness to this sacramentum is that the mystery we partake of we become for the sake of the world through deeds of kindness, works of mercy, and acts of justice.

To partake in eucharist is to realize that something is required of us. Eucharist calls us not only to establish and expand our ties and to give thanks, but more so to be responsible to all life forms connected by “the blessed ties that bind.” Today when we hear so much about the unhealthiness of co-dependency, of taking care of rather than caring for persons, what does it mean to be responsible for others? It means, in response to Cain’s rhetorical question, that indeed we are our brother’s and our sister’s keepers. No, we are not self-appointed wardens of anyone’s life, but as members of one another in Christ, we are living reminders of one another’s innate dignity, guardian’s of each other’s well being, and signs of God’s liberating and loving care. So rather than turn and go the other way, eucharist calls us to broaden our notion of neighbor, to incarnate an ethic of caritas, and to respond with the same passionate concern that God poured out for us in Jesus. Eucharist demands from us more than quiet reflection and private adoration. It must be food for thought and action.

The paradox of the Mass is that it is an action both of condensation and expansion. It moves predictably yet furtively toward that point of convergence–the table–where if we dare to make ourselves available to God, the mystery and manners of eucharist will expand in and spread out from us. The pulse-like movement of the eucharistic liturgy beats like a heart in the body of Christ. It begins with a prayerful communal contraction and leads to an ecclesial evangelical expansion. Coming together in gratefulness we are compelled to stretch out in compassion. The result will be a feeding frenzy, a meals on wheels, a scattering of hospitality, a perfusion of passionate care, forgiveness, and justice. To commit one’s life to communing is to go from the Table of Life and from the place of worship, dedicated to creating with God and each other “the beloved community,” a blessed harmony between all people and all creation.

After all, the eucharist is not our private possession. It is not solely or even primarily for the Church. Eucharist is for the transformation of the world in and through the Church. It is intended to bring all into the loving embrace of God. Jesus is not interested in feeding only his disciples, but the hungry multitude, the human mishmash and hodgepodge that hound him and lean into his every word in the hope of finding real food, real drink, real solace, and real life. Indeed, the radical nature of the eucharist is seen precisely in the extent to which Jesus’ meal-practices contradict the base human tendency toward parochial, exclusive, elitist, bigoted, and haughty living. Jesus outrages the religious leaders of his day, as he offends his own disciples’ provincialism, by disregarding the rigid lines of judgment they have drawn which let a chosen few in while keeping an abundant number out. For Jesus, hunger is the only ticket necessary.

Our willingness to enter into the broken places of our world is deepened by our commitment to enter more fully into the radical hospitality and generosity of the eucharist. As Christ draws near to us, so too we draw near to others. This is compassion. And for those who identify themselves by the name of Jesus, it is not an option. It is an obligation. We become compassionate by sitting a little closer to each other every day: to the lonely extrovert, the friendless widower, the alienated adolescent, the exhausted single parent, the busy business person, the taken-for-granted priest, the different, the diffident, the driven, and the destitute, one and all. As we sit a little closer to each other every day, we find ourselves sitting a little closer to God as well.

What is Essential?

The final lesson is that eucharist helps us to see what is essential.

As the little prince and the fox were about to say goodbye the fox said,
“Here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Eucharist teaches us to see and act with the heart. Only the heart receives the riches the eucharist holds, and only over time by entering into the mystery which it simultaneously conceals and reveals. The secret and hidden wisdom contained therein is not discovered by theological investigation or cerebral computation. Nor does it happen all at once in a rapturous flash. Inductively, the eucharist has nothing to teach us. It is not a doctrine to be adhered to, but a secret to be discovered. It is not a lesson to be learned, but a life to be lived. What we discover comes not by “getting” or “receiving” it, but rather by making our own the dramatic action that the eucharist itself is. The psalmist sings, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord,” suggesting that what is essential is recognized and learned only in and through experience. Knowledge that is not fashioned in the heart is merely information. Knowledge that is fired and shaped in the smithy of the heart is wisdom. And the wisdom of God, which is invisible to the eye and is the insight of the eucharist, is the impetus to translate the passion of Christ into the compassion of God, to live from the inside out.

Eucharist reveals to us what is essential and what to aspire to. The fourfold action of taking, blessing, breaking, and sharing rouses our hearts to the ideals we are called to embody. Participating in it enables us to distinguish what is significant from what is trivial, what is life-giving from what is parasitical, what is worth giving our lives to from what is unworthy of that self-gift, and what is eternal from what is fleeting. (Cf. Philippians 4:8-9) It is the pattern that characterizes Jesus’ life. We are invited and commanded to make it the movement of ours as well.

Awakening to the gratuitousness of God, the eucharist moves us to bless God by activating the gifts we have been given on behalf of all other creatures and all other people. “Taking” and “blessing” oblige us to participate in the life of God by “breaking” and “sharing.” Jesus identifies himself with the bread, not to glorify brokenness but rather to put an end to all human breakage and the wounding of creation. In this sense we see that reconciliation is central to the meaning and mission of eucharist. God reconciles the world to God’s self in Jesus. To partake of Jesus in the eucharist is to resist and counter all divisions that are of human making. We promise to allow God to bring together all the disparate pieces of our own fragmented lives. We commit to move a little closer every day to people we find it easy to avoid, ignore, reject or condemn. We reach out to those from whom we might be estranged and confront anyone or any system that breaks, alienates, or dehumanizes persons. Through compassionate actions we join ourselves to the care of creation which like us groans for wholeness and the fullness of redemption (Romans 8:23). Like the bread, we break our lives in order to share them with others. Mysteriously, as we share our lives, we gather all the broken pieces into the one basket of God’s love.

When we come to the table of life, when we listen and respond to the wind in the wheat, we are active participants, not passive recipients. What we say “Amen” to is not a thing. What we say “Amen” to is not a sacrament, if by that we have in mind a static object, even if that object is considered God. What we say “Amen” to is not a doctrine. It is rather a disturbing mystery, a parabolic action, a saving event, a “terrible beauty,” the divine dance embodied and offered to us by the person of Christ. When we say “Amen” to “the body of Christ,” we say yes to Jesus’ command: You give them something to eat. When we say “Amen” to the “blood of Christ,” we say yes to Jesus’ command: Do this in memory of me. When the fourfold action of the eucharist becomes the internal logic and the natural flow of our life, when it becomes the defining pattern of the Church’s mission, the result will be the reign and will of God on earth as it is in heaven.

DANIEL J. MILLER, Ph.D. © 2002-03