Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, April 21, 2011

[ Maundy Thursday {Christian} ]

[First Day of Ridvan {Baha'i} ]

[ 2nd day of Pesach/Passover {Jewish} ]

O God, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted
the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may
receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who
in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life …

Collect (“gathering prayer”) for Maundy Thursday
[The solemn Feast of the Institution of the Holy Eucharist]


“In remembrance”. How insipid. “Remembering” can be powerful; but that was not, I think, what Jesus was doing in this profound Myth about the formation and nourishment of the Beloved Community. I don’t think that a simple “remembering” was how the early followers of the Way of Jesus understood it.

Think of the word as “re-member”. To pull back, to “reassemble” into our Present and our Consciousness the living presence of Life, which we call God.

And where does the Divine Presence “re-assemble”? It reassembles in us! When I receive the Bread and Wine, the symbolic and real Body and Blood of Jesus, at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, I feel the texture of the bread in my mouth, and, even more, I experience the fire of the wine spreading down my throat and into the blood vessels of my chest. My brain is aware that God is filling me ~ that my Being is being renewed with the Power of Aliveness. It is indeed a “Holy Communion” ~ I feel myself absorbed into Existence, into the Universe.

I am also then aware that I am to be the vessel of that Power in the World. That the whole Beloved Community is that vessel. That we are all to pour Love into the World. That we are each a “Christ”, a balm of healing and of peace.

Everyone has sacraments. For John Muir, the Sierra Club and lover of Nature, who was born on this date in 1838, Nature “re-membered” God. I think we all need sacraments, or we slowly die to Life.

I think we all metaphorically must “Eat this bread, Drink this wine” if we would Live.

Brian+