“Body of Christ”
Speaking of Jesus…I just got round last night to The Tablet’s fat Christmas issue, which had many fine offerings, as usual, but an especially good review by Eamon Duffy of Timothy Radcliffe’s book on the Eucharist, “Why Go to Church?” I am a fan of Radcliffe’s writing, and had heard good things about the book (as well as the fact that it was written at the invitation of Rowan Williams). But Duffy’s closer sealed the deal for me:
This is a serious but never a solemn book: not the least of its joys is the gallery of Dominican eccentrics who punctuate its pages. They include the learned but famously irritable Père Regemay, whom Radcliffe overheard in a Paris common room shouting angrily at one of his brethren, “Since I began to practise yoga I am CALM, I am CALM”. Best of all is the ancient Oxford lay brother who, when Radcliffe offered him Communion with the usual words, “The Body of Christ”, replied, simply, witheringly and with the accumulated wisdom of a long life lived eucharistically: “I know”.
Not surprisingly, priests always seem to have unfortunate stories about odd responses to offering the Body of Christ. They usually run along the lines of “Gee, thanks,” though I’m sure our clerical and/or eucharistic ministering community here has others. But as far as unorthodox goes, “I know” is a new favorite. And not so unorthodox.
I’ve heard lots of different “translations” of “Amen” — when it comes up in Deuteronomy my Bible footnotes it as “certainly” or “truly.” So “I know” doesn’t seem beyond the pale!
The reply “I know” is surely addressed to the minister, who has just said “the Body of Christ”, and suggests that for this communicant the words supply information that is superfluous. I would be inclined to take it that the minister’s words are not meant to inform the ignorant but rather to affirm the mystery of the Real Presence, and then with the “Amen” the recipient joins in the affirmation.
I keep imagining “I know!” in the voice of my six-year-old nephew, who loves learning about animals and other kid-friendly science topics. He has these illustrated encyclopedias he’ll ask me to read to him, and he always listens very carefully for new information. But if I read something he’s already learned, he takes it as a personal insult. I’ll read, “…Only male lions have manes,” and he’ll say, “I know!!”
Duffy writes:
“So Radcliffe persuasively (and piquantly) uses Pope Benedict’s exegesis of Peter’s confession after the fish breakfast in Galilee to highlight the incongruity of refusing Communion to men and women in irregular marriages or in gay relationships: “if there is a place for Peter … then there is a place for us all”.
But Peter confessed before.
There is something a bit dainty about Fr. Radliffe’s eschewing mention of the Real Presence, one of the great difficulties with the Anglican communion. It’s like saying “let’s don’t worry about serious things”.
I agree completely with Joseph Gannon. The humor of the exchange lies right there, in the switch between a mode of speaking that is acclamatory and a response uttered in a didactic, intellectual mode. Part of the fun of this perception of incongruity is surely that it gives us a chance to laugh at the way learned communities may sometimes take their usual ways of thinking more seriously than they should.
One of my favorite real-life parish stories, from a place where I used to work, also concerns an unexpected response on the communion line. It was Ash Wednesday, and the church was packed. One woman came forward on the communion line, and when presented with the Body of Christ responded indignantly: “What’s this?? I came for ashes!!”
“Thanks” is rather common at a certain pilgrimage site where I’ve helped with Communion.
Once a guy I know, who must have heard a lecture or read something in a magazine, translated, “Yes, I do believe.” I stared him down, he smirked, I stared, he wavered, I said, “Could you please say that in Aramaic?” He did.
Like Peter, he repented.
“It’s like saying ‘let’s don’t worry about serious things.’”
Up until about the 5th century, this attitude was true of Christians. They believed the consecrated bread and wine were the body and blood of Jesus, but they didn’t concern themselves with (as one observer has noted) the “how.”
Once philosophers and theologians began focusing on the “how,” we began to see the inadequacy of trying to “prove” the Real Presence.
As a Christian, I believe. As a believer, I don’t care how.