Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, bishop and doctor of the Church

Gathering in Cincinnati
for our Chapter of Mats

This month shall stand at the head of your calendar;
you shall reckon it the first month of the year.
Tell the whole community of Israel: On the tenth of this month
every one of your families must procure for itself a lamb,
one apiece for each household....


When I learned Bible stories as a child, I wanted Cecil B. Demille’s version with blood on the doorposts and the Angel of Death descending from the sky to wreak havoc on the earth. I liked the parting of the Red Sea, Yul Brynner’s glare and Charlton Heston’s smoldering gaze. If I had a question I asked, “Did that really happen?” I skipped right passed details of the Passover meal.

I meet the same foolishness in people who assure me they believe in God and pray everyday, but never go to Church. How can we remember the saving works of God without the community and its rituals? How can anyone be sure he is worshipping the same God if he refuses to eat with God’s chosen people? He has created his own God -- which might bear a passing resemblance, if anything so ridiculous can be supposed -- to the true God. It is only a half step from that kind of deism to doubt and the question, “Did that really happen?”

As I came to understand the mystery of salvation, I heard first the command of Jesus, “Do this in memory of me.” There is no memory of Jesus worthy of the name which does not break bread and share the cup.

Charles Dickens begins his novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, with the story of Seth Pickwith who assures a young man he has forgiven him but refuses to shake hands. Pickwith insists he is the very ideal of a Christian man but any casual passerby can see his blatant hypocrisy. He is a “spiritual Christian” who cannot bother with the religious gestures that bind one to the Church.  

Doing this in memory of Jesus leads us to a deeper appreciation of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. We hear the commands of Jesus at every Mass, we should eat and drink. (I am continually astonished by those who receive his precious body and idly walk by the proffered chalice. Did they not hear the dual command to eat and drink?)

Contemplating the rituals of our Mass, continually immersed in and fascinated by these mysteries, we are transformed into the very body of Christ. We become his Presence in the world. As we watch fellow Christians swept away by the seductions of secularism or the allure of Islam, even as they insist they worship "the same God," we must turn our attention ever more eagerly to the Banquet Jesus sets before us. Thus will he deliver us and our loved ones from the Egypt of I did it my way to the Promised Land of Freedom before us.