Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jean-Philippe Marceau
But Fr. Brent says that initially, this idea comes off as foreign to
people. It takes time to explain and make it viable for them. We
just seem too far removed in space and time from Christ to
possibly share in His suffering in a tangible way. Sure, one can
claim that Christ endured all possible kinds of sufferings in
Palestine two millennia ago, and that in that sense Christ suffered
like us. But how could that really relate ontologically to us in, say,
North America in the 21st Century?
Head-Body Symbolism
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Let me pause to make clear just how incredible this seemingly
mundane fact is. Our head mediates between our bodies, spread in
space and time, and our minds, which live in a more abstract
space. Somehow, our head mediates between the physical and the
conceptual. Let me also state that we don’t need to go further than
this for the purposes of this article. No need to debate the exact
relationship between mind and matter. The point is that the head
mediates between concrete space-time and abstract patterns,
between the physical and the mental, between our members and
our mind.
We can also see this pattern in a family. Say the head of the family
is the father. In that setting, you can see that the father will gather
the individual and separate members of the family into the more
abstract group of the family itself. Instead of having just a child
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there, another child over there, and the parents elsewhere, all
doing their own separate thing, the head of the family gathers them
into the overarching pattern of the family. Now the family will
gather to eat dinner, will go to church on Sundays, will listen to
this child’s piano recital on this date, and so on. Those are abstract
family-level patterns that unfold concretely in the space and time
of the family members through the father.
his parish, the priest adjusts his prayers and homilies of the weekly
mass to keep the parish together under the story of Christ.
Through the weekly and yearly cycles of the Church, the priest
mediates between his concrete parishioners and their abstract
common story under Christ.
Before moving on to Christ and the Church, let us take stock of the
different spatio-temporal layers we just went through. The cellular
is the lowest scale we examined. In a cell, the various chemical
reactions occuring in nanoseconds over the cell are gathered into
higher genetic patterns by the nucleus. In a body, the various
interactions happening in microseconds over the different cells are
gathered into the higher pattern of mind by the head. In a family,
the various individual interactions taking minutes or days are
gathered into the pattern of the family by the father. In a parish,
the different families are gathered together into the higher patterns
of a parish by the priest.
The Christian claim is that Christ takes all of this to the highest
possible level. He gathers all of creation, all of space and time into
Himself, the Creator who is outside of space and time. He does so
to this day by gathering all parishes into the Church, which is His
Body. The high point of parish life is the Eucharistic Liturgy, which
reenacts the crux of Christ’s own story. Every week, when the
parish gathers to eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ,
broken for them, they are actually being gathered around Christ’s
original Passion, two millennia ago. They gather around this
moment to make sense of their own lives, and to let Christ unfold
through them.
“But God raised Him from the dead, releasing Him from the agony
of death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in its
clutches.” 6 This loving self-sacrifice of Christ of course defeated
Satan and turned suffering into joy. It is obvious when we look at it
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abstractly, outside of space and time. Indeed, Satan cannot destroy
God the Son. A being cannot destroy the Ground of Being. The
Original Sin that separates us cannot separate the Persons of the
Trinity, nor the Trinity from Their creation. But this abstract
eternal truth incarnates itself concretely in the most poignant of
ways in the Passion. The greatest of sorrows, namely Christ’s
crucifixion, is turned into the greatest of joys, namely Christ’s
resurrection. Creation holds together around this turning point,
where sorrow and joy meet in Love.
Thus, the suffering of the poor, the meek, the innocent, the sick
and the prophets acquired cosmic significance at this turning
point. Job’s obedience to the Father is now not only limited to a
local bet against Satan, but is part of the cosmic story of Christ’s
defeat of Satan through obedience. And the story of the prophets
before Christ is no longer just one of opposition to local evils, all
too often unsuccessful. They become a joyful part of Christ’s
cosmic victory against Evil itself.
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And this growing Body has many parts, intricately woven together
in love. More precisely, you can see prophets and martyrs as the
face and arms of Christ. They actively and visibly proclaim and
suffer for Him. They actively bring others into Christ’s own Body.
They are “fishers of men”, who bring people from a chaotic world
into the Church. But the Church does not only have a face and
arms. She also has a heart. The heart works in secret and gives life
to the whole organism. And while the heart does not suffer visibly
like the face and the arms do, it also suffers. The difference is that
it does so contemplatively and in hiddenness. In fact, it is this
hidden joyful suffering of the heart that gives life to the rest of the
Church.
Take the Blessed Virgin Mary for instance. She was not a prophet,
and was not persecuted by the local authorities, but Revelation
chapter 12 describes her as persecuted by Satan himself. As a
loving and innocent mother silently and powerlessly standing at
the Cross of her unblemished Son, she felt the worst of human
sufferings. Like Job, she was not being punished for her sins, nor
even really for the sins of someone else. She was fundamentally
suffering from Satan’s blows to her Son. She was feeling all the
weight of Original Sin. And for doing so in obedience she was
“clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and upon her
head a crown of twelve stars”. 7 Also notice how, unlike Job, Mary
suffered joyfully. That is because, unlike him, she knew that her
Son had conquered Death, and she knew that as a member of His
Body she was participating in that fight.
Conclusion
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of
the throne of God. 9
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