AT GOD’S TABLE

Elemire Zolla (1926–2002) wrote: “One does not steal from the table of a God to whom one has not offered oneself with complete love”—that is, we cannot understand the mystery of the Eucharist unless we enter into its very dynamic of offering. But what strikes us is the tragic context in which Jesus instituted the Sacrament: betrayal. Paul, who was very close to Luke, states this very clearly when he writes: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread…” (1 Cor 11:23ff). Let us then begin with this key to enter into today’s solemnity of Corpus Christi. The story of Jesus is marked by betrayal. The sadness at the Last Supper, the anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, the cry on the cross reflect a crescendo of drama but also of transformation for Jesus. In each of these experiences, he becomes aware that he has been betrayed. He had sensed this about Judas from the very beginning (cf. Jn 6). He will accept it for the greater glory of God. Peter’s denial, too, had been foretold (cf. Jn 13). All the other disciples then betrayed him during the Passion (cf. Mk 15). At that point, Jesus focused entirely on the Father, placing his trust in Him, certain of His help and His aid. In a word, Jesus knew that the Father would never abandon him. He was indeed the man of sorrows, but his original trust was still entirely intact. He counted on the Father, and even asked Him to forgive his killers. But at a certain point, however, he saw this pact of trust broken, in that he no longer felt it. And there he cried out against His absence, feeling in his flesh and spirit the reality of God’s betrayal and brutality. But where he was abandoned, where he felt betrayed, there he became fully human, suffering the human tragedy of God’s absence. At that moment, Jesus and the Father were no longer one. His faith withstood this terrible blow, generating in him a new love, born from the crucible of suffering. And what are the signs of this fullness? We can discern five of them. First of all, he did not threaten vengeance but entrusted himself to God. Nor did he fall into denial—that is, despite everything, the value of humanity, his brothers, did not fail within him, nor did he repudiate or curse his disciples. Nor did he detach himself from the Father, but rather, by crying out Psalm 22, he made himself its living exegesis; he did not become cynical—that is, no expression of disappointment or regret for what he had said and done was heard on his lips; he did not betray himself. If he had adopted the logic of his betrayers, he would have betrayed his values, that in which he believed and had always believed; he made no paranoid choices—that is, after the resurrection he did not fall into the idealization of perfect relationships. This fullness lives in the Eucharist and is freely shared with all of us. Here is the energy of the new world, the dawn of a new humanity.

Commentary by d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italia)