Lures of Life

by Joseph Lucas

THE LURE OF THE EUCHARIST

A beautiful spectacular ceremonial the Church has wrapped around the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, smothering it under the pomp of a religious service, which works upon the nerves like a subtle, mastering spell. The senses of the worshipper become drugged with incense, dazed by the glitter of broidered vestments, charmed with the strains of alluring music, spellbound with the deep droning voice intoning at the altar, and all the splendid equipments and sacred associations of the sanctuary, which tighten you up until a wrapt ecstasy of feeling intoxicates you in the midst of it all, and you are drenched in the luxury of strong, dreamy religious emotion.

For nineteen centuries the spectacle has been growing in significance, and it is not finished growing yet. Every age adds a decorative touch to embellish its colossal splendours. Finality in ecclesiastical evolution lies a long way off in the distance. If one of the twelve disciples who supped with our Blessed Lord on that historic night could slip out of paradise and for a few minutes witness a modern high celebration of the Holy Eucharist, he would marvel much at the imposing function, and marvel more at men's credulity in mistaking an ecclesiastical pageant for a simple act of devout obedience to Jesus Christ. The plain and homely meal which our Lord instituted to be a remembrance of Himself and His death on the Cross has flowered into an ornate and flamboyant religious function striking wonderment and awe in the hearts of mankind by the glitter of its barbaric and imposing splendours. The Church has worked up the Lord's Supper into a supernatural mystic rite run on old pagan lines; in fact, it amalgamates Christianity with ancient magic, and so the spirit of Christ escapes from the service, and only His traditional dead body reposes on the altar like the cold ashes of an extinct fire.

Recall the simple and unpretentious meal of which our Blessed Lord partook with His disciples on the eve of His betrayal and death. There in an upper room in the city of Jerusalem is the small assembly, consisting of the Master and His twelve disciples, and during the meal Jesus took a piece of bread, "and when He had given thanks, He brake it and said: 'Take, eat: this is My body, which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of Me.' After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying: 'This cup is the New Testament in My blood; this do ye as often as ye drink in remembrance of Me; for as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come.'"[*]

[*] 1 Cor. xi. 24-26.

On this plain foundation the amazing and pernicious rite of Transubstantiation has been reared--a veritable temple of divination, and cloistered within its shadowed recesses the priest casts his spell, dispensing religious consolations to credulous and confiding mortals tangled in the coils of the seductive creed.

Transubstantiation is a pagan heresy grafted on to Christian stock. In ancient times, when the pagan priest muttered an incantation over the idol of his god, the spirit of the god was supposed to enter the idol, and so when the Christian priest now utters a prayer over the bread and wine it is affirmed they become the real flesh and the real blood of Christ.

A brief glance back on the early history of the Church shows us the door through which this sacerdotal error slipped into the sacramental service, and how the Church drifted from the words of Jesus Christ and sought other and strange gods for counsel. For three centuries after the Crucifixion the disciples held closely together in little groups or churches in the towns where they abode. Many of them dwelt in Rome, down in the dark subterranean city of the catacombs, with its maze of narrow lanes, blind alleys, and cryptic sanctuaries, hidden under the gay, cruel city of sunlit streets and open air. Here they lived, striving faithfully and patiently to attain pure, blameless, holy lives before God in a pagan world, whose sins they renounced and whose hatred they courted by thrusting the new and unwelcome society of Christ into their hostile midst. Christians were mistaken for criminals--but there, Christ was crucified as one. Through all persecutions they held fast to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Nothing daunted them, nothing disheartened them. The words of Christ refreshed them in all the weariness of spirit. In teeth of deadly opposition they grew in number until a questionable honour was conferred upon the Church which changed its fortunes and marred its simplicity. The Roman Emperor Constantine became a convert to the new religion, and now and henceforth the religion of Jesus Christ is honourable in the sight of all men. It is the fashionable craze of Rome. The Emperor's Court followed the Emperor's example and joined up. The Roman world followed the royal lead and professed conversion. This is the flowering-time of Christianity. The Christian sect, yesterday the outcasts and scum of the earth, are now received into polite society, dine in the best houses, and are welcomed everywhere. The bishops of the Church are dug out of their deep burrows in the stuffy underground where they practised the simple life; they put off their poverty of pocket and meekness of spirit, and are robed in gorgeous raiment and rank amongst the rulers of the earth. They are transfigured men in mind and in manners. The Bishop of Rome leaps into fame, wins for himself a palace and a throne in the city of the Cæsars, and a court of red-robed cardinals surge round him with royal observances and diplomatic intrigue. Our bishops in England become princes of the Church, have princely palaces, and princely revenues to maintain the dignity of their princely estate. These gilded grandees of the Church are considered to be spiritually the lineal descendants of the Peasant of Galilee who at nightfall had not where to lay His head. Flattery worked the Church's undoing, for in the hour of her worldly triumph she gave away all that the early Christian martyrs had died to win.

The mass of people who obsequiously played up to Constantine and joined the Church were not converted to the Christian faith; they did not believe in Christ with all their heart. To many of them Christ was only a new Deity added to the many gods they already worshipped. In heart they remained pagan, but behaved prudently and changed their coat at the Emperor's bidding. They did not forsake their old religion when they accepted the new creed; they amalgamated the two. They carried their pagan superstitions with them into the Christian Church, and, planted in new soil, there they took root and flourished vigorously in the garden of the Lord. The old gods became saints; the pagan shrines and images and festivals were whitewashed and christianized and given a place in the Church calendar; the magic by which their pagan priests trained the spirit of the gods to enter the idol at call, the same priestly magic transferred to the new religion brought the body of the Lord into the bread and the wine at the service of the Lord's Supper.

Such galloping progress did the heresy make amongst the mixed multitudes who mingled their devotions with the elect in the Church that before long the bread and wine were given to the dead. The Sacrament, it is supposed, was placed on the breast of dead persons, as a charm against evil spirits. This superstitious custom was rooted deeply in the religion of the day, for the Church was compelled to legislate on the subject. The custom was forbidden in Africa by the Council of Hippo, A.D. 393; the Council of Carthage, A.D. 397; and in Gaul at the Council of Auxerre, A.D. 578; yet it lingered tenaciously in the hearts of the people as a sacred custom to be observed regardless of hostility to it in high places. Again at the Council in Trullo, A.D. 691, it was forbidden. An incident in the life of St. Benedict, who died about the year 540, discloses much to us. A boy who had been disobedient died suddenly, and his corpse could not rest, in the grave, so St. Benedict ordered the body of the Lord (the Sacrament) to be placed on the breast of the boy, and the corpse rested immediately, and remained quietly buried.