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Introduction: The Body, Flesh and Bone
- Fordham University Press
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Introduction: The Body, Flesh and Bone Thus ignorance of literature among students of theology can give Christianity a bad name. Since by nature we learn only by proceeding from sense experience to higher truths (there is nothing in the intellect that does not come via the five senses), so only by means of poetic imagery and sensitivity to language do we grow in understanding and intelligence. This adds strength and a certain fittingness to the art of writing. Hence a particular native elegance in speech moves and invites men to hear and read it. Thus it so comes about that men are more easily moved to hold with greater conviction truth which is illustrated by the beauty of Literature. Liturgy and the worship of God has a certain likeness to this. —Pope Leo XIII, letter to Cardinal Parrochi, 20 May 1885 It is as clear for the writers to be discussed here as it was for Leo XIII that, when one brings the strongest attributes of imaginative literature to bear directly upon Catholic faith and practice, liturgy becomes the primary site of interaction. Moreover, when that literature is dedicated to representing the body, the possibilities for a sustained and compelling correspondence increase significantly. During the drama of the Mass, individual bodies join symbolically and actually with each other and with the body of Christ. As the novelist Ron Hansen says, Catholics have three yoked concepts in Corpus Christi: Christ as human being, Christ as Host or blessed and consecrated bread, and Christ as mystically embodied in the Church. We were saved in a mysterious way by Christ’s crucifixion and physical death on the cross; we are helped and preserved and sustained through the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; a Church inspired by the Holy Spirit keeps us from harm or loss through wise precepts and ordinances ; and we share in Christ himself when we join together a Church in his name.1 1 2 Introduction: The Body, Flesh and Bone Hansen’s summary of the term ‘‘body of Christ’’ defines the corpus by the way believers experience it: as human, Host, and Church. His words also emphasize the purpose of this experience: that is, union with God and one another. All of the writers in the following chapters recognize and value the Catholic understanding of the term ‘‘body of Christ’’ because of the relationships the term both connotes and stimulates. However, it is crucial to recognize that, amid all of these relationships, one point persists: each author imagines those relationships primarily in terms of fleshly existence. Even the ultimate union between human and divine is construed as a relationship between human and divine ‘‘bodies.’’ Moreover, in each case, these authors find Catholic liturgy to be the source and summit of their faith, because it is in the liturgy that the sacred is called forth from the mere proximity of flesh to flesh. Consider, for example, Sebastian Taggart, Alfred Alcorn’s reluctant protagonist of his novel Vestments, as he watches Mass unfold from the back of the church: Transubstantiation. It changed bread and wine into the body and blood of God; it meant union, communion, with God and God’s essence. But what God? What essence . . . ? It made sense to him now . . . that we are, individually , all a small part of the Godhead. Sebastian reaches this conclusion while he witnesses two events: the priest before him acting in persona Christi and ‘‘the faithful who rose to approach the railing for communion. . . .’’2 In this scene, Sebastian’s reluctance to join the congregation at the communion railing results in his ‘‘envy’’ of their ability to act in ways that demonstrate the essence of a Eucharistic experience , a moment when believers accept and enact an analogy between their approach to the rail and an advance toward God. Fellowship during the meal, Sebastian discovers, proves Jesus’ point that he will be present when two or three gather in his name. This same analogy operates when the central character of Louise Erdrich ’s novel The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, a priest named Father Damien Modeste, tastes the wafer in the midst of his first consecration . Looking out from the other side of the altar in a wintry, bone-chilling Objibwe reservation church, Father Damien sees around him the pinched faces of those starving nuns who live and work at Little No Horse, and as he lifts the bread to his lips two experiences follow...