The Franciscan View of the Human Person: Some Central Elements

APPENDIX

67 APPENDIX Tabernacles Graziano Marcheschi It happened fast. A feeble-brained innocent, refugee from half-way spaces, moving at the wrong time: the Bread raised high, the Cup engaged in mystery, and he chooses this time to change his seat from one church side to the other. For a moment his head blocks the view of bread yielding to miracle. For a moment his face and the bread are one. The words spoken over both. Then hands shake, extending proper peace; cheeks meet, words wish a peace the world has never tasted. He stares, like a dog offered too many bones at once, and accepts only one hand’s greeting. Next comes procession to his first meal of the day as faces clearly wonder if he understands what this is all about. He takes the proffered piece of pita in this most post-Vatican assembly and stops. Momentarily thrown by this bread with pockets, he’s oh-so-gently reassured that it’s quite all right to eat. He takes and green teeth masticate the Body of Christ. Then he reaches for the syrupped goodness of the cup (Just three sips after him I debate the wisdom of changing lines.) 68 Dawn M. Nothwehr, O.S.F. His puffed-cheek mouthful nearly drains the cup. (I almost wish he had so I wouldn’t need to tell myself I won’t catch some disease.) And then (I knew it!) he coughs and sends forth a rosy mist that sprays Divinity onto the floor. A rainbow comes and goes in that unexpected spray as gasps are quelled in forty throats. He clamps his mouth with leaky hands looking like a child trying to keep a pricked balloon from bursting. Unslackened, the line moves on and Divinity is trampled by shod feet till pure white linen, –bleached and starched– in fervent hands that won’t permit impiety, drinks the pink God from the floor. In a corner he sits alone in rapt humiliation. When someone asks, “Are you O.K.?” he quickly shows his palms and says, “I didn’t wipe them on my dirty pants, I didn’t. I rubbed them hard together, see?” and he demonstrates, with insect frenzy, how he used friction to evaporate the spilled God from his hands. Oh, what a cunning God who tests our faith by hiding in green-teethed tabernacles to see how truly we believe in the miracle of real presence.154 69 The Franciscan View of the Human Person REFLECTIONS ON “TABERNACLES” Each time I read this poem, it tugs powerfully at my Franciscan heart. This “tugging” is evidence of the foundational moral experience of reverence for persons and their environment. But this reverence comes at a cost and it is often shrouded in paradox. In the Mass the cup does “engage mystery” and the bread does indeed, “yield to miracle,” making the God I seek truly present. But God’s presence is not only borne forth in the anticipated sacramental mystery. It appears simultaneously in the concrete; in the despicable “feeble brained innocent.” I read on, and in a moment of recognition, recall the powerful words of the theologian, Paul Ramsey, “Call no one vile for whom Christ has died!” Yes, it is much easier to find God in the miraculous than in the ordinary! Though the Catholic faith holds that the same God is present in the bread and wine as in the flesh of the “least ones” as the imago Dei, I often fail to grasp the obvious! This poem profoundly illustrates the deep link that exists, and that Franciscan theology emphasizes, between the Christian doctrines of creation and redemption; between God’s generous and exquisite gift of human life itself and the even more extravagant selfgift of God in the Incarnation and in the Eucharist. The green-teethed “feeble-brained innocent” always jars me back into the reality that the same Christ Incarnate redeems all people, and, therefore, divisions of any sort are most certainly idolatrous. One can only imagine that reflections similar to these flashed through the mind and heart of Francis and Clare of Assisi as they experienced the sick and poor– especially the lepers of their day. I often use this poem in my opening lecture for the Introduction to Christian Ethics course I teach at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Unprompted, my students who come from all over the globe, identify with...