Patrick Comerford
The celebrations of Epiphany-tide continue today, and the week began with the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany IV, 28 January 2024).
The calendars of the Church of Ireland and of the Church of England in Common Worship today remember Saint Brigid, Abbess of Kildare (ca 525). Major celebrations are being planned in Kildare today to mark the 1,500th anniversary of her death. Saint Brigid’s Cathedral is hosting an ecumenical service at 11 am, a Pause for World Peace takes place at 12 noon and a new mural of Saint Brigid is being launched in Market Square at 12:30. At 2 pm, 4,000 schoolchildren gather across the Curragh plains (Saint Brigid's pastures) to form a massive human Saint Brigid’s cross. Altan and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra are performing a concert in Kildare Cathedral at 8:30.
But, before today begins, I am taking some time for reflection, reading and prayer.
Christmas is a season that lasts for 40 days that continues from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation tomorrow (2 February). The Gospel reading on the Sunday before last (21 January, John 2: 1-11) told of the Wedding at Cana, one of the traditional Epiphany stories.
In keeping with the theme of that Gospel reading, I have been continuing with last week’s thoughts in my reflections each morning until the Feast of the Presentation tomorrow:
1, A reflection on one of seven meals Jesus has with family, friends or disciples;
2, the Gospel reading of the day;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
12, The Heavenly Banquet (Luke 14: 15-24):
My final meal with Jesus in this series of reflection on ‘Meals with Jesus’ is the climax to all the meals with Jesus.
But before this 40-day Season of Christmas season comes to an end with the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas tomorrow (2 February), I want us to step back for a few moments, and to think again about Christmas.
Christmas is a much messier and more humbling story than we allow it to be with all our tinsel and decorations and carolling.
When the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph are refused hospitality in Bethlehem – the name of the town means the ‘House of Bread’ – they are not only refused a bed for the night, but they are also left without anywhere to eat.
One of their earliest experiences as a family for Mary and Joseph is the refusal or denial of hospitality … being denied both bed and board.
To refuse someone a place at your table is, of course, to deny them a place in your family. Yet, it is family duty – being of the House of David – that brings Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem in the first place.
I wonder what all those family meals were like for the growing Jesus. Did Joseph tell him to eat up his vegetables? Did Mary tell him he couldn’t go out to play until he had finished eating?
As a pious religious Jewish family, they would have placed a high priority on the Friday evening meal, the Sabbath eve meal that has its own beautiful domestic liturgy in the home at the blessing of the wine and of the bread.
And then there was the usual, year-by-year round of religious meals, especially the Passover, when the saving events of the past were made real in the present, and there was hope for the future. As the child in the family, Jesus would have asked why this night was different to all other nights. What made it special?
And, of course, there would have been the usual meals associated with the cycle and rhythm of life, for bar mitzvahs, for weddings, and the meals brought to family members, friends and neighbours as they mourned loved ones at shiva.
Just as he is calling his disciples, Jesus joins his family and friends for one of these types of meals, as we know from the story of the wedding in Cana of Galilee (John 2: 1-12), the first of the signs in the Fourth Gospel.
At a wedding, new families are formed: there are new fathers-in-law, new mothers-in-law, new brothers and sisters-in-law. Eventually they become new grandparents, new uncles and aunts, when there are new grandchildren, new nieces and nephews.
And when the wedding is over in Cana, Jesus and his mother, and his brothers and his disciples return to Capernaum, where they spend a few days. No doubt, there is some bonding to be done, for there are new relationships, new ties of kinship.
But there are also hints at the wedding in Cana of the promise of the Resurrection and of the Heavenly Banquet. Have you noticed how the wedding takes place on the third day (John 2: 1), and just before the Passover (John 2: 13)?
It was a common in Jewish thinking and imagery at the time to speak of wedding banquets as a foretaste of God’s heavenly promises. The Mishnah says: ‘This world is like a lobby before the World-To-Come. Prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall.’
But then, so often throughout the Gospels, we find that great meals and wedding banquets provide a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet.
We are invited; but are we ready, are we prepared, to be wedding guests? (see Matthew 22: 1-14; Luke 14: 15-24). Think of the Ten Bridesmaids, and how the foolish ones are not ready when the bridegroom arrives (Matthew 25: 1-13).
On the other hand, plush dining can also tell us a lot about what the Kingdom of God is not like. Consider the story of the rich man, who dined sumptuously and alone, and left the starving, sick and dying Lazarus to go hungry at his gate (Luke 16: 19-31). This is not what the Kingdom of God is like, as Dives finds out. But he finds out when it is too late for his own good.
The great Biblical meals celebrate not only what was, as with the Passover, but what is, in the present, and what is to come, as with the wedding banquets – new promises, new covenants, new families, new expectations, new hopes.
At the Resurrection, Christ breaks down all the barriers of time and space. And so every Eucharist we celebrate today, in the present, reaches back in time into the past and makes real today the promises and hopes for liberation from slavery and sin. And the Eucharist of today also reaches out into the future and is a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet, which is the completion of the promise of a New Heaven and a New Earth, the final glory of God’s creation (see Revelation 2: 17; 19: 9-10; 22: 17).
So often, we think first in terms of the Church and then in terms of the Sacraments. We think in terms of my church and its rules about who can be baptised and who can be invited to share in the Eucharist.
But we must ask again: Does the Church make the Sacraments? Or, do the Sacraments make the Church?
The Church does not own the Sacraments. They are Christ’s invitation to us. There can only be one Baptism, for we are baptised into the Body of Christ, and there is only one Body of Christ.
And there can be only one Eucharist, for we being many are one body, and we all share in the one bread. In sharing in the Eucharist we are most visibly the Body of Christ … and Christ has only one body.
And the Eucharist is a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet. And when we find ourselves invited to it, we will find that there is only one Heavenly Banquet. I hope we will not be surprised like Simon to find who Jesus keeps company with at the table.
The Meals with Jesus we have shared in these reflections can never be separated from our hopes for the Heavenly Banquet and for the coming of God’s Kingdom.
The Prophet Isaiah challenges us about which fasts we choose and tells us (Isaiah 58: 6-9):
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
Mark 6: 7-13 (NRSVA):
7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 1 February 2024, Saint Brigid):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Welcoming the Stranger – A Candlemas Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Annie Bolger of the Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Brussels.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (1 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Father God, we pray for all of the chaplaincies throughout the Diocese in Europe and for all the work and programmes that they do to support displaced people.
The Collect (Church of Ireland):
Father,
by the leadership of your blessed servant Brigid
you strengthened the Church in this land:
As we give you thanks for her life of devoted service,
inspire us with new life and light,
and give us perseverance to serve you all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Post Communion Prayer (Church of Ireland):
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table and invited us to eat
the bread and drink the wine of the kingdom.
Help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that in fellowship with all your saints
we may come to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection: the meal that never was: the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4: 5-42)
Continued tomorrow (Candelmas)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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