It is an
accepted interpretation that the trek from Jerusalem to Emmaus which ends with
the Lord breaking bread is an ambulatory depiction of the Mass we celebrate.
Just as in our regular Sunday Eucharist which is broadly composed of two
liturgies—of the Word and of the Eucharist—He began by enlightening the minds
of the two disciples with Scriptures: “Then starting with Moses, He
explained to them the passages through the Scriptures about Himself”.
Secondly, to crown the day, He celebrated the liturgy of His own Body and
Blood: “While He was at table with them, He took the bread, said the
blessing, broke it and gave it to them”. This narrative gives us the
familiar phrase that “They recognised Him at the Breaking of Bread”.
Well and
good but somehow at the start, the two Disciples also expressed something which
may resonate with us today. Even though quite a few have expressed that the
lifting of the lockdown would not be soon, those of us who are waiting for the curtain
to lift are impatient at this extended intermission. We hear at the start of
the conversation with Jesus that the two had harboured expectations: “We
had hope”. Some of us too have hoped that we can somehow return to the
life which we know so well.
We are, after
all, Homo Consumptor (or in mock or dog Latin, Homo
Consumericus). Our entire economic life is premised on this cycle of
exploitation, production, and consumption. The closure of malls has only witnessed
the explosion of online shopping—our courier services are not only overwhelmed
by delivery deadlines but are also laughing their merry ways to the banks. Furthermore,
we are expecting oil price to rebound once the supply chain that feeds our consuming
habits cranks up again.
To match
this consuming philosophy, the coronavirus pandemic is considered merely a
glitch of nature, as it were. And if Louis Vuitton can conscript or re-purpose its production
line to manufacture face masks, you can imagine how every endeavour is
directed to the discovery of the elusive vaccine to help us, not so much as to live
healthily but to return to a life we have come to expect as typically ours as a
Homo Consumptor. Imagine what the so-called “new normal” of
social distancing would do to an economy that rests solely on the consumption
of leisure?
What is
relevant to us is if we would dare to run against conventional wisdom that this
nature’s glitch could also be God appearing and speaking to us. Just like what He
did to the two oblivious Disciples in their despairing departure from
Jerusalem. Of course, our current theology does not permit a God who dares to
punish us let alone chastise us. We have imprisoned God in a gilded cage of
mercy without justice. A capricious God is not reasonable, it would appear, for
it would harken back to the days of the Olympian deities easily insulted and
wounded by our insolence.
However, canon
law possibly provides us with what is more in tune with our understanding of
God. Whatever penalty we find therein, its aim is never punitive but rather
rehabilitative, restorative, and finally redemptive. The Mass was once commonly
called the Holy Sacrifice. The notion of redemption gels with the language of
sacrifice. He offered His life as a sacrifice in order to redeem us and to
restore us to grace. Hence, if God were to punish us, He is not out to even the
score or to get even with us—a kind of tit for tat. No. If at all, God
punishes, it is in order to reconcile us to Himself as St Alphonsus de Ligouri
characterised in the prayer of a sinner: “O God I have so much offended you, chastise me in this life, that
you may spare me in the next”.
Perhaps,
Covid-19 is the pause we all so needed for the purification (or to use the
argot du jour, sanitisation) of our expectations. Whatever the cause of this
viral affliction, be it nature’s caprice or God’s punishment, we are being
purified. God’s wrath and His mercy are not polar opposites or mutually
exclusive but rather they are two sides of a coin. Even if we choose the think
Covid-19 in terms of eco-catastrophe as the result of our misuse of freedom, it
belongs to the permissive will of God that we are being afflicted by this pandemic
to turn us back to God.
We are in
the darkness of a long and lengthy Lent. But there have been lights shining if
only we are attuned to them. It is not the light of commercial success—like the
“ka ching” of online shopping. Rather, the pollution over parts of China, the mass
and cheap production centre of the world, has improved and here in our country,
even our rivers are cleaner now. Once we return to normalcy, we may have to
rethink our cycle of consumption to replace it possibly with an economy that
better expresses what it means to be graced human rather than how much we can regain
commercially. It may be true that the market is about life, but life is not
entirely about the market. Scarcity, competition, and consumption are not the
only invisible hand that runs the economy. When the lockdown is lifted, there
will be wounded to be cared for. Even now, they are already showing up on our
radar. How do we mobilise the other invisible hand of Christian charity, so
that the human landscape can better mirror the image of Christ? St Peter puts it through the language of grace
in the 2nd Reading to live worthily the new state of life which we
have gained through Christ’s Resurrection. Thus, caring for those injured by
the pandemic is witnessing to Christ
who has risen and is also alive in us.
This economy
of sharing, giving and self-sacrifice is established on His memory, not on a
virtual memory of Him. The two disciples’ experience walking to Emmaus
establishes the paradigm for who the Church is and how central the Eucharist is
to her identity. The Eucharist should belong to the essential services because
Christ the Lord Himself wants to feed us with His Body and Blood. We should
never be content with this virtual feeding but creatively must look for ways,
within the law, to allow this essential service to be available in spite of
everything.
Finally, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer commenting on the Church as the Body of Christ said something to
this effect that “Christ’s body (the Church) takes up physical space here on
earth. The body of Jesus Christ can only be a visible body or else it is not a
body at all”. For now, we seem to be trapped in this isolating tomb of
“Eucharistic fast” and worshipping in exile, almost in a disembodied Church. Yet, we are resolutely hopeful because
the Lord is still sacramentally present in both word and sacrament to the
small the community we have, as in 3 religious
sisters and a sacristan. In hope we pray for the end to this prohibition of
providing this essential service, a cure for Covid-19 and most of all, we pray
that this deprivation of the Mass will only deepen our love for His Sacramental
Presence.
