Sundays of Trinity and the Body and Blood of Christ
Last Sunday’s feast of the Holy Trinity and this Sunday’s feast of the Body and Blood of Christ are theological feast days.
Coming after Pentecost, they reinforce the outward dynamic of Christian faith and practice.
They are also an opportunity to become more centred as a trinitarian person and community and a eucharistic person and community.
We have left the fear of the upper room behind and entered the Pentecost world, emboldened to become, as St Paul writes, “all things to all people for the sake of the Gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:22) and “never [to] be ashamed of bearing witness to our Lord” (2 Timothy 1:8).
The Trinity
Trinity sets the scene for the Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus.
Trinity (Father, Son and Spirit) is a community of redemptive, generous love and the source of all liturgy, service to others and self-giving (leitourgia, diakonia and martyria).
Trinity is the communion of saving service, redeeming the whole of creation through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the Cosmic Christ of whom St Paul writes, the one who will give all things back to the Father as a redeemed creation at the appointed time.
The Body and Blood of Christ
The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ expands our understanding of the meaning and purpose of life-giving service.
It celebrates how God serves us through the life of Jesus given for others. It shows us how lives given for others are redemptive.
In a life given for others, we see an essential element of the Eucharist, namely martyria or self-giving.
Martyria
Martyria gives us the word martyr.
This is a grim word when a life is taken from someone who is not offering it freely. In that case, it is abuse or violence.
But so many people give martyria to others every day.
I see parents give it to their children, friends to their mates and spouses to their beloved, healthcare workers to their patients or clients, and people who bring food parcels to those in need.
Without self-giving a Christian community or a family dies because it is not “living for another” but only for itself.
Martyria is more about self-giving; it is an “other-centred” word.
Individuals can be like this: the people who always use “I” when they think, pray or give. This is one reason why the word “I” is not in the liturgical texts of the Mass, but always “we”.
The inclusion of the confiteor and the creed in the Mass breaks this rule because neither of them belongs originally to the Mass.
The confiteor belongs to the priest’s personal preparation prayer in the sacristy before Mass and later at the foot of the sanctuary. The Creed belongs to the questioning of a person before they submitted to the personal act of baptism.
Martyria (μαρτυρία) also means to testify before a judge to be a prophet.
It is also the name given to places where the martyrs are buried-places that became our first churches.
When linked to liturgy, martyria is the gateway into a meditation on how our liturgical life serves others.
Are our prayers only for ourselves? Do you pray best when you never pray for your concerns or your family, but only when you pray for others? Do we pray best when we pray without counting the cost when we pray without asking for anything?
Jesus, the icon of Martyria
For Christians, Jesus is the icon of martyria.
He is the freely given offering of self, the freely spoken testimony to the judge of this world.
His prophecy shakes the old orders of violence and hatred and invites us into a (martyrium (Latin) or martyrion (Greek)) place of hope that promised resurrection even as it claims our mortal bodies.
Jesus’ violent death is the moment of his total self-giving–his martyria or gift is real.
We accept it as the most profound theological revelation of God’s real desire to save through unbounded love.
As Christians, we are attuned to this through our baptismal vocation to Christianity and so receive it for the whole world and give it to the whole world through works of charity, praise and worship.
This is big stuff; this is the stuff that needs a faith capable of wonder, silence and contemplation.
It is awe-ful to consider the utter simplicity of God received as gift; a gift that gives every life its sense of purpose and sense of wonder.
Fr Joe