The Lamb's Supper

THREE

Parish the Thought

REVELATION
AS FAMILY PORTRAIT

HEAVEN IS A FAMILY REUNION with all God's children; and this is true, too, of heaven on earth: the Holy Mass. Let's go back to that telling passage from Hebrews: “You have come to Mount Zion . . . the heavenly Jerusalem . . . and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb 12:22–23). Heaven touches earth in the Mass and encompasses the family of God Himself.

In Revelation, John only intensifies the image. John describes our communion with Christ in the most remarkably intimate terms, as “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:9).

FAMILY HISTORY

Yet, before we can understand this family bond, many of us will have to put aside our modern, Western notions about family. We live in a time when families are highly mobile; few people will die in the town where they were born. We live in a time when families are small; fewer children today experience uncles and aunts and countless cousins, as previous generations did. When moderns say “family,” we usually mean the nuclear family: mom, dad, and a child or two.

To appreciate John's vision, though, we have to glimpse a much different world, a world in which the large, extended family defined the world of a given individual. The family—the tribe, the clan—was a man or woman's primary identity, dictating where they would live, how they would work, and whom they might marry. Often, people wore a conspicuous sign of their family identity, such as a signet ring or a distinguishing mark on the body.

A nation in the ancient world was largely a network of such families, as Israel comprised the twelve tribes named for Jacob's sons. Unifying each family was the bond of covenant, the wider culture's idea of what constituted human relations, rights, duties, and loyalties. When a family welcomed new members, through marriage or some other alliance, both parties—the new members and the established tribe—would seal the covenant bond by swearing a solemn oath, sharing a common meal, or offering a sacrifice.

God's relationship with Israel was defined by a covenant, and Jesus described His relationship with the Church in the same terms. At the Last Supper, He blessed the cup of the New Covenant in His blood (see Mt 26:28; Mk 14:24; Lk 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25).

The Book of Revelation makes clear that this New Covenant is the closest and most intimate of family bonds. John's vision concludes with the marriage supper of the Lamb and His bride, the Church. With this event, we Christians seal and renew our family relationship with God Himself. In our bodies, we bear the mark of God's tribe. We call God Himself our true Brother, our Father, our Spouse.

THE GOD WHO IS FAMILY

In the Book of Revelation, believers bear the mark of this supernatural family upon their brow. The early Christians, for centuries, reminded themselves of this reality by tracing the Sign of the Cross on their foreheads. We do the same thing when we make the Sign of the Cross today; we mark our bodies “in the name of” our divine family: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, in the Apocalypse as in the Mass, the family of God—like any traditional family in ancient Israel—finds its identity in the family's name and in its sign.

Yet here's the most remarkable revelation: our family is not only named for God—our family is God. Christianity is the only religion whose one God is a family. His most proper name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Said Pope John Paul II: “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.”

To me, that's an earth-shaking truth. Notice he did not say that God is like a family, but that He is a family. Why? Because God possesses, from eternity, the essential attributes of family—fatherhood, sonship, and love—and He alone possesses them in their perfection. It may be more accurate, then, to say that the Hahns (or any household) are like a family, since our family has these attributes, but only imperfectly.

God is a family, and we are His. By establishing the New Covenant, Christ founded one Church—His mystical body—as an extension of His Incarnation. By taking on flesh, Christ divinized flesh, and He extended the Trinity's life to all humanity, through the Church. Incorporated into the Body of Christ, we become “sons in the Son.” We become children in the eternal household of God. We share in the life of the Trinity.

The Catholic Church is nothing less than the universal Family of God.

AN AFFINITY FOR THE TRINITY

As Catholics, we renew our covenant-family bond in the marriage supper of the Lamb—an action that is, at once, a shared meal, a sacrifice, and an oath (a sacrament). The Apocalypse unveiled the Eucharist as a wedding feast, where the eternal Son of God enters into the most intimate union with His spouse, the Church. It is this “Communion” that makes us one with Christ, sons in the Son.

To prepare for this Communion—our New Covenant, our mystical marriage—we must, like any spouses, leave our old lives behind. As bride, we will forsake our old name for a new one. We will be forever identified with Another: our Beloved, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Marriage demands that spouses make a self-sacrifice that is complete and total, as Christ's was on the cross. Yet we are weak and we are sinners, and we find the very suggestion of such sacrifice unbearable.

Here's the good news. Christ became one of us, to offer His humanity as the perfect sacrifice. In the Mass, we join our sacrifice with His, and that union makes our sacrifice perfect.

FEELING NO PAIN

The Mass is the “once for all,” perfect sacrifice of Calvary, which is presented on heaven's altar for all eternity. It is not a “repeat performance.” There is only one sacrifice; it is perpetual and eternal, and so it needs never be repeated. Yet the Mass is our participation in that one sacrifice and in the eternal life of the Trinity in heaven, where the Lamb stands eternally “as if slain.”

How can this be? How can God offer sacrifice? To whom could God offer sacrifice?

In the Godhead, in heaven, this life-giving love goes on painlessly but eternally. The Father pours out the fullness of Himself; He holds nothing of His divinity back. He eternally fathers the Son. The Father is, above all else, a life-giving lover, and the Son is His perfect image. So what else is the Son but a life-giving lover? And He dynamically images the Father from all eternity, pouring out the life He's received from the Father; He gives that life back to the Father as a perfect expression of thanks and love. That life and love the Son received from the Father and returns to the Father is the Holy Spirit.

Why bring this up now? Because this is what happens in the Mass! The early Christians were so astonished by this fact that they were prone to sing about it, as in this sixth-century Syrian hymn: “Exalted are the mysteries of this temple in which the heaven and earth symbolize the most exalted Trinity and our Savior's dispensation.” The Mass makes present, in time, what the Son has been doing from all eternity: loving the Father as the Father loves the Son, giving back the gift He received from the Father.

A MASSIVE CHANGE

That gift is the life we're meant to share; but before we can, we must undergo a significant change. As we are now, we're incapable of giving so much or receiving so much; the infinite fire of divine love would consume us. Yet, we cannot change on our own. That's why God gives us His own life in the sacraments. Grace makes up for the weakness of human nature. With His help, we're able to do what we couldn't do by ourselves: namely, love perfectly and sacrifice totally.

What God the Son has been doing from all eternity, He begins doing now in humanity. He doesn't change at all; for God Himself is unchanging, eternal, without beginning or end. What changes is not God but humanity. God assumed our humanity, so that every gesture, every thought He had—from the moment He was conceived till the moment He died on the cross—everything He did on earth would be an action of the Son loving the Father. What He is from all eternity, He manifested in His humanity. Thus, perfect love now takes place in time, because God has assumed our human nature, and He has used it to express the life-giving love of the Son for the Father. Through His life and death, Jesus deified humanity. He united it to the divine.

And every time we receive the Eucharist, we receive this glorified, divinized, empowered humanity of Jesus Christ, the perfect manifestation of the divine Son's love for the Father. Only with this massive infusion of grace can we undergo the change required before we enter the life of the Trinity.

The Eucharist changes us. Now, we're able to do all the same things we'd done before—but making them divine in Christ: making our every gesture, thought, and feeling an expression of love for the Father, an action of the Son within us.

TRIBAL TROUBLES?

Marrying into any family means big changes. Marrying into the family of God means complete transformation.

What difference does it make? All the difference in the world, and then some. With this change—in the words of a fourth-century Syrian Father, Aphrahat—man becomes God's temple, as God is man's temple. We worship, as Revelation says, “in the Spirit.” We dwell in the Trinity. Now, too, we live in God's house, the Church, which is built upon rock (see Mt 7:24–27; 16:17–19). Now, we are called by His name (see Eph 4:3–6). Now, we partake of the table of the Lord (see 1 Cor 10:21). Now, we share in His flesh and blood (see Jn 6:53–56). Now, His mother is our mother (see Jn 19:26–27).

Now, we can understand why we call priests “Father” and the pope our “Holy Father”—because they are other Christs, and Christ is the perfect image of the Father. Now, we can understand why we call women religious “Sister” and “Mother”—because they are images for us of the Virgin Mary, and of Mother Church.

Now, more clearly than ever, we can understand why the saints in heaven care so much for our welfare. We're their family! We must never forget the Christians who have gone before us. In our prayer and our study, we must come to know their company and their help. Through the saints' example, we must learn to care as deeply for those who stand beside us during Mass each week. Because they're our family in Christ—and our common sainthood begins now.

Think about it: if we all persevere together, you and I will share a home forever with Christ—with the parishioners we worship beside today.

Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Maybe you suddenly remembered the parishioners who most get on your nerves. (I know I did.) Could heaven really be heaven if all of our neighbors are there? Could heaven be paradise if Father So-and-So makes it, too?

That's the only sort of heaven we should think about. Remember, we're a family of the ancient sort: a clan, a tribe. We're all in this together. That doesn't mean we'll always feel affection for the people we see at Mass. It does mean we must love them, bear with their weaknesses, and serve them—because they, too, have been identified with Christ. We cannot love Him without loving them. Loving difficult people will refine us. Perhaps only in heaven will our love be so perfected that we can actually like these people, too. St. Augustine spoke of a man who, on earth, had chronic gas problems; in heaven, his flatulence became perfect music.

BRING IT ON HOME

The communion of saints is not merely a doctrine. It is a lived reality perceived only when we live steadfast lives of faith. But it is more real than the ground we walk on. It's a permanent reality, even if its permanence is not manifested continuously in our parish.

We need, right now, to open our eyes of faith. Heaven is here. We've seen it unveiled. The communion of saints is all around us, with the angels, on Mount Zion, whenever we go to Mass.