BLACK FIRE, WHITE FIRE ^_[1]

BY THE FINGER OF GOD

1.  The Jewish religion proposes that the Word of God is black fire written on white fire. As we keep watch with Christ on this night of solemn Vigil, we will meditate on the spiritual nature of white and black fire. Of particular concern to us will be white fire, that is to say, the media on which God's Word is written. A striking example from the Book of Exodus helps to illustrate the complementary archetypes of fire:  "When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God."  [Ex 31:18]  If we imagine black fire as the written words of the commandments, we may understand the tablets of stone as white fire. One fire writes upon another. Our scriptural reference reveals another instance of the spiritual imagery of white and black fire. Consider black fire as God's revealed word to his prophet, and Moses (a human page on which God spiritually but definitively writes) as white fire. God's finger unleashes both kinds of fire. Hence, God does to Moses what he does to the tablets:  "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it."  [Isa 55:11]  Thus we celebrate the white fire of our uniquely human context and experience, the gathering-in of the faithful, and our simple gifts of bread and wine of the eucharistic feast. Black fire is God's message to the man of old in many and various ways  [Heb 1:1]  and the word of faith preached since the days of the apostles to the new man in Christ.  [cf. Rom 10:8, Eph 2:15]  The first covenant, a prophecy of the messiah (Heb. saviour) in the revealed Mosaic law, now yields to the eternal covenant announced in the Gospel of eternal life and incarnated in the flesh of the God made man. Both the Mosaic Law and the Gospel are written by the finger of God. But we are cautioned not to cling to a perspective of Christ which has as its lens the material world:  "One can confine oneself to saying that the created thing is the humanity of the Word in itself, and that therefore something has happened, a change has taken place. But it one sees the event as taking place only on this side of the boundary which separates God and the creature, one has seen and said something which is true, but missed by a hairbreadth and omitted what is really the point...God himself"^[2]:  "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now we know only in part; then we will know fully, even as we have been fully known (by God)."  [1Cor 13:12] 

HISTORIC FRUSTRATION

2.  With the knowledge that God is a consuming fire  [cf. Heb 12:29], we may respectfully surmise that God consumed Moses; expressed differently, God purified Moses humanity, the tablet of his flesh.  [cf. Eze 36:26]  The Lord prepared the prophet to conceive and birth the Law for the salvation of his people.^[3] For the elderly Moses, birthing the Law was a difficult experience, inasmuch as he interrupted the Hebrews who, in his absence, prostituted themselves to false gods. In his passion, he shatters the tablets of stone on which the Law was written. A new sojourn to the shrouded summit of Mt. Sinai awaited him as did the traumatic purging of sin that manifested itself among the Hebrews in his absence. Like the Egyptian Hebrews in the time of Moses, the crowds that followed Jesus in his day were provocative. Prove it and Says who? are favored stones in the arsenal of a crowd; these recall the historic frustration of the prophets who served Israel: "...the pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son; for now he does not present himself at the mouth of the womb".   [Hosea 13:13]  In the synagogue of Capernaum, a decisive confrontation takes place between Jesus and a crowd that, for the most part, wanted comfortable and easy answers. They demand of Jesus: "Then what sign do you do, that we may see, and believe you? What work do you perform?"  [Jn 6:30]  And so Jesus imparts to them the revelation of God's gift of heavenly bread that "gives life to the world".  [Jn 6:33-34]  Concurrently, Jesus admonishes the crowd to move beyond its collective sycophancy with regard to Moses. "Do not labor for the food which perishes," Jesus says, "but for the food which endures to eternal life."  [Jn 6:27]  His challenge awakens in his hearers the recognition of their own spiritual thirst. "Lord, give us this bread always," they say.  [Jn 6:34]  But the crowds receptivity turns to hostility when Our Lord identifies the "living bread which came down from heaven"  [Jn 6:51] as his flesh. On hearing this, the Jews are stunned and then incensed; they denounce Jesus' message as a provocation, an egregious affront to the Mosaic laws of dietary and ritual purity. Shocked and defiant, they rise up in anger, crying out, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"  [Jn 6:52]  Today, this Community of Faith testifies on behalf of its catechumens  (men and women who seek baptism and full membership in the Roman Catholic Church)  that they have diligently prepared to receive the sacraments of life. They prepared by worshipping, praying, studying the Word of God, and purifying their spirits. We have challenged them to put on the mind of Christ  [cf. 1Cor 2:16], and this they have done. These men and women will ask for the Sacrament of Baptism and this grace will be granted them. They seek the Lord and, today, they will experience him in a new  and inexpressible way in the eucharist.

SOMETHING VASTLY GREATER

3.  On this solemn evening, our catechumens knock on the doors of the Church and the gate of heaven  [cf. Gen 28:17]; the path to the heavenly Jerusalem lies before them. If we were to ask our catechumens to reply to the challenge given Jesus--"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"  [Jn 6:52]--what would they say? Our catechumens witness that our Lord Jesus seeks out all men and women of good will; he wills to write his Divine Word of Love on their hearts with the fire of his Spirit. They will say that Christ alone can assuage our human fears, that every man longs for God to consume his heart with the fire of his love that does not destroy. In this privileged hour, we unwrap the winding sheet of this world and cast it aside. The Church calls its beloved catechumens out of the gloom of futility and dread, and the darkness of selfishness and greed. Their mind, heart, soul and strength  [cf. Mk 12:29-30] unite as one voice:  Here am I, Lord! I stand before you to do your will. Upon the white fire of the catechumens hearts is written this message by the finger of God:  Jesus Christ is truly present in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Christ is truly present in the bread and wine transubstantiated by the Spirit into his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. This subsistent reality, one to which human words can merely point, encompasses past, present and future. It is given to the people of God as the means par excellence by which they may participate in the eternal now of the living and true God, the experience we know as communion.^[4] Thus, Jesus emphasizes his eucharistic teaching by his repetitive and deliberative use of the present tense:  "'I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.' The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' So Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.'"  [Jn 6:51-56]  Through the mediation of the priest who presides over the Mass in the Lord's name, Christ comes to his Bride the Church in a unique participation, that is to say, a communion which prophesies its own perfection--"Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb"--and its ultimate resolution--"When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him (God) who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one."  [1Cor 15:28]  One may be confident in saying, then, that something vastly greater is taking place than his senses of touch and taste can perceive in the act of receiving holy communion: when the believer receives the Blessed Sacrament, is he not experiencing a participation in the incarnation, and the passion, death and resurrection, and the ascension and return of Our Lord in glory? Are not all these things held by the Spirit in conjunction with one another? Is not what is happening in the Eucharist true at the moment, as it has been consistently true since our Lord's institution of the sacrament, and will be consistently true until the coming of the Son of man as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west?  [cf. Mt 24:27]  Our catechumens, like the crowd before our Lord in the synagogue at Capernaum, must accept Jesus' teaching exactly as he intends it: word for word in understanding and literal in practice. But wholly unlike the recalcitrant crowd at Capernaum  [cf. Jn 60-66], our catechumens are filled with the wisdom of the Spirit and are prepared fully to discern what they see, and become what they eat.^[5]

IMMERSION INTO INFINITY

4.  The Lord's words--"for my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed"  [Jn 6: 55]--are captured twelve times in the sixth chapter of Johns gospel. Without exception, Jesus message is expressed in the grammatical  present tense, which is to say, the template of God's order of time. The past, present and future are one to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Lord Jesus Christ. In the saving plan of God, all of the divine miracles that ever happened, are happening now, or ever will happen, coalesce to form one ongoing reality and revelation which Christ will perfect and return to the Father:  "But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power."  [1Cor 15:23-24]  Jesus' preference for the present tense in his great eucharistic proclamation reveals that when we partake of the flesh and blood of Christ at each and every eucharist, we enter into a mystery which takes us far beyond the linear yardstick of human time. On the day of Christ's return in glory, all things will be subjected to him. The Holy Eucharist prophesies the Church's immersion into infinity; its form and matter foretells the shape of the Church's future glory, and its sacrificial offering is the pledge of the true presence of Christ in the Church's midst. Vital to our deliverance from suffering and death is the power of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. Nevertheless, the magical and hence impossible erasure of life's difficulties and uncertainties is not the work of the Eucharist. Christ, who reconciles all things to himself, liberates his pilgrim people--once and for all time--from the grave of ultimate meaninglessness,^[6] the terrifying oblivion disguised by the Prince of Darkness as an elysium of light. Jesus Christ invites us now to the Holy Table (Gk. hagia trapeza) to receive food for the journey, the bread of heaven, to eat what is good, and delight in richness.  [cf. Isa 55:2]  The Kingdom of God has overtaken us, on this day, in this sacred setting of God's Church. I invite you in the name of Jesus to "incline your ear, and come to God; hear, that your soul may live; and he will make with you an everlasting covenant, his steadfast, sure love for David".  [Isa 55:3]  Let us celebrate life itself, glorified by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ! If you trust in Christ with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, as our catechumens do, then the saving events of Jesus' passion, death and resurrection are irresistibly alive in your life. They are the compass points of your spirit. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead reveals to the world what was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.  [Glory Be Doxology of Faith]  On this Easter day, we bestride two worlds:  the familiar form of the world we see about us that is passing away  [cf. 1Cor 7:31]  and the eternal now of the divine plan of salvation we cannot see.  [cf. 2Cor 4:18)  Consequently, we are a pilgrim people of God journeying through human time but walking together by faith in God's time until we reach our heavenly homeland.^[7] We are in the world but not of the world: "So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."  [Rom 6:11]  Father of all good things, we proclaim our gratitude in the midst of your assembly. Our hearts magnify your love. May we respond to it faithfully, for you call each and every aspect of your human creation to a higher dignity. Fulfill in us the noble purpose begun by Christ who redeemed us from darkness. Heal our bitterness and loss that we may become a holy temple in which your Spirit may dwell in peace. May we strive to leave an enduring legacy of love, "for no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."  [1Cor 3:11; cf. 1Cor 3:9-17]  Father, in your name, we announce to the world that Light triumphs over darkness! The resurrection of Jesus Christ overthrows the power of death! Joy wins over all sadness! The peace of the Lord Jesus banishes all discrimination and extremism! Gracious God, hear us, for we cast aside doubt and passivity to accept the Spirits ministry of gladness. We make our prayer through Christ Our Lord.  Amen.