Corpus Christi

As human beings – we tend to value objects and items that are “polyvalent,” items that can mean and serve many different functions. This is why, perhaps, we have come to so value the little gadgets that we carry around with us everywhere in our pockets and purses, which can be used as a camera, calculator, radio, tv, bank teller, dictionary, encyclopedia, translator, typewriter, library book, and phone. In many regards it is both their polyvalence and their ease of switching between all these different meanings for which we value them. The more polyvalent an item, the more valuable it becomes to us, and if we think about it, perhaps the most valued item on this planet in terms of its polyvalence is money. Its ability to transform itself into whatever we wish is literally priceless. However, sometimes the polyvalence of an item can be problematic, as the following anecdote reveals.

When I was a chaplain to the students at the University of Zimbabwe, I used to preside at a mass every Sunday in the chapel on the university campus. Since the chapel was an interdenominational one, the altar could not be a fixed one, so there was a wooden table that we had to move into place every time we had mass to serve as an altar. The problem is that this wooden table could also serve as a desk, and in an academic institution where desks were in short supply, the temptation simply proved too strong to resist for some. Consequently, this wooden table frequently grew legs and would be carted off to some other part of the campus to get used as a desk, meaning that often we had to scramble around to find it, a process that often ended up delaying the start of our mass. If I were to take just one word to describe this problem, I would choose the word “polyvalence.” The problem with the desk is its polyvalence: its capacity to serve and mean two very different functions: to be a desk on which a student writes her homework as well as being an altar on which the sacrifice of the mass is celebrated. If we were to personify this desk, it’s problem is that it cannot make up its mind whether it wants to be a desk or an altar, and therefore lets itself get buffeted around dragged from one place to another and in the process gets damaged by all this moving around.

Is there a way to get around this problem of polyvalence, and “lock in” just one meaning and one use for this wooden table? Well, yes there is actually: in Church circles the solution is called “consecration.” The act of setting apart an ordinary everyday object and consecrating it as sacred takes its polyvalence and reduces it to a univalence. From being able to serve many different functions, this item now comes to be dedicated and reserved for serving only one function: to serve God. We might think about the manner in which this is achieved: by sacrificing the other uses of that item. It is interesting that Latin etymology of the word sacrifice is to “make holy.” We sacrifice the use of an item for our everyday use by “setting it apart” and consecrating it to the Lord. This is why we consecrate altars to the Lord. We resolve to sacrifice the use of an altar as a table for other uses and dedicate it to the use of the Lord alone. An altar that is fixed into the ground in the Church cannot double up as a desk for a student to do her homework on. And so we see that there is a completely opposite trend operative in the sacred realm: where an item attains value and importance for us, not by becoming more polyvalent, but rather by going in the complete opposite direction and becoming univalent – by streamlining all it’s different uses into one supreme meaning: the service, glory and praise of God.

As an aside, this is why it is often very depressing for me to walk into a Pentecostal Church and to find it filled with polyvalent objects. The chairs, projector screens, windows, tables, lecterns could belong just as easily to an office or theatre. The Catholic Church on the other hand is enriched by a whole ecosystem of univalent objects from its sacraments to its sacramentals which all combine to usher a person into a space where they too can become univalent. When you walk into a Church that lacks such a sacramental ecosystem, it is hard to see how you can come to fully appreciate the univalence of Christ’s self-offering in the Eucharist.

If we think about it, we as human beings are perhaps the most polyvalent creatures on the planet. This brings incredible opportunity and creativity in our lives, but it is also something we struggle with, faced with the immense choice of different meanings and purposes we can give to our lives. A person finds themselves on one of two trajectories, either tending towards more polyvalence and disintegration, or tending towards univalence and integration. The trajectory that Jesus followed was crystal clear – Jesus’ whole life tended towards univalence, towards consecrating his whole life to the service of his fellow brothers and sisters and to the glory of God his Father. As Jesus progresses through his life, this univalence becomes more and more pronounced throughout his public ministry and culminates in the sacrifice of his life on the cross. On the way to the cross, Jesus bypasses many opportunities for his life to mean something else: the opportunity to marry and have his own family, the opportunity to be an earthly King. By sacrificing the other possible routes his life could have taken, Jesus consecrates his life to his Father and locks in the meaning of his life once and for all. This meaning is encapsulated in the words we hear in today’s gospel: Jesus’ life is one that “is poured out for you and for many.” This was the meaning of his life, procured by the sacrifice of everything else that could have been for himself.

Karl Rahner has a wonderful concept of human death. He says that when we die, the sum total of the meaning of our life is poured into the universe. Death is what “locks in” our contribution to the universe, as we now pour out of ourselves and into the universe what we have lived and died for. For most people, this contribution will be a patchwork of different meanings, perhaps with considerable contradictions and loose ends. Any so when someone dies, mostly at the funeral, but even before and after it, we try to make sense of this contribution and weave it into some form of tapestry that can continue to sustain us as we celebrate their legacy. But in the case of Jesus’ we don’t have to do any work at all, for there could not have been a more pure and concentrated “single malt” contribution to the universe. With other people, we are wont to lose track of their precise contribution to the universe, as it gets mingled with the contributions of countless others. Not with Jesus, for Jesus was able to pour this contribution into elements of bread and wine and transform their polyvalence into the univalence of his own life.

The Eucharist takes its holiness from its univalence, it becomes the most holy object we have because it takes on the univalence of Jesus’ life. When humble elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus, they take on the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ life, they become real food and real drink for us. When we consume Jesus’ body and blood we are helped to become univalent like Jesus. The sacrament of the Eucharist helps all of our words, thoughts and deeds to become univalent: for others and for God. So Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist is not a static one, but rather dynamic pulling all people who eat at the table of the Lord into the flow of his univalence – his sacrifice to the Father and to all humanity. The Eucharist is the foretaste of the destiny and the fate of all matter: to become like Jesus in his single-minded offering of himself to the Father for humanity.

Questions for reflection

1. Do I find that my life is progressing along a trajectory of polyvalence or univalence?
2. Do I regard Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist as something static, or as a dynamic presence, taking me along with him to the Omega point of the union of all creation in Christ with the Father through the Spirit?
3. Which sacrifices might God be calling me to in order to reduce my polyvalence and increase my univalence, in other words how can I consecrate my home, my work, my family and my life to the Lord in a Eucharistic hymn of service and praise?