IEC2012 Pt. 8: Communion...

As a follow up to my spending June 11-13 at the three first full days of 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, I am writing a series of reflections on the different talks, addresses, and workshops I attended on the theme of The Eucharist: Communion with Christ and with One Another. I took notes (including some quotes, hopefully nearly verbatim, that will appear within quotation marks) during the speeches based on different things that struck me personally, and what I offer here on the blog is simply a distillation of how the speeches affected me. They are not meant to be comprehensive summaries but rather the reactions of one pilgrim from a subjective perspective.

Part 8

Catechesis: God as Loving Communion

Arhcbishop Barry Hickey, Emeritus of Perth, Australia

Tuesday, June 12 - 2pm

Testimony: Communion in Marriage and Family

Mr. Carl Anderson

3pm

Disclaimer: This was easily my least favorite part of my three days at the IEC, and it has provoked what will be a not-as-intelligent-and-cohesive-as-I-want-it-to-be rant.

I was seriously underwhelmed by the archbishop. He was clearly intelligent, well-spoken, commanding, and a strong leader, but I thought his piece on the value of family was too much of a speech against birth-control. His message was one of "anti," which I am ok with, if it had provided a faithful argument against negative things rather than simply rail on something as wrong in a manner whose best reasoning seemed to be "because" or "since I said so." I have a near insatiable hunger for theology, faith seeking understanding, keynotes, lectures, talks, and speeches, but I couldn't distill out much of use from this speech. Here are the three bullets I wrote before deciding to close my notebook and just listen:

• The alternatives to marriage are futile.
• God Himself as Trinity lives in perfect loving communion (via John Paul II).
• The Archbishop's main argument against contraception - the danger of an anti-child mentality.

Those first two points are wonderful, and I don't disagree with his third point. The modern attitude toward sexuality is that sex absolutely does not have to be procreative, and often, it doesn't have to be unitive either; these are the two things that the Church teaches should be present simultaneously in sex. Modern society seeks to invent ways around nature so that humans don't have to change the behavior they want to practice. Rather than practice chastity, humanity had to develop "birth control" to enable it to freely have sex without worry of pregnancy, which is treated as an inconvenience. Such an attitude toward pregnancy can create a seriously flawed attitude toward sex that can affect how people approach engagement, marriage, and starting a family. It's a slippery slope situation, and that's as solid of an argument as I find here, I think.

I started piecing together how I might approach it, and unfortunately, I can't come up with an argument that I feel is both logical and superior to the one I heard there. So I have to just say what I live and feel is best conscientiously. For me, it just comes back to self-denial, and I acknowledge that this is both unpopular and widely viewed as unrealistic. But I think it remains a valuable and effective discipline. 

Wait to start drinking until you're 21, and you will probably be a more responsible drinker. Save up your money and shop around really well before buying your new iPad or laptop or choosing your new car, and you'll gain discipline and end up with the best product you can have. Spend time with a new friend of the opposite sex to talk a bit, do some social things together, and discern how you fit together before jumping into a relationship, and you'll probably have a better relationship. Let your physical sexuality develop in proportion to the whole intimacy or closeness of your relationship, and the relationship will be more nourishing and loving. Wait to have sex until marriage, and it will mean more because it celebrates the full self-gift of two people to each other in a way only possible within the sacramentality of marriage.

And that's where I lose most people. They don't care to exercise patience. People are happy enough to spend freely on expensive stuff, experiment with drinks, cigarettes, or other drugs, and hastily accelerate physical sexuality with others, often many different people right in a row, let alone involving themselves in a relationship. The tendency toward instant gratification, the aversion to cultivating patience, and people's not wanting to learn from self-denial and slow-playing things are all tremendous barriers to the adoption of a more chaste sexuality.

And now the nuggets from Mr. Anderson:

• Mr. Anderson quoted Jesus, "Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you do not have life within you." But people receiving Eucharist still have life, so how is it different? Not sure what the answer exactly turns out to be, but it is something along the lines of not realizing the full reality of communion made possible by Christ in Christ.
• He told us that Eucharist is always both horizontal and vertical. Benedict XVI teaches us that where we fail to live communion with each other, we fail also to know communion with God.
• He believes that the Eucharist, not our works, is the ultimate measure of our lives (cited JP2 for this). The Eucharist is what makes us effective collaborators in the spreading of God's love and the building of His Kingdom.
• Finally, he sees great similarity between the Trinitarian relationship and human community. Through Eucharist, we can know and execute profoundly the love shared between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Son, Jesus Christ, became incarnate by the Holy Spirit, a beautiful miracle that placed God in the human family, by way of the Holy Family, and also in the greater family that is the Church.

Mr. Anderson was a wonderful testifier to faith, but my attention and focus was diluted by the previous talk and the falling rains during his talk - so, my apologies for not having better notes on him.