The Motto of St. John the Baptist

 

      Last Sunday evening, after celebrating Mass at the Catholic Student Center at WCU, I drove over to a town near Charlotte to spend some time with a priest friend in his parish.  The next morning he left the rectory early to offer Mass at the parish church, while I stayed behind and celebrated Mass in the small rectory chapel.  The altar there is located against the east wall on which hangs a framed and glass-covered copy of Diego Velazquez’ stark and beautiful painting of the crucifixion.  All is dark on the canvas except for the cross itself and our Lord, crowned with thorns, crucified.  The effect of Velazquez’ art was for me all the more effective, since it was right there, only a couple of feet away.

      I said Mass as usual, carefully trying to pray the words that are so familiar to a priest.  The Consecration was more moving than usual, though, since the proximity of the scene of Golgotha was all but overwhelming.  Then came the words – so oft repeated – now with new force:  “Father, we celebrate the memory of Christ your Son....”   “The memory.”  But do we, do I, very often remember Him like this, His body broken and blood poured out?  We should, since the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is that very remembering – and more, much more:  the very re-presentation of this, the one Sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world – Calvary. 

      But more was in store for me on this occasion.  I came finally to the Doxology – “Through Him, with Him, in Him...” – and as I held up the Consecrated Gifts, I glanced up and into the reflection cast by the glass covering Velazquez’ art, and there I saw for a mere instant the vague figure of a man, vested as a priest, whose face was obscured beyond personal identification due to the fact that I was staring at His feet nailed and bleeding, and the reflection was dimmed by the colors of human flesh, human blood and Roman nails. 

      I paused and looked slightly to the left and to the right, to those parts of the painting before me that are all in darkness.  And there, lifted up and perfectly reflected, with amazing clarity, were a golden paten on which lay His Body and a golden chalice containing His Precious Blood.  Oh what a relief to not look at myself in whom, left to myself, there is no resource for redemption, forgiveness, and salvation!  The words of St. Paul came to mind:  “I preach only Christ and Him crucified.” 

      What else is there in the light of what transpired on a hill outside of Jerusalem some two thousand years ago?  Well, people have come up with alternatives; I’ve heard them mentioned, taught, and even seen them fervently enacted (a rather embarrassing experience) at many a workshop or seminar.  I heard it in seminary:  things like, as I’ve shared with you before, “we come to Mass to celebrate ourselves.”  That last word, “ourselves,” depending on the latest liturgical fad, could become “our community,” “our gifts,” “our culture,” or whatever.  Modern churches have even been built with mirrors lining the sanctuary walls so that “the people” can behold themselves around the altar.  It cannot get much more ridiculous than all this (or let us at least hope so); and I saw in a stunningly fresh way why this is all so silly, as I offered Mass in that little chapel in a priest friend’s rectory:  Christ himself “obscured” my face, not to erase me or my human dignity or my own personality (which He gave me), but rather so that I might behold Him.  So that I might, all the more sincerely and honestly, say, pray, with your, the laity’s assistance, those words from the Roman Canon, “Father, we celebrate the memory of Christ, your Son.  We, your people and your ministers, recall his passion, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into glory....” 

      Thus the sense of St. John the Baptist’s words, “[Christ] must increase, but I must decrease.”  That is, John is saying as much, “I must bear witness to Him”; and to his interrogators, “Stop looking at me, questioning me, dreaming up ideas of who I am – go to Him, ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’.”  The Mass, then, is all about Christ, our memory of Him and His Sacrifice, and the making of that Sacrifice present to us so that we might share in it and receive the fruits of it in Holy Communion.  Those fruits are nothing less than what I saw so clearly reflected in that painting of the Crucifixion:  Christ’s Body broken for us, and His Blood poured out for us.  “This is the bread,” Jesus proclaimed, “which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:50ff). 

      It boggles my mind that any Catholics would even want a different understanding of the Mass, but I have, over the years, heard any number of them complain about having to say those words that enact our “decreasing”:  “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you....”  Of course we are not, but that’s hardly the point, if we remember His Sacrifice, His free giving of Himself for us out of love.  We do not deserve such a gift, but Love insists on giving it, Himself, anyway. 

      Glancing at Velazquez’ portrayal of that Sacrifice while offering that very Sacrifice, I realized that my “facelessness” was most appropriate, because I not only then had a sharper view of the nails in His feet, but also a jolting reminder of Who it is that I was holding up to God the Father in my hands, priestly hands consecrated at ordination to do such an awesome and somewhat frightening thing:  that He Who is the “living bread which came down from heaven,” comes again to us in the most Holy Eucharist.  What a Gift!  So great, so very wonderful, it makes one forget himself!  Or, that is, decrease, so that one might all the more reflect Him, Christ, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world.