The phrase “gift of self” makes no sense in a metaphysic of
individual “things” that are taken to be simply what we conceptualize them to
be. The tree out in the yard with snow melted around its base because it gives
off heat, is that individual tree
that I take to be that particular thing,
and it is what it is in itself, and
not out of itself. A concrete individual thing cannot give "itself" away.
I write this on the heels of glancing at the Brooklyn Table that reads on its front page: “The Eucharist is a celebration of Christ’s gift of Himself for the salvation of sinners, which is why the Mass begins with people confessing they are sinners and begging for the Lord’s mercy.”[1] I write this not to prove anything, but just to suggest that it would be good for us to pay attention to what is being said, and what the words involve. It is quite accurate to write that the Eucharist is “the celebration of Christ’s gift of Himself,” in that He can most literally give His “I” away. In fact, His “I” is an action of “being away from itself,” and this because He is a divine Person Who is the Son being always generated by the Father, and obeying and giving glory to the Father. He is consitutively “open.” Benedict XVI once write:
“The
word "Ephphatha" … calls to mind the well-known episode in
Mark's Gospel (cf. 7: 31-37) which is paradigmatic of how the Lord works for
deaf people. Jesus took aside a deaf mute and, after making some symbolic
gestures, raised his eyes to Heaven and said to him: ""Ephphatha',
that is , "Be opened'". At that moment, the Evangelist says,
the man's ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly. Jesus'
gestures are full of loving attention and express deep compassion for the man
who stood before him. The Lord showed the deaf man his concrete concern, drew
him aside from the confusion of the crowd, made him feel his closeness and
understanding by several gestures full of meaning. He placed his fingers in his
ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. He then invited him to turn his
interior gaze, that of his heart, together with him to the heavenly Father.
Finally, he healed him and restored him to his family, to his people, and the
crowd, marveling, could only exclaim: "He has done all things well; he
even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak!" (Mk 7: 37).
By his way of behaving which
reveals the heavenly Father's love, Jesus does not only heal physical deafness
but points out that there is another form of deafness of which humanity must be
cured, indeed, from which it must be saved: it is deafness of the spirit, which
raises ever higher barriers against the voice of God and that of one's
neighbour, especially the cry for help of the lowliest and the suffering, and
closes the human being in profound and ruinous selfishness. As I had the
opportunity to say in the Homily during my Pastoral Visit to the Diocese of
Viterbo last 6 September: "we can see in this "sign' Jesus'
ardent desire to overcome man' s loneliness and incommunicability created by
selfishness, in order to bring about a "new humanity', the humanity of
listening and speech, of dialogue, of communication, of communion with God. A
"good' humanity, just as all of God's Creation is good; a humanity without
discrimination, without exclusion... so that the world is truly and for all a
"scene of true brotherhood'" (Homily, Mass in Faul Valley, Viterbo, 6 September 2009).
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