THE WORLD'S GREATEST SECRET
John Mathias Haffert
table of contents
CHAPTER EIGHT
BOOK OF THE SECRET
We often see just a loaf of
bread marked with a cross in ,'the Mediterranean excavations. Generation after
generation of the ancient Jews told their children that the great one, the
Messiah,* would be born in "the house of bread," or as the name is
in Hebrew, Bethlehem. "Where is he who is born King of the Jews?"
was the question that was asked by certain foreigners newly arrived from the
distant East. Following a strange star in the heavens, they had traveled over
misty mountains, through and deserts, across broad valleys, until they came at
last to Israel and to its capital city, Jerusalem. The chief priests and the
scribes there had an answer for the Easterners. The Holy Scriptures foretold
that the expected of nations was to be born in the town known as the house of
bread. From the moment that Christ lay like a kernel of wheat restored to the
straw of the manger, one scene and one circumstance after another seems to tie
in by symbolism and analogy with His future Eucharistic life. It was as though
all His coming and all His days were directed, like the entelechy of living
cells, toward the Eucharist. Indeed, we can go back before His birth.
2 At
the moment of the Incarnation nine months before His birth we see a
correlation between God-man in embryo* and God-man in bread. Surely His hidden ness
in those nine months and His sanctification of John the Baptizer suggest his hidden ness
in the Eucharistic bread and his sanctification of all who approach him
there.' He might have been expected to materialize in some dazzling, glorious
manner. But He chose to come as a speck of matter in a human tabernacle. One
could review His whole life as recorded in the Gospels and continue finding
these connections and looking for this symbolism with marked success. His very
first miracle, the one which inaugurated His public life, was the changing of
the water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana. In the Eucharist He changes
wine into His blood. Let us try an experiment. Let us open the New Testament
at random and by the spot-check method see how closely Christ's Palestinian
life relates to His Eucharistic life.2 The first opening falls upon the tenth
chapter of the Gospel of John. The first verse to meet our eyes reads:
"And they once again took up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them: 'I
have showed you many good works from the Father, for which of these do you
stone me?' "The Jews answered him, 'It is not for a good work that we
stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself
God.
3 "' A few verses
later, we read: "Again they tried to arrest him, but he escaped from
their hands. " Two facts strike us here: Christ claimed to be God, and at
the moment of His choice He became invisible. In this day of militant atheism
stones still threaten Him in churches and in tabernacles where we assert His
Divinity. But He constantly escapes and constantly renews His Presence. Just
as He became invisible on the occasion of the Gospel story, so He becomes
invisible now, hidden under the appearances of very ordinary looking bread.
Heroic missionaries who consecrate the bread sometimes slip behind the Iron or
Bamboo Curtains and no enemy detects the Lord Whom they bring with them. He is
both human and divine, yet He becomes invisible. If you have a Bible handy,
you might like to follow the experiment. This time the sacred book opens on
Mark's tenth chapter. James and John have just asked Christ for a place on His
right and left sides when He is glorified. He replies that they do not know
what they are asking and He challenges: "Can you drink the cup I shall
drink... ?" Eagerly they say that they can. But He goes on to tell them
that their request is not His to grant them, and He admonishes them for
seeking so high a position. He says: "... whoever would be great among
you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave
of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve ...... How
completely these words find fulfillment in the Eucharistic state of
subjection. He makes Himself dependent on men.
4 Next our Bible falls open
on the tenth chapter of S Luke. Here we find Christ in Bethany visiting the
home o the sisters Martha and Mary. At the moment their brother Lazarus is
out. Mary sits as the Master's feet listening to His words. Martha asks Christ
to speak to Mary and bid her to help with the cooking. Christ answers:
"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; only one
thing is required. Mary has chosen the better part and she shall not be
deprived of it. " In this passage, again the dual nature of Christ is
asserted, with emphasis on personal conversation with Him. Where can we meet
Christ in person? Of course we can find God anywhere, wherever we happen to be
at the moment, whether in a crowded subway, on a lonely mountain pass, in a
bustling newspaper office, in a hospital bed. God is everywhere and we can
always seek His Presence in prayer, in love and in the turning of our mind and
heart to Him. He is at hand. Martha must have known and lived this truth and
it is emphasized by many today who do not believe in the Eucharist. But we
can, according to the doctrine of the Eucharist, actually sit at His feet as
Mary did in Bethany by walking to the nearest tabernacle.* The truth that He
is everywhere is not always enough to evoke prayer. Even the truth that He
dwells within our very souls is not always enough. It is sometimes too
nebulous an idea for us to grasp solidly. The secret of Christianity reveals
that God had pity on us. He comes to our human weakness in human form as well
as with His divinity. He comes in His own flesh and blood in the Eucharist.
5 He is there in a set
place, at a set time, under the appearance of a visible and tangible) thing
that we can see, and feel, and taste. Patiently today He waits in the
tabernacles throughout the world, hoping that a few Marys will stop to sit at
His feet. Sadly today He addresses the millions upon millions of Marthas who,
though they are good and just people, are so caught up in a whirlwind of
activities and business that they rarely, if ever, find time for prayer in His
Eucharistic Presence. And He is so available! Could He have made Himself
anymore so than by entering thousands upon thousands of tabernacles in every
city and hamlet in the world? If it might appear that some of our
interpretations of the Bible passages we chose at random were contrived, let
it be quickly admitted that many lessons can be drawn from the life of Christ.
During the survey made before publication of this book, many tried the same
experiment with varying success. Some came upon passages more apt than the
three we quoted. But those passages in particular which assert His divinity,
His power of working miracles, and His desire for physical intimacy with us
are obvious confirmations of the climactic events of the Last Supper. And what
if we deliberately chose the passages from the Evangelists which we considered
appropriate instead of opening the Bible at random? Once we know the secret of
Christianity, all that Christ did and said has new meaning. But even more, our
present relationship with Him leaps to new life, wherever we may be, in any
corner of the world. That house in Bethany is no more honored than a place He
has chosen in my own town.
6 He wept outside that house
in sympathy for the grief of two sisters; and a few moments later He called
their brother back from the tomb. He demonstrated in those few minutes how
completely He war both human and divine. He showed His delight to be with the
children of men, to share in their sorrows and to be their joy. So we find in
almost every gospel passage that the same Christ who walked, talked, prayed,
forgave and wrought cures in Palestine is just as meaningful in the Eucharist.
Indeed, the Eucharistic life of Christ is at once the fulfillment and the
extension of His life in Palestine. He is as close as the nearest tabernacle.
In a sense the world's first stone tabernacle is in Jerusalem on Mount Zion,*
in the ruins of the house of Caiapas high priest in the year 33 A.D. It is the
recently discovered security prison where Christ spent the last hours of the
night on which He instituted the Eucharist with
a rope.
7 While the fact of the
prison's existence was long known, the actual prison itself was not discovered
until the twentieth century, together with the scales to weigh the "sin
offerings" and other items which identified the prison area as belonging
to the high priest. A staircase has now been cut into the prison so that the
Eucharistic Liturgy can be celebrated in this subterranean hold where on the
very night after the institution of the Blessed Sacrament He, by His Presence,
made the place a tabernacle. Hidden here, between the hours of the first Mass
and its culmination on Calvary, He prayed for us. To receive the Eucharist in
such a holy place could be a special experience. Nonetheless there is hardly a
Christian who would not agree with the pilgrim who said: " I spent so
much to come to the Holy Land, which seems scarcely to have changed since
Christ's day, and it was here I learned what I should have known before I
started. He left here places and memories. Himself He left in the
Eucharist." And what about His miracles? Does He still perform them in
London and New York, in Berlin and Des Moines, in Bangkok and Athens, as He
did in Bethany?
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