A major difference between Eastern and Western
spirituality is in the way the various traditions regard the immanence or
transcendence of the Divine. The East
tends toward immanence and the West toward transcendence. The Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist can find the
Divine within; the Jew, Christian or Moslem is not so comfortable with that
idea.
Communion is only possible if the divine is
immanent. So how can a religion that
insists on the transcendence of the Divine, as Christianity does, enter into
communion? Holy Communion, at least as
it is celebrated in the Catholic Church, provides an interesting solution to
this. It brings the Divine into
space/time through the “miracle” of transubstantiation; and then we actually
bring the Divine into our being through the partaking of the transformed bread
and wine. We get a momentary immanence,
and thus communion is possible.
But what of this momentariness? How long does the Divine stay within after
communion? Until the bread and wine
dissolve?* There are many fascinating things to think about in this. Christianity overcomes the distance from God
that it inherited from its parent religion, Judaism. But by being a temporary immanance, it
maintains the fundamental idea of a transcendent God. Perhaps more sinister, the priest are given
control of access to the Divine (you get your five minutes of the Divine and if
you want more, come back tomorrow, and don’t forget to pay on your way
out!).
To the best of my knowledge, no one answers the
question above about how long the Divine stays.
It would seem that if we can bring the Divine into our life for a
minute, we could bring it there for an hour, a day, a lifetime. Why should the materiality of the bread and
wine matter? Yet the carefully crafted
theology of communion makes it matter.
There is definitely the assumption that the divine immanence presented
by communion is ephemeral.
The Catholic communion is tied to another
sacrifice, confession. One must make
oneself worthy of the Divine. I believe
that “communion” in some sense or another is a goal or the goal of all
spirituality and that it is always tied to some preparation, some making of
ourselves worthy or prepared.
Many today find communion with the natural world;
a long trek through the wilderness prepares us.
Many find it in erotic love; the preparation is the attention each partner
pays to the other. Some take peyote,
which has its own ritual preparation.
For some of us communion is also known as Satori, Samadhi, Nirvana,
Immersion in the Tao; the preparation is long years of study and
meditation.
To its credit, the Catholic sacrament of communion
is wonderfully easy, available, and right for many people. I suspect most people only want a few minutes
of the Divine per day, or even per week – a few minutes of being pure and
humble, before going back to the ordinary preoccupations.
Some of us are a little greedier.
·
* (I started asking questions like this early in
life, and I got slapped around by the nuns a lot because of it.)