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| Musical Musings: Hymns and Hymnody |
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Singing for the Supper or the Sacrifice?by Lucy E. Carroll
This article first appeared in Adoremus Bulletin: Online Edition - Vol. VIII, No. 8: November 2002, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the editor, Helen Hull Hitchcock, and the author, Dr. Carroll. While actual numbers vary but little, most surveys today show that more than half of American Catholics either do not believe in the Real Presence, or do not understand the concept. Since the Real Presence is the primary difference between Catholicism and Protestantism (all other differences must pale in comparison), this is a serious issue. Causes are many: inadequate catechesis, incorrect catechesis, emphasis on the Liturgy of Word over the Liturgy of the Eucharist, removal of the Tabernacle, prohibitions on kneeling, bargain-counter lines to Communion, secularization of the Church's art, architecture and music.... In Catholicism, the altar is an altar of sacrifice. Replacing it with a wooden table, as in Protestant churches, shifts the emphasis from the sacrifice to the meal. This becomes only a banquet, a memorial of Holy Thursday without the blood sacrifice of Good Friday. In some denominations, the Communion service is only held once or twice a year. In other Christian churches, it is once a month. Yet to Catholics, the very purpose of the service is the Eucharist; to miss that portion means to miss Mass. It is ironic that in churches that recognize only a "presence" (Episcopal, Lutheran), Communion is received reverently, while kneeling at the altar rail. In other denominations, bread and small cups of wine or juice are passed out to the seated congregants, who partake in silence and reverence. Yet Catholics, who are to receive the transubstantiated Body and Blood, the very soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, march up to the server while juggling a paper missal and singing about ... what exactly are Catholics singing about the Eucharist these days? Are we singing for a supper? Or for the sacrifice of Calvary? One often-overlooked issue in the erosion of belief in the Real Presence is the text of Communion hymns. As we sing, so we believe. In the rush to provide vernacular hymnody in post-Conciliar days, many Protestant hymns were adapted. Some are beautiful, suitable; interestingly, some are even more appropriate textually than modern-day hymns in "Catholic" liturgy booklets. Contemporary hymns lead us to believe that Christ becomes bread, rather than the reverse; that the bread is only a symbol of Christ, or, worse, of something else entirely; that it is our body and our blood; that this is a meal only; or that this is a call to social activism. The words sacrifice, Real Presence, and even Body and Blood of Christ are strangely absent. To most of Protestant Christianity, the Eucharist is a symbol; while some believe that Christ becomes somehow present in the elements of bread and wine, only Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) believe that the elements actually become Body and Blood. But in this hymn, we have only a symbol: Welcome the symbolsWelcome the symbols? Surely this is more than a symbol. Yet in another hymn we find only a meal, and symbols yet again: We bring the bread and wine to share a mealA sign of the presence of the Lord. Is that all there is? Similarly, in "Bread, Blessed and Broken" we find no reference to Body, Blood, Presence, or sacrifice: Bread, blessed and broken for us allThe aspect of symbolism is now enlarged upon in some current hymn texts. The bread is a sign not of Christ, but of something else entirely, as is the wine. For example: Here we will take the wine and the waterBread is re-birth, wine is compassion? They may be something else again, as in this hymn: You are the bread of peaceJoyful wine? This extended symbolism continues in a text by Jerry Brubaker: We eat the bread of teaching,Wine of wisdom? What an interesting interpretation! Now, dramatic license is very well and good, but a steady diet of questionable interpretation can only serve to erase the true meaning of the Eucharistic sacrifice. This extended interpretation is carried even farther in this Wisdom's Feast: here we learn that it is not Christ giving His Body and Blood, but Wisdom - the gnostic concept of Sophia! - giving us bread and wine. Wisdom calls throughout the cityPerhaps reading Gnosticism into this is unfair; perhaps this is only a feminine pronoun for God, inclusive language run amok? At any rate, the concept of Wisdom preparing bread and wine for a banquet is rather far removed from orthodoxy. The Eucharist, one must repeat, is the gift of bread and wine that become - through the act of consecration, through the sacrifice of Calvary prefigured in the Last Supper - the Body and Blood. But according to another current hymn, it is the reverse: Here is a living sign:Here we are told that death and resurrection become bread and wine. And is it Christ's death and resurrection? The text only refers to Him as "one man." Regardless, actions cannot become elements: death does not become bread. Through Christ's death the bread becomes His Body, but how are Catholics to know that, given the texts they are given to sing? Indeed, according to David Haas, the reverse is true: Christ becomes bread. (verse 3) He chose to give of HimselfMoreover, we are to become bread and wine, as the hymn continues: (verse 4) We are the presence of GodAnother popular hymn repeats that we become bread: Bread for the world,This confusion continues as some hymns now tell us that we are to become the bread of life: I myself am the bread of lifeSo, are we all involved in this act of consecration? This is our blood? Is it any wonder Catholics are confused? It is only Jesus Christ who is the Bread of Life! And that bread is His Body, that wine becomes His Blood.
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