God willed not only to create the world, but to enter into
relationship with it. God wanted the created world to be charged
with personal existence. Creation would know God back. Creation
would love God in return.
And so it was that we were enfranchised with intellect and will,
gifts that made possible a free act of love. We were endowed with
the ability to commit ourselves. We could enter covenant.
God said, “Let it be.” Even more, God said, “I
enter into covenant with you.” Yet we mere humans were unequal
to the task. The risk of personal relationship, of faith and hope
and love, while so godly, was somehow also too frightening for us.
It required that we accept our creaturely state. It meant that we
would have to admit our dependence upon and our free obedience to
the holy Other. This, we resisted. And the sorry tale has been told
since Eden.
But God was relentless. Even if we reject the proposition, God would ply us with promises of gifts, holy signs, and steadfast guidance. Covenantal relationship, the very life of the Trinity, would never be withdrawn from us, even if we are lost in a sinful state. The divinity would hold itself bound to us. Thus Noah had his rainbow, Abraham his improbable descendants, Moses the covenant of law, David the ark in his palace. And among the prophets of covenant appeared Melchizedek with bread, wine, and blessing given to Abram and Abram’s God.
Melchizedek’s gesture foreshadowed our final covenant, our new law, our ultimate promise that we and the Holy Spirit make present in Eucharist. Christ’s body and blood is the covenant. He himself is the promise of God. We in turn affirm our side of the covenant, proclaiming the mystery of faith: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.”
Paul reminded the Corinthians of this covenantal promise in words similar to those we find in Luke and Mark: “This is my body, which is for you. ... This cup is the new covenant in my blood. ... Do this in remembrance of me.”
Eucharistic images, such as the miraculous multiplication account in the Gospel of Luke, are all harbingers of the undying relationship between God and us. Our daily consecrations remember and re-enact the reality of God’s covenantal love.
They also remind us, however, what it is that God so much wants from
us. It is that relationship, that free “yes,” that gaze
back that says with all one’s heart, “I do believe, I
hope, I love.”
The poet Charles Péguy wrote in his work God Speaks that after all the magnificence of mountains and depth of the
seas, God wanted something else. It was not power or might; it was
not the submission of slaves; it was not the automatic response of
robots. It was covenant. It was consent. After one has been loved
freely in return, submission loses its taste. All the blind
submission in the world is not equal to the beautiful soaring-up
point in a single invocation of a love that is free.