Ever Present

Today Irwin touched on, among many other things, the idea that we do the Eucharist not strictly as a remembrance but to perpetuate the experience of Christ crucified. Yes, Christ died on Calvary's hill in AD 33, but the idea behind Eucharist is to perpetuate the experience of all that this event means. This is a profound theological datum. Think of it: an event that started 2000 years ago continues through the ritual of the Eucharist to this very day. On Sunday mornings we still experience Christ's death and resurrection; it goes on and on.

The idea prompts the question of whether there are other realities worth perpetuating, and of course there are. The kingdom of God broke into the world at the incarnation; the church's privilege and obligation is to perpetuate that kingdom, to keep unrolling it throughout the world and time.

I'm reading some Romero while I'm down here. This morning's reading likened the sensation of placing a scraped hand in salt to the truth that wherever the world is fractured, the presence of Christians should burn. How's that for a different nuance to being the salt of the earth!