Celebrate the Feast

Mount Calvary, Camp Hill PA • Feb 24 2018
The Funeral of Br Luke Anthony Nowicki BSG
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Death has been swallowed up in victory.+

Anyone who knew Brother Luke Anthony knows that he liked to eat. I knew Luke Anthony for almost forty years, and shared many a meal with him during that time, in many different settings. In part because of this familiarity, I noticed one of the first signs that he might be dealing with a serious illness late last December. He was with a group of us Gregorians at Lin’s Buffet, one of his favorite restaurants. But not only did Luke not make his normal second trip to the buffet, he didn’t finish what was on his plate from the first trip. Now, Lin’s Buffet was Brother Luke’s idea of something close to paradise. Whenever he talked about going there for lunch, he would get a gleam of anticipation in his eye, such as a mystic might when speaking of heaven. And Luke Anthony got that same look in his eye when he spoke of the Holy Eucharist — another feast that meant so much to him. So I am confident that Luke’s choice of the Old Testament passage from Isaiah has something to do with a vision of heaven as a bit like Lin’s Buffet; as Isaiah says, God’s provision of “a feast of rich food” for all peoples, a truly international buffet.

As that passage from Isaiah reveals, Luke was far from the first to associate an abundance of food in rich variety with a vision of paradise. More importantly, Christians have long associated the earthly celebration of the Holy Eucharist with the heavenly banquet. Now some might be tempted to think that bread and wine are insufficient provision for a banquet, providing only a limited buffet hardly worth the name. So it is good to recall the old legend of the Holy Grail and of the knights dedicated to its service: for the Grail was the cup of the Last Supper, and the knights devoted to its service lived entirely and solely on Eucharistic Bread and Wine as their only food and drink, and yet each who partook of those simple elements experienced them, so say the legends, as “whatever food each liked best, containing all variety.” In, with, and under those two simple elements of the oblation, an infinity of perfect satisfaction was to be found and tasted.

So it is that simplicity can convey complexity, a single promise realize an infinity of fulfillment. In the same way, there is more to Isaiah’s vision than merely an abundance of food. This is no ordinary meal, not even an ordinary feast, but a banquet set for a purpose, a feast with a reason. It is a celebration feast, a way to mark and rejoice in deliverance. And as with so much in Isaiah, it is not about deliverance just for the children of Israel, but for all the peoples of the world. It is not merely deliverance from hunger or sorrow or disgrace — though it is that — but deliverance from an old enemy. Isaiah pictures him as a funeral shroud or winding sheet, the old enemy Death, dressed in the tattered old sheet of a Hallowe’en costume. Death is the one whom the Lord God, at his coming, will sweep away and swallow up, whipped out of sight and mind much as a magician might pull the tablecloth away from the dining table in a flash, leaving the banquet standing still and undisturbed.

As Saint Paul observes, continuing the image deployed by Isaiah, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” Death — the thing we feared, the thing that led us to weeping and sorrow, the enemy that each of us mourns in others and dreads for ourselves, turns out to be perishable goods. Death itself dies, swallowed up in the victory of life. All of its pretended power and might is swallowed up, to serve as little more than an hors d’oeuvre, a mere appetizer, a first course before the feast of life begins.

That feast of life is spread for us today, as it has been spread for nigh on 2,000 years, beginning in that upper room amidst a band of disciples with their master. It has been celebrated since in every conceivable circumstance and situation. And it is common to speak of this Eucharistic feast as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. But I would like to affirm to you today that it is not merely a foretaste or anticipation: it is participation in the heavenly banquet itself, the Real Presence of the Promise. It derives its power as a promise assured by the One who made the promise, and gave the command: “Do this!”

We don’t always take him at his word, so he gently reassures us. Look at Jesus gently correcting Martha when she thinks he is referring to some far off future resurrection of the dead yet to come: He assures her that the resurrection life was — and is — present to all who believe, who though they die, will live, and that life will come to her dead brother in mere minutes. Such are his promises, such his reassurance. And just as the power of the resurrection cuts through time and space and makes its real presence felt not only in the there and then of a distant past or distant future, but in the here and now of every instant in a Christian life, so too the heavenly banquet is not merely set in heaven, but set here and now before us, and before every gathering of Christians when they follow the command, and “do this.” Whether at a simple table set in an upper room, a grand marble altar in a great cathedral, or a cart on wheels at a hospital bedside in intensive care, it isn’t the table that matters, but the meal.

Jesus had shared the table fellowship and graced the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus many times. He sat at the table in Bethany as starry-eyed Mary listened to his teaching, while practical Martha busied herself with her pots and pans — and Lazarus perhaps looked on with some amusement, though the Gospel gives us no explicit witness. Lazarus would be the first — even before Jesus — to taste the power of the resurrection. But he could not, would not enjoy that resurrection before he had tasted death — any more than Christ himself could pass that first course by.

Death: Lazarus’ death, Luke Anthony’s death, your death, my death, are in this feast and banquet bound together and tied up with the death of Jesus Christ our Lord. He has swallowed up death, as did Lazarus and Luke, as I will and as you will, that piquant palate cleanser before we sit to dine for ever at the feast of resurrection in the heavenly kingdom. But remember — remember as our Lord and Savior bids us do — that our Eucharist today is not just a foretaste of that heavenly banquet. It is participation in the banquet itself. Lazarus and Luke are seated even now — in that timeless Now of God’s good time — seated even now on the other side of the table from us, together with all who have gone before, all our loved ones, all the saints; and all the sinners too, redeemed by the one in whom they put their trust. It is one banquet, however often and wherever it is celebrated, one banquet for our one Lord, in whom we all are one through one baptism: baptized into his death that we may share in his life. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Therefore let us celebrate the feast.+