Breaking Bread in the Desert

By Christian Bergmann

Christian Bergmann

One of my old teachers from college used to correct us constantly whenever we did not use basic grammar when it came to theology and the life of the Church. He wanted us to unlearn many of the bad habits of speech we grew up with. The idea was, I suppose, that if we could learn to talk straight, then perhaps we could learn to think straight, too. One of those bad habits we had – and I still haven’t entirely uprooted this from my life – was to talk of ‘going to Church’. This, he said, was a fundamental error of speech we had to unlearn.

Why was this? It’s obvious to many of us that, in fact, we do go to Church, hopefully at least once a week. But, this bad habit we hold actually runs up against a more basic truth: when we gather, we gather for worship as the Church, not at church. That is to say: the ‘Church’ is something we are, something we live, and not something we go to.

I’ve been thinking a lot more about this recently, especially since, as Catholics, we are facing an unknown period of time without being able to participate in the celebration of the Eucharist. In some sense, we are entering now into a kind of ‘sacramental desert’. The Eucharist is, as centuries of saints and mystics and theologians have taught us, what brings the church into being and sustains her on her journey. As Saint Augustine observed: we become what we eat. “The Body of Christ”, the priest says. We respond: “Amen.” Yes. We become the very Body of Christ we consume. Now, for a time, we must go without.

The question, though, is how we continue to be the Church when our lives have been so disrupted that we can no longer do what we consider to be the normal Church ‘thing’.

The answer lies, I think, in the Eucharist even still. Pope Emeritus-Benedict XVI once said, in his exhortation ‘The Sacrament of Love’: “Each of us is truly called, together with Jesus, to be bread broken for the life of the world” (88).

In other words, a Eucharistic spirituality isn’t supposed to remain within the Mass. It is supposed to pervade our whole lives so that we can learn to live as Jesus lived and die as Jesus died: broken for others. This is the Christian life. This is Church.

In Melbourne at the moment, and possibly for some time, there is a palpable anxiety. There is unrest, distrust and fear as so much hangs upon the uncertainties and unknowables related to the spread of COVID-19 and the government’s responses to it. We fear for our food and for our work and for our loved ones. These are no small things. In the pandemonium of frantic shopping, it can often feel like the only response to this crisis is ‘every man for himself’.

Maybe as we continue journeying through Lent and through this crisis, we can try and figure out a way of being and living as the Church that resists this ‘every man for himself’ instinct. The ethic of the Church, after all, is not every man for himself, but is about being our brother’s keeper. Ever since Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” in the book of Genesis, God’s answer through the ages has been: “Absolutely.”

In this time of fear and panic, how can we be our brother’s keeper? How can we share, in a time of hoarding, with those who do not have enough? How can we live as a bread that is broken for the life of the world? How can we continue to witness, with joy and hope, to the Christ who is present amongst us, even in great anxiety?

These are the questions going through my mind. I’ll be praying we can wrestle with them together, as a Church.

Christian Bergmann is a graduate of Campion College and is a freelance writer, Parishioner of Holy Family, a husband and a father of a baby due in July.