Few quotes to reflect on Corpus Christi
(Definitely not the conventional ones)
On the feast day of Corpus Christ (or the feast celebrating the gift of Jesus completely to us), I wish to share three quotes from different types of authors who speak about gift and relations. I think these reflections can open a pathway to think of our relations with God and fellow humans (which are definitely intimately related in a Christian understanding). Relations are a gift; and probably fundamental to us than we think.
THE BONDS THAT COMPOSE US : When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. It is not as if an “I” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes who “I” am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who “am” I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I THINK I HAVE LOST ‘YOU’ ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT ‘I’ HAVE GONE MISSING AS WELL.
( Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence). Judith Butler is a renowned philosopher, but definitely not closer to Christian faith.
In the course of my life, love has gradually become incarnate in me, my personality has been woven by the love I have received and the love I have given; the way in which I have expressed this love through my body, which is my capacity to be present to others and to the universe, this love has forever constituted my personality. We ask ourselves the problem of the relationship with others: let us know that this relationship is not adventitious, additional, but that it is constitutive even of our being. I am woven together by the love that I have received and that I have given. And if it is true that love alone passes through death, we can say that, to the extent that my being is open to the totality of God and of others, I will forever be this being that I have woven throughout the days
A text from Xavier-leon Dufour, a French Jesuit Biblist.
One can say and write everything, imagine and feel everything, consolation has for only vocation to make whole, to repair the broken heart, to reconcile the torn soul, to put back upright the broken body. All this, together. To console is to repair the living in their wholeness and integrity. And it is to repair them with their suffering. It is to make them whole with their emptiness, their loss and their lack.
(Julliand, Anne-dauphine. Consolation (French Edition). Groupe Margot. Kindle Edition) Anne-Dauphine is a mom who lost two of her daughters to a terrible illness.
I wont say all quotes and images are connected in a logical sequence… but i think they reveal some aspects of gift and relation….
