Noticing Jesus

Sounds odd, that post title. Just ‘noticing’ Jesus infers a passing glance. But the focus of Good Friday is the whole Passion and crucifixion of Christ on the Cross.

I noticed a really good article, and lively discussion going on as a result of it, over at First  Things.

The Eucharist—celebrated constantly throughout the world and this night with a particular intensity—turns our world upside down. It announces that at the center of the universe is the crucified Jew, Jesus.

When he was crucified, everybody thought the real action and the real power and glory were in Rome. Jesus was just another small-time, backwoods nuisance to the emperor, easily disposed of.

But in the frail flesh of Jesus, in his death, God changed everything. This is in human terms a most unlikely form of revolution. More radically—if that is imaginable—God continues that work under the forms of bread and wine.

Two things came to mind in reading and contemplating everything in this piece and the ensuing disussion. Things that came to me years ago in an adoration chapel. One, since it’s hard for even many Catholics to realize Christ is fully present in the Eucharist (much less those never taught his institution of that presence at the Last Supper…), imagine how powerful it would be if they could see a sort of hologram of him in front of every monstrance or tabernacle. Wow, talk about revolutionary….

And two, imagine if only one priest in one church in the world had the ability to consecrate the bread and wine into the body and blood of  Jesus Christ and thus make him truly present in that church…..how people would probably travel across the globe to be at this sacred place where Christ is really ‘appearing’ among us today.

But since all of this is happening in the nearest Catholic church, and has been since the Apostles carried on the sacraments, it has become mundane to many (most). What Fr. Klein and his respondents remind us is that Axis Mundi is the better term.