Fifth Gospel, Part 1

Studying how the Holy Land shapes the liturgy

06/18/2024

We begin a new series of homilies on the Mass or the Eucharist. Why? Well, because the U.S. bishops are calling all Catholics to deepen their faith in "the source and summit" of the Christian life, as Vatican II described the Eucharist. The most unusual place I ever celebrated Mass was while hurtling through the Canadian countryside on a train. Many years ago I took a five-day, scenic train excursion with my parents from Toronto to Banff. It was breathtaking to gaze on the crystal clear lakes, to peer up at the snow-capped mountains, and to try to catch sight of the skittish wildlife as the train sped by. Gazing out the frosty window I felt like I was glancing back in time to the Garden of Eden at the creation, still unspoiled. Canada, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, still does not “wear man’s smudge and share man’s smell.”

We spent a week on the train, and one of those days happened to be a Sunday. As usual, I brought along my traveling Mass kit (about the size of a briefcase). I planned to say Mass in our tiny cabin with just my parents for my parishioners. But suddenly it occurred to me: surely there must be more than three Catholics in Canada! So like a conductor I went up and down the train not taking up tickets but handing out tickets to “the greatest show on earth”, the supernatural circus of the Eucharist! I often think of myself as the circus monkey in the pulpit performing silly antics to make people come to the main attraction, Jesus in Holy Communion.

One family graciously offered their spacious, double-cabin for the Mass, so I was certain we would have plenty of room. By the time Mass started, however, a flash mob of Catholics had gathered, even lining up far down the hallway. As the earthly Garden of Eden flashed by outside the window, we enjoyed the heavenly Garden of Eden inside. In other words, wherever the Eucharistic Lord is present, we enter the true Garden of Eden, like innocent Adam and Eve.

The best way to deepen our faith in the Eucharist, though – besides attending the Mass itself – is by studying Scripture. St. Jerome famously said “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” I would paraphrase that to say: “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of the Eucharist” because the Eucharist is Christ hidden behind the mask of the Mass. John Bergsma and Brant Pitre make this connection explicitly: “the Bible is the Church’s liturgical book" (liturgy is another word for the Mass). If the Bible remains closed on our shelf, our minds remain closed to the mystery and miracle that is the Mass.

And tragically that ignorance is spreading like wildfire. On August 5, 2019, the well-respected Pew Research Center released a study with the astounding title: “Just one third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that the Eucharist is body, blood of Christ.” Put simply, American Catholics are experiencing a profound crisis of faith in the Eucharist. Think about it: if sixty-six percent of Catholics don’t believe Communion really is Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, why would they come to Mass? As Flannery O’Connor novelist famous retorted a a dinner party: “If the Eucharist is just a symbol, to hell with it.” And that is exactly why sixty-six percent of Catholics think, and why they don’t come to Mass. One remedy that could put out this fire of ignorance is studying the Bible, “the Church’s liturgical book.”

In the following essay I want to take you on a tour of where the Eucharist was born, namely, the Holy Land. In a sense, the Bible will serve as our tour guide. Pope Benedict XVI once referred to the land of Israel as “the Fifth Gospel” in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini (meaning the Word of the Lord). He observed: “The stones on which our Redeemer walked are still charged with his memory and continue to ‘cry out’ the Good News. For this reason, the Synod Fathers recalled the felicitous phrase which speaks of the Holy Land as ‘the Fifth Gospel’.” That is, its very topography is theological. Its stones teach us every bit as much as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the other four gospels.

What I am proposing is that Israel, especially its capital city of Jerusalem, should hold a central place in the liturgical imagination of all Judeao-Christians. Why is that? Well, Jonathan Smith, professor of humanities at the University of Chicago, summarizes the numerous sacred, and we might even say “sacramental” events that took place at the site of the Jerusalem Temple. He writes: It is the place where the waters of the “Deep” were blocked off on the first day of creation; it is the source of the first light of creation; it is the place from which the dust was gathered to create Adam; it is the location of Adam’s first sacrifice, it is the site of Adam’s grave; it is the place where Cain and Abel offered sacrifice and hence, the location of Abel’s murder; the Flood was caused by lifting the Temple’s Foundation Stone and releasing the waters of the Deep; Abraham was circumcised on the Temple place; the Temple site was the location of Melchizedek’s altar; the Temple was the site of the altar prepared for Isaac’s sacrifice in the narrative of the Akedah; the Foundation Stone was the rock from which Moses drew water; YHWH stood on the Temple site to recall the plagues.” Can you hear how the very stones “cry out” to preach the Good News in the Holy Land?

Last Spring Bishop Erik Pohlmeier invited me to accompany him and some pilgrims on a tour of the Holy Land. Since then, however, the events of October 7 and the ensuing retaliation in Gaza have shelved all tourism and pilgrimages to Israel. But a war cannot stop us from going on a virtual tour of the Holy Land with the Bible as our infallible tour guide. The Fifth Gospel of the Holy Land is as close as our family Bible. Like I walked through that train offering tickets to Canadian Catholics to come to Mass, I would like to offer you a ticket to come tour the Fifth Gospel, the land of the liturgy.

Specifically, we will travel to Jerusalem and study four Masses in the Scriptures: the Mass of Melchizedek in Genesis 14, the Mass of King David in 2 Samuel 6, the Mass of Jesus and the Apostles in the Synoptic Gospels, and the Mass of the Heavenly Hosts in the book of Revelation. My hope as we proceed, is to show you how an amazing transformation occurs in the Fifth Gospel – the land where the stone “cry out”. That is, the Bible when it speaks about the Eucharist lifts our gaze from the old Jerusalem on earth to the new Jerusalem in heaven. And we can experience the Fifth Gospel – heaven on earth – even on a train between Toronto and Banff.

Praised be Jesus Christ!