If Western Civilization is to recover, it must enter into itself, i.e., respect the true nature of man. It must also have a recognition of a “sense of need”; for unless it feels its own inadequacy, its own insufficiency, its own hunger, how can it aspire or even yearn for the Bread of the Father’s house?
The first condition of the prodigal’s return to the Father’s house was self-examination. The prodigal “entered into himself,” that is, he began to do the pre-eminently human thing which differentiates him from the beast, namely, to reflect. The second condition revealed by the parable, was a recognition of a “sense of need.” “How many hired servants in my father’s house abound with bread, and I here perish with hunger.” The misery, want, and spiritual desolation he felt in a foreign land made the prodigal yearn once again to break and eat the bread of the father’s house.
If Western Civilization is to recover it must fulfill both these conditions. The first condition has already been discussed: It must enter into itself, i.e., respect the true nature of man. Now we pass on to the second condition which is a feeling of need; for unless it feels its own inadequacy, its own insufficiency, its own hunger, how can it aspire or even yearn for the Bread of the Father’s house? There is no hope for any civilization which is hungry and does not wish for bread; but there is hope for one that is hungry and feels the need of it. There is very apt to be in the minds of my hearers a general feeling that the Bread of the Father’s House or the Eucharist is too spiritual a concept and can therefore have no application to the ills of our day. If we have any such suspicion it is only because we have lost hold of the fundamental truth that there is no salvation apart from God. In order to show how vital the Eucharist is to our problems, let us begin by contrasting the Capitalistic, the Communistic, and the Eucharistic or Catholic, philosophies of life.
The problem of social reconstruction revolves about the three words which have rung around the world since the French Revolution: “Liberty,” “Equality,” and “Fraternity.” With which shall we begin? Which shall be first in rebuilding the social order? Capitalism said, Start with Liberty: Let a man be free, and let freedom mean the power to amass wealth without any interference either from the State, or the Church. Well, they had their liberty, which was only another word for selfishness, and it brought neither Equality nor Fraternity. Communism believes in starting with Equality, or the development of a homogeneous jelly-like state in which all men are equal because all are servants of the New Capitalism or Communism. They have had their “Equality,” which was another name for tyranny, and it destroyed both Liberty and Fraternity. The Church says both are wrong. She says you cannot start with either Liberty or Equality; you must start with Fraternity or Brotherhood. Brothers may share, but sharing does not make them brothers—that is the mistake of Communism. Thieves may share their loot, but such equality is only the equality of gangdom and not a brotherhood. In Russia, where there are no classes, the workers in a tractor factory and the O.G.P.U. are equal in the eyes of the State, but it is ridiculous to say they are brotherly.
There is only one way to build up a social order where men are free and equal and that is by starting with Brotherhood. There is only one way in the world to make men brothers, and that is by giving them a common body and a common blood. And there is only one Father in the universe who is good enough and powerful enough to make us all His adopted sons, and that is the Heavenly Father who so loved the world that He sent His Beloved Son into the world to give us His Body and His Blood.
Thanks to the Eucharist, the age-long symbol of the common meal becomes the basis of the brotherhood of men and the Fatherhood of God. Just as many grains of wheat make one bread, and many grapes of the vine make one wine, so we who are many are all made one in that Bread which is the Body and that Wine which is the Blood. Once men are made brothers of Christ and sons of the Heavenly Father at the Communion rail, then Equality and Liberty follow. Then men are both equal and free: Equal because God loves each infinitely, and because each has a common need which God alone can supply; free because each soul is one with Christ who can do all things that are good—and what greater freedom is there than this?
The Communion rail is for that reason the most democratic institution on the face of the earth; it is even a greater leveler than death, for there the distinction between the rich and poor, the learned and unlearned disappears; there the millionaire must take the paten from the common laborer, the employer must kneel at the same board as the employee, the university professor must eat the same Bread as the simple Irishwoman who knows only how to tell her beads. There the dividing wall between nationalities is broken down and rebuilt into that spiritual Kingdom where all are one, because of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One Bread. There every prayer is said in the great context of a brotherhood where every selfish act of the rich, and every envious deed of the poor, is envisaged as a hindrance to the unity of that Body. Hence, the real way to be a Communist is to be a Communionist or Communicant, i.e., to bring our hearts to the anvil of Divine Life and have them under the flames and fires of the Eucharist forged into that unity where we call one another not the atomic name of “Comrade” but the spiritual name of “Brother.”
The beautiful superiority of the Eucharistic Life over the Capitalistic and Communistic views, thus emerges because of the value it sets upon a man. Capitalism considered every man a “hand,” and hence employers were wont to speak of having ten thousand “hands” in the factory; the newer Capitalism, or Communism, considers every man a “stomach” to be fed like the beast of the field, as long as he works to amass wealth for the great Capitalistic State. The Church, on the contrary, says man is neither a hand nor a stomach, but a creature composed of body and soul, made unto the image and likeness of God, and destined one day like the planets to complete his orbit and return unto that same God of Love who made him. The Church has ever insisted that mobilization must not minimize the value of a soul; and that collectivity does not make even a single soul less precious. Millions may go to war wearing only a tag, hundreds of thousands may go into factories with only a number, or may swell the breadlines under the generic title of “the unemployed,” but for the Church each of these souls is just as precious in the sight of God as the soul of a Shakespeare or a Washington. And why is each man precious? Because God has paid an infinite price for him, namely the Blood of the Lamb slain from the beginning of the World.
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This essay is taken from The Prodigal World. Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.
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