"A friend from another country once came up to me and ceremoniously handed me a folded-up piece of paper. Bemused and somewhat trepidatious, I opened it to find a five-verse hymn that he had translated from his native language, which began:
"'Welcome nutrition in which immeasurable
Maker of heaven and earth is enclosed/confined
Welcome beverage totally adipsous
mind panting after'
"Well, I thought, so this is what it feels like to be nonplussed.
"I hope I never forget the feeling of looking at my friend's eager face - 'Isn't it beautiful?' he was asking - and my own total incomprehension of what I was holding. From his excited seriousness I could tell that I was supposed to be deeply moved by the words on the page, but all I could see was the world's strangest piece of refrigerator-magnet poetry. I guess it's true what they say: one man's trash is another man's welcome nutrition.
"Looking back on the verse later, I realized that this was nothing less than a hymn about the Eucharist. 'Welcome nutrition' was surely some sort of reference to the life-giving food of the Lord's Body, in which Christ himself is 'enclosed/confined.' 'Welcome beverage' must be a reference to the Precious Blood - an insight I later confirmed by discovering via the Oxford English Dictionary that 'adipsous' is in fact an obsolete medical term meaning 'thirst-quenching.' And, sure, the mind could pant after a totally adipsous beverage, if that beverage is the Blood of the God-man."
In a recent commentary, Brother Gabriel Torretta, O.P., reflected on the effectiveness (or not) of the words we use in proclaiming the Gospel message.
To access Br. Jordan's complete reflection, please visit:
Dominicana: Welcome Nutrition: It’s Totally Adipsous (19 JAN 15)
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