Glad you’re reading the blog!

All Christian scholars converge on “paradox” as norm.
For us. All Jewish scholars have been for the most
part lost in, and to, our Tradition! So, for us
to take topical potshots at OT interpretation is
now I posit a maturity-required turning point in our
Salvation History escapade…. In End-times reality
(cf. Zachariah, ch. 8) the Hebrew and the Christian
Churches will be reunited as when we took our 1st
baby steps! Meantime, it’s time our Age starts this
process of mutual rediscovery, mutual sharing of two
distinctive yet universal Covenants, and converge
on our common destiny! The Last Banquet will be One!

During the interval, we play with the little we’ve
inherited, share the few marbles (of understanding)
we have, and remember in Whose Name the game (of life)
is played: it’s always, His stage we’re on!

Therein there is a unity (of the crowd!) in Christ
-but never yes, in the crowd itself, as such-
and, an encounter with reason taking turns in the road
of understanding, definitively existential and only
topically rational!

Everybody, and every language (both human & Divine!)
has a hermeneutic! Because we, we Xians, do not
have a predictable God! Fissures and volcanoes are
expected, as the norm: clear logical analysis is our
idolatrous self-deception!

Xtian Life is wholistic plus holistic. Because Xt
unifies all (cf. Chardin) to heal humanity and restore
wholeness (lost by the 1st Adam):
- His birth endorses creation;
- His death judges it;
- His resurrection re-connects it with Eternity,
and the Trinity in toto.

Prayer is therefore an expression of this re-connection, at its highest human form in the mystery
of the Mass.

And its profundity will only in ongoing Millennia
begin to be grasped by the crowd when it looks
beyond itself to the cosmological realization that
we will as a crowd only learn to love and apply
the 11th Commandment, once we realize first,
that we are loved. Unconditionally.

Now, that is an interesting question. As I was working on the post, I was wondering about what it meant for concelebration (or co-presidency, as you put it) but didn’t come to any definite conclusions.

I think you’re right that concelebration probably tends to weaken the stress on Christ’s aloneness (and vice versa). This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other compelling factors that weigh in concelebration’s favor, the priest wanting to exercise his Eucharistic ministry, for example, which he might (and probably should!) see as an important service to the People of God.

Even if these other considerations in the end outweigh the “minuses” against concelebration, at the least the stress on Christ’s aloneness calls for attentiveness to the way concelebration is carried out, even what might seem like mundane logistical details like where the priests stand. We’d probably want to avoid it seeming like there’s a crowd around the altar.

As I was thinking about your question, I was also thinking about the notion of distances in the liturgy… all the distances surrounding Christ in his moment of absolute aloneness, as well as the distances that are overcome (between heaven and earth, between God and humanity) in the Eucharist… it seems important that the liturgy somehow maintains these distances, at the very least so that we have a sense of them being overcome… this might also factor into the concelebration question, but I’m not sure exactly how yet.

Anyway, I’m really glad the post got you thinking and would be very glad to hear any other ideas, questions, challenges, musings you have…

Tony