Little Biscuit Lord. Unamuno, Life 4.10
Does
religion come before or after ethics? Unamuno thinks that Catholicism
puts religion before ethics, while Protestantism does the reverse. So
Catholic worship is first a cult of immortality, within which we then
seek to find good ethics, while Protestant worship is first a cult of
justice (i.e. good ethics), within which we then look to find some
good religion (and immortality).
Es
el sacramento genuinamente realista,
dinglich,
que
se diría en alemán, y que no es gran violencia traducir material,
el sacramento más genuinamente
ex
opere operato, sustituído
entre los protestantes con el sacramento idealista de la palabra.
Trátase, en el fondo, y lo digo con todo el posible respeto, pero
sin querer sacrificar la expresividad de la frase, de comerse y
beberse a Dios, al Eternizador, de alimentarse de Él.
¿Qué
mucho, pues, que nos diga Santa Teresa que cuando estando en la
Encarnación el segundo año que tenía el priorato, octava de San
Martín, comulgando, partió la Forma el padre fray Juan de la Cruz
para otra hermana, pensó que no era falta de forma, sino que le
quería mortificar «porque yo le había dicho que gustaba mucho
cuando eran grandes las formas, no porque no entendía no importaba
para dejar de estar entero el Señor, aunque fuese muy pequeño el
pedacito?» Aquí la razón va por un lado, el sentimiento por otro.
¿Y
qué importan para este sentimiento las mil y una dificultades que
surgen de reflexionar racionalmente en el misterio de ese sacramento?
¿Qué es un cuerpo divino? El cuerpo, en cuanto cuerpo de Cristo,
¿era divino? ¿Qué es un cuerpo inmortal e inmortalizador? ¿Qué
es una sustancia separada de los accidentes? ¿Qué es la sustancia
del cuerpo? Hoy hemos afinado mucho en esto de la materialidad y la
sustancialidad; pero hasta Padres de la Iglesia hay para los cuales
la inmaterialidad de Dios mismo no era una cosa tan definida y clara
como para nosotros. Y este sacramento de la Eucaristía es el
inmortalizador por excelencia y el eje, por lo tanto, de la piedad
popular católica. Y si cabe decirlo, el más específicamente
religioso.
Porque
lo específico religioso católico es la inmortalización y no la
justificación al modo protestante. Esto es más bien ético. Y es en
Kant, en quien el protestantismo, mal que pese a los ortodoxos de él,
sacó sus penúltimas consecuencias: la religión depende de la
moral, y no ésta de aquélla, como en el catolicismo.
The
Eucharist is a genuinely actual sacrament, real or dinglich,
as the Germans would say. It is not wrong to call it material
or substantial, the sacrament performed most authentically
for its own sake, for the action that its performance entails. In its
place the Protestants offer an idealist sacrament of the spoken word.
Its essential feature, which I hope to express honestly and vividly
but still respectfully here, is eating and drinking the body and
blood of God, feasting upon the One who makes things eternal. St.
Teresa (‡) tells a story of the time she went to communion during the
feast of St. Martin (†),
in the second year of her term as prioress of the Incarnation
at Ávila. Father John of the Cross broke the sacred wafer to
share with another sister, and Teresa thought not that there was any
lack of the blessed host, but that he wished to mortify and humble
her, "for I had said to him that I really enjoyed the large
wafers, not that I thought it mattered that the Lord retain his
integrity, though he be quite a little biscuit." What are we to
make of this? Reason goes one way, and feeling another. And what does
feeling care for the thousand and one difficulties that arise when
anyone attempts to reflect rationally on the mystery of this
sacrament? What is a divine body? The human body, when it belonged to
Christ—was it divine
then? What is an immortal body that bestows immortality? What is a
substance separated from all accident? What is the substance of the
body? Today we have drawn very precise boundaries around materiality
and substantiality, but there are fathers of the church for whom the
immateriality of God himself was never a thing so definite and clear
as it appears to us. The sacrament of the Eucharist is an instrument
of immortality par excellence and the axis, therefore, of
popular Catholic piety. And thus, if it must be said, it is the most
especially religious sacrament.
The
Catholic religion is uniquely concerned with making things immortal,
not with justifying them in Protestant fashion. That is more ethical
than religious. And we see in Kant its all but final fruits, much as
orthodox Protestants might not like them: for the Protestant,
religion depends on morality, and not the reverse, as in Catholicism.
---
(‡)
Teresa of Ávila
(1515-1582) was born to a family of Jewish conversos
whose prosperous material fortune she left upon completing her
education, feeling called to a religious life. She joined the
Carmelites as a nun, and after several years found inspiration and
support from fellow religious to reform the movement and create new
monasteries (for men as well as women). She composed various
writings, notably The
Interior
Castle,
a classic of Spanish literature as well as Catholic mysticism. Her
approach to piety was personal and ascetic: religion offers means for
the individual to commune with God via intimate sacrifices and
sacraments,
apart from the world.
Her reformed Carmelites became their own order in 1580: the Discalced
Carmelites (for short) because she wore no shoes. She was canonized
forty years after her death, by Pope Gregory XV, and was named a
doctor of the church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.
(†)
The
feast of St. Martin of Tours (316-397 CE) is celebrated over a period
of eight days, beginning the 11th of November, when the funeral of
the saint is commemorated. This festival coincides with the yearly
slaughter of pigs in many traditional European societies, yielding a
proverb:
«A cada cerdo le llega
su San Martín»
(Every pig meets St. Martin eventually).