Years ago, I attended a conference for non-profit organizations from around the Pacific. The conference was held on the island of Morea in Tahiti. Living conditions were simple. The discussion at the conference was quite open and sometimes contentious, as people felt passionately about the issues being discussed. While the conference was sponsored by the UN, the local host was the Congregational minister in whose village the conference was held. He was Tahitian, had a long white beard that reminded me of an Old Testament prophet. Much of the time he wore a lava-lava, which was a relatively common practice in Tahiti, once you got away from the urban centers. He was a powerful preacher, a great storyteller and had a wonderful way with a joke. There was a dance one evening that included both traditional island dancing and more formal western ballroom dancing. He could dance the traditional forms with the best of them and could give Fred Astaire a run for his money when it came to ballroom dancing.
There were two religious ceremonies held for the participants. One was very traditional and involved fire walking. While I enjoyed watching the event, I did not participate in walking in the fire pit. To be honest, I was afraid that I would burn my feet! The other ceremony was a communion service at the end of the conference.
Our host lead us in a prayer of thanksgiving for bringing us together and asked that we might remain one in Him even as we departed. He then took several coconuts, split them, and passed the coconut juice for us to drink from the half shell and share among us. When that was done he cut pieces of coconut meat from the empty shell, broke them into smaller pieces and had us pass them to share with one another. That experience was one of the most moving and profound experiences of Eucharist in which I have ever been able to share. It was a deeply felt celebration of the communion that had arisen among the community of participants in the week-long conference. It had taken place in the context of Christian prayer.
While not the bread and wine of the Last Supper, the coconut has a profoundly deep symbolic meaning for many islanders. When all else fails, in times of drought or storm, the coconut is the “bread of life” in the most literal meaning possible. The life cycle of the coconut speaks of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Even the three black dots on the top of a husked coconut speak of the Trinity. This symbolism was well known to all of us and powerfully evoked the felt presence of Christ in our sharing of the coconut and in our communion with one another.
The communion service took place out of doors and avoided the traditional trappings of any denomination, so that no one was asked to compromise his identity as a member of a particular faith community. However, the sharing of the coconut allowed everyone to acknowledge the common ground among us as Christians and as islanders. The symbolism involved was powerful and spoke to the communion we shared the week of the conference as well as to our communion in Christ. It was a natural, joyful, meaningful and appropriate experience of shared worship that honored our faith and respected our differences as well.
A year or two earlier I was in Auckland, New Zealand for a development conference sponsored by the Vatican. It brought together representatives from dioceses all over the Pacific, as well as from various Vatican congregations. It was a great conference in many respects. My most powerful memory from that conference was the Mass held toward the end of the conference at the cathedral in Auckland. It was an impressive event presided over by several cardinals and archbishops. The choir sang in the Polynesian style that was so beautiful you almost thought that you had died and gone to heaven. The entrance process incorporated traditional heralds and dancers common to many cultures in the region, which was both impressive and beautiful, underscoring the formality and importance of the event. The penitential rite echoed a Samoan cultural practice of reconciliation, in which one person placed himself at the mercy of another, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. Following the Eucharistic prayer, a lei was placed around the Eucharist to symbolize the real presence of Christ. Cultural symbol after cultural symbol was used in the Mass to convey the shared experience of worship in ways that spoke powerfully to those assembled. If you didn’t get one of the symbols, there were others that you could get. In that context, the shared universal Christian symbols helped to explain the cultural symbols and extend their richness to those for whom the meaning was not immediately understood. However, by the end of the Mass, even the symbolic networks that were new to me, spoke very powerfully to the depth of my heart.
The point is that we can’t treat the Mass as a canned religious experience in which we simply repeat the script and do the actions called for in the liturgical books. While the Mass is the prayer of the Church, it is also the door to the sacred for us. We are invited to enter into that prayer, so that it becomes an experience of the transcendent. As a community, we can incorporate our symbolic language into this prayer of the Church. We can share our stories through the medium of this liturgical experience. We can allow the story of Christ that is given expression in the Mass to touch the depth of our hearts. This is something that we must look for in our worship experiences and to which we must be open. It is also something that we must work at in our parish liturgical planning.
