On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (11). Sanctus.

And a door opened in heaven… (Rev 4:1)

Climbing this spiral stairway at the Eucharist, we arrive with Christ unto Jerusalem and the temple door (Mt 21), and we sing:

Holy, holy, holy Lord God of host
Heaven and earth are full of Your glory (Is 6:5)
Hosanna in the highest
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord (Ps 118:26)
Hosanna in the highest (Mt 21:9)

This Jerusalem temple door is at the same time His descent into hell and His ascension into heaven (Eph 4:8-10). Sanctus is a sung by heaven and earth. It is through the Eucharistic Sanctus that we enter the quantic paradox of the mystery of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, where heaven meets with humanity.

At this juncture, rhetoric and explanation means nothing. Sanctus is a reality that staggers the faithful and confuses the faithless. Experience alone tells it all. How dare He leads us, poor sinners that we are, through this narrow door (Mt 7:13), which only permits the clean and spotless, and where, even faithful Patriarchs shivered and dared not behold (Is 6:5)?

Sanctus seems to me as the make or break of the Eucharist, where many see but do not perceive (Mk 4:12) and a great lot turn back and follow Him no more (Jn 6:66), leaving only a remnant few to push through (Mt 22:14).

The Catholic Eucharist is one hell of a mystery, meant neither for the lazy nor the ignorant and immoral. But the consoling paradox is that, it is precisely because we are as such that Christ calls us; but we’ve got to be ‘willing’,in order to be vindicated by Him. I have no idea how to explain ‘unwillingness’ away.

At Pentecost, heaven descended through the Spirit, but during Sanctus, we ascend heaven only by the Spirit. We sing in the church with the angels whom we may likely not see up the ceiling or on the high altar; but angels, in reality gush forth in droves, from our mouths, the more we sing in Spirit and in truth (Jn 4: 24).

We may discover nothing of the external reality of heaven if we look without, heaven lies deeply within, and only from within does it manifests without (Lk 17:21) and these are realities greater than our existence to tell.