Ord Om ordet
For Many
Romans 8.26-30: The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness.
Luke 13.22-30: But he will reply, ‘I do not know where you come from. Away from me.’
In the Gospel narrative of the institution of the Eucharist, we read: ‘This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many’, in Greek: hyper pollōn.
The sense is unambiguous, but has caused a headache for liturgists seeking to render it in vernacular translations of the Eucharistic Prayers.
For is the ‘for many’ not somehow exclusive? Does it not limit the reach of the Eucharistic sacrifice effectively foreshadowing Christ’s Passion?
May our Blessed Lord have spoken, in distraction, out of term?
In some national contexts this view has prevailed. So the Germans hang on to their ‘für alle’, the Italians to their ‘per tutti’ — one does not quite understand how, given that the Latin editio typica has ‘pro multis’, which simply has to be, ‘for many’.
‘God desires all men to be saved’. This is axiomatic to the New Testament (1 Tim 2.4). God does not, though, force his saving on anyone. We are free to embrace or reject it: this awesome privilege is inscribed on our iconic nature.
The pouring out of Christ’s Blood on the cross is a wholly gracious dispensation, It cannot be fathomed by any merely juridical category.
A grace is a gift. A gift proposed calls out to be received. Should it not be, the dynamic of grace and thanksgiving, ēucharistia, is incomplete.
The ‘for many’ recalls that receptivity is no matter of course: such is God’s immense regard for our freedom.
Today’s Gospel reminds us sternly of this fact. It is possible to have eaten and drunk with Christ, yet to make oneself unfit for his redemption, effectively to be locked out, if eucharistic grace is not allowed to saturate and transform our being.
Redemption, as renewal and recreation, is not improvised. It is made ready in an organic process of growth. This process is not realised despite us. We must say yes to it, cooperate.
Let us keep alive, then, our wish to be saved, and for others to be, too; let us keep looking for the narrow door, and direct others towards it.
The phrase ‘for many’ does not exclude ‘for all’, only does not take it for granted.
‘The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness’. If only we let ourselves be helped. Amen.
