BILLTESKA

The Banquet of Holy Wisdom is free, open to all. She has done everything, made all the preparations: the meat is dressed and roasted, the strong wine is carefully diluted with the right quantity of spring-water, and the bread is fresh and hot out of the oven. Her well-constructed and perfectly-proportioned house of seven-pillars stands open to shade her guests, whom She invites in the most public fashion. The only thing Wisdom cannot do is compel the anyone to accept the invitation. She cannot force anyone to eat Her Bread and drink her Wine.

This is Her problem: Wisdom invites the witless. If we weren’t half-wits, her banquet would have nothing to offer us. But as we are simple (which is a gentle way of saying “retarded”) and without sense (the old translations are less delicate, calling us “fools”), how are we supposed to come by the good sense to take Her up on Her invitation in the first place?

That, too, has to be a gift, just like the Banquet itself. Today, Olivia is about to receive that gift ~ and her first taste of the Wine mixed by Holy Wisdom. Baptism is an invitation and a promise. Many promises are made on Olivia’s behalf today ~ vows weighty and dread ~ which she will have to decide to live up to in the future, or not. But for now, she is given the grace to accept the invitation and to receive a promise far greater than any she could ever make: the promise of life eternal.
The one who eats this Bread lives forever.

Such life is not natural, that is, Olivia is not born with it. As the old rite say, it is something that by nature she cannot have. By nature, Olivia gets mortality. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But Baptism promises a whole new dimension of being, which we call eternal life.
Those who eat my Flesh and drink my Blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day…

Her body will still die, but her life will never end.

One way of expressing this Mystery is to say that in Baptism she dies ~ and rises again ~ with Christ, so that henceforth she abides in Christ and Christ in her. She becomes immune to death, death has no more dominion over her, for she has already passed through it. Another way to express the Mystery is to recognize Baptism as the acceptance of the invitation to the Banquet of Holy Wisdom, Baptism being the gate into Wisdom’s House. Just as the food she eats will gradually build her physical stature, so the Banquet of Holy Wisdom will build her real and eternal stature unto ages of ages. The Banquet of Holy Wisdom is the Life in Christ through the sacraments of the Church, which is the House of seven pillars that Wisdom has built for Herself.

The eternal realities that Olivia will come to know are hidden from her now ~ as they are from most of us in this world. But they are gradually disclosed, as we feast in Wisdom’s House. Most of us get only a glimpse, an inkling, in this life. The bread and wine and strong meat of Wisdom’s table are not digested all at once. Although Christ dwells in us and we in Him from the moment of our Baptism, we have not yet grown up into the full stature of Christ. Even if we have laid aside immaturity to live and walk in the way of insight, we don’t grow up instantaneously. But with each, mouthful, we are a little stronger, a little clearer, a little closer to the unspeakable Reality. More significantly, we are increasingly transformed into Wisdom’s likeness.

“You are what you eat,” we used to say. The food we eat becomes our flesh. And so it is at this Banquet.
This is the Bread that came down from Heaven…whosoever eats of this Bread lives forever.

As we eat the Flesh of the Wisdom of God, which is to say of Christ, and Drink His Blood, we gradually change. We change into the likeness of Christ, from glory to glory. And we simpletons, we senseless ones, we fools, become wise, reflecting the beauty that surrounds us as we dwell forever under the seven pillars of the infinite House of the Holy Wisdom of God.