Ardor (61 page)

Luther had reached a point where he could no longer contain himself and, with his innate vehemence, he declared that to interpret the Mass as a sacrifice was “the most impious abuse (
impiissimus ille abusus
)” and all such teachings produced “monsters of impiety (
monstra impietatis
).” That moment marked the watershed in the Western history of sacrifice. A voice was finally saying that sacrifice could be abandoned. Or rather, that it was something barbarous and incompatible with the true religion, in which
iustus ex
fi
de vivit
, the just man lives by faith, without resorting to particular gestures, particular acts, as a way of seeking justification through pious works. And on this point Luther was inflexible.

But so too was the Roman Church. Here it was not a question of deploring or defending indulgences, something blamable on weaknesses that were human, all too human. Here the entire liturgy was at stake, and the very framework of religious life. And so on September 17, 1562, forty-two years after Luther had proclaimed his terrible words, the Council of Trent promulgated nine canons. The first of these was that of: “Anathemizing anyone who shall say that in the Mass no true and proper sacrifice is offered to God,” whereas the third obstinately condemned “anyone who shall say that the Mass is a sacrifice only of praise and thanks or bare commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross, and not propitiatory, or that it benefits only they who receive it and must not be offered for the living, for the dead, for sins, suffering, satisfactions, and other needs.” Here was a rejection, therefore, not only of the negation of sacrifice but also of that form of euphemism that meant transforming the Mass into the
commemoration
of a sacrifice. Because commemorating is not the same as performing, it no longer belongs to that sphere of actions that are efficacious. Here once again, after so many empty disputes, was the arcane and archaic wisdom of the Roman Church, its capacity to recognize when a founding principle of its very existence was at stake. But it was a battle already lost. Luther was not just suggesting that a part of religious society wanted to be rid of sacrifice, but that the whole of secular society, in its expansion over the world scene, would look upon sacrifice as a meaningless institution, to be consigned to the lumber room. Four centuries later, it is no surprise that a Catholic theologian, Stefan Orth, ends his inquiry into various recent writings on sacrifice by saying that nowadays “many Catholics are in agreement with the verdict and the conclusions of the reformer Martin Luther, according to whom speaking of a sacrifice in the Mass would be ‘the most great and tremendous horror’ and an ‘accursed idolatry.’” It is a sort of delayed surrender of arms, as if world pressure has forced the Catholic Church to abandon even this doctrine. Without which, however, the entire edifice of St. Peter would inevitably collapse.

*   *   *

Jesus’s gesture of breaking bread during the Last Supper and speaking the words
“Hoc est corpus meum”
is a dazzling ray of light that opens up two horizons, behind and ahead. Behind Jesus himself we can look back to the beginning, to the situation when the officiant and the oblation are the same (
“ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio,”
in the words of Augustine). A situation to which every sacrifice alludes, but which is reserved for the deity. Ahead of Jesus is a view that goes beyond the observer, toward that which has still to take place. In fact, the sacrifice announced by the
fractio panis
, which prefigures the dislocation and fracturing of his joints in the crucifixion, is not a sacrifice but a death sentence confirmed by the voice of the people. Therefore it is something belonging not to the religious domain but to the secular domain and, ultimately, to the domain of public opinion. Two extremes are therefore set: on one side the sacrifice that no man can celebrate, except by committing suicide; on the other the abandonment of sacrifice, substituted by a judicial sentence and by the majority choice of a community. The Eucharistic innovation suggests the opening up of two conflicting and incompatible perspectives. The sacramental bread will assume the name of
hostia
, which is the technical term describing the oblation in sacrifices of atonement. But Jesus’s trial and the carrying out of his sentence will follow a procedure imposed by the Roman state, alien to the religion of Jesus’s own people. There remained only one point of contact with the sacrifice: the killing would take place
“extra castra,”
outside the city.

*   *   *

Reading the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
is like making a journey to the radiant heart of India. But the idea—later abandoned—of a commentary certainly did not aim to do that. On the contrary, it was an attempt to move away from any specific coordinates of time and place to return to observing certain simple gestures, of which we may be aware or unaware, but are always with us and without which we could not exist: the actions of breathing, swallowing, copulating, cutting, killing, evacuating, speaking, burning, pouring, thinking, dreaming, watching—and more. Cultures have practiced each of these actions, indeed they have become identified with the methods and techniques used to develop them. But, once the anthropologists had seemingly concluded the work of listing all of these configurations, a sense of indifference and atony took over. All of these cultures marched off, in formation, like lead soldiers each dressed in different uniforms. Marching off not to war but to a World Exposition—one respectful of all diversity and futile in its foundation, which was simply this: all diversity is to be respected, because, within a particular culture, it serves to maintain social balance. But, since we are concerned here with techniques, each placed on the same level, how do we work out which will be the right technique? And what could it mean for a technique to be
right
? Every technique, by its nature, recognizes only one criterion, that of effectiveness. But effective in relation to what? The only acceptable technique is that which relates to material power and conquest. But what if we are aiming for an effectiveness of another kind? Then, perhaps, the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as might be helpful. Because they deal only with irreducible gestures, eliminating any other concern. And because they introduce techniques and criteria of effectiveness that very often seem to be ironic and impatient glosses on what, three thousand years later, has established itself as common sense. Such an abrupt and disorientating shift of perspective might well be beneficial in itself, like a sudden change of air.

*   *   *

The gods appear like foam, ready to be blown away. Their waves persist. “A divine vitality, infinitely agile and deceptive,” wrote Céline in a letter of 1934, thinking of the America that was around him. He was also referring to the world.

*   *   *

In the end, we might well ask: what can be the relevance of all we read in the Veda, seeing that it has nothing to do with modern life in a secular society? None, we could say. But then quantum mechanics has no correspondence whatsoever with modern life, whereas Newtonian physics has ended up becoming the very model of common sense. And should we then perhaps think of quantum mechanics as unimportant? The Veda might be more comparable to a microphysics of the mind than to other categories (archaic or magic or primitive thought or other descriptions of that kind, now inert). The impressive vividness of those writings, even though nothing of them is borne out by common experience, might indicate that something of that-which-is continues to appear as the Vedic seers saw it. Or at least it resembles nothing so much as what the
ṛṣ
is
have passed down to us.

*   *   *

In the present world there are so many brands that strive to become myths. But the expression “myths of today” is a lexical abuse. A myth is one fork in one branch of a vast tree. To understand it we need to have a view of the whole tree and the great number of other forks that are hidden within it. That tree has not existed for a long time—well-honed axes have chopped it down. Modern stories that most resemble myths (Don Giovanni, Faust) therefore have no trunk on which to attach themselves. They are stories that are orphaned, self-sufficient, but have none of that sap which flows inside a tree of myths and whose composition is constant in every part of it—a sap that contains a certain coefficient of truth. And it is that very coefficient of truth that enables us to understand and make use of stories from the most distant times and places. What these stories offer is something that, once found, remains unscathed by any further investigation or discovery. Anyone who has entered the flow of mythical stories can let himself be swept anywhere, knowing that one day the very same current will bring him back to the land from where he first set off. And from where he may, at any moment, set off once again.

NOTES