Corpus Christi
I went to mass today in the South Cathedral in Xuanwumen, on the site where Matteo Ricci built a church around 1600. Today is Corpus Christi, and the theme of the sermon was the assertion that transubstantiation is a real phenomenon, and not symbolic. The readings had to do with the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and at one point the LCD displays (this is now a very high-tech church, with cameras run by a Sujai Kumar-like camerman randomly weaving and zooming around the church) showed the excerpt “And all ate and were satisfied.”
I’m certainly not the first to comment on how central food and eating are here. This reminded me of Lu Xun’s famous story, “Diary of a Madman” (page down a bit to find it).
Everything requires careful consideration if one is to understand it. In ancient times, as I recollect, people often ate human beings, but I am rather hazy about it. I tried to look this up, but my history has no chronology, and scrawled all over each page are the words: “Virtue and Morality.” Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently half the night, until I began to see words between the lines, the whole book being filled with the two words—”Eat people.”