Today we are quite familiar with the notion of "culture": in most nations there are public or private organisations that work for preserving and fostering culture. But, it was not until the twentieth century that the word "culture" became invested with the meaning given it by ethnology and anthropology, namely, "the cluster of acquired forms of be-haviour in human societies." This definition comes from Marcel Mauss in 1923. Every society tends to constitute an original cultural whole. The culture of a society tends to be organised as an ensemble of complementary, coherent elements; this ensemble reflects the symbolic universe created by human beings.

This reductionist approach characterises cultures by the objects that they produce - ob-jects considered today as a precious patrimony to be preserved. In this perspective at the beginning of the 19th century there arose public "museums" - a name derived from Greek. Napoleon established the first administration of museums in 1801. (The setting up of museums roughly coincides with the appearance of the contemporary notion of "cul-ture".)

This account of the notion of culture does not exhaust its richness. Jean Paul II, who set up the Pontifical Council of Culture on 20 May 1982, stated in Paris: "Mankind is the primordial fact of culture" (Discourse at UNESCO, 2 June 1980). Man, the Son of Man, is the source of culture in his Eucharist, in his Passover.

The Passover of the Jewish people recalled its liberation from being enslaved by another nation. The Lord's Passover celebrates an event of the history of salvation, which tran-scends in all respects the culture from which it comes and on which it bestows an eternal fecundity. The Eucharist works in all the diversity of cultures in order to make them fruitful and to transform them.

In considering the Eucharist as the source of culture, we get a more vivid vision still of the events of our spiritual history. This enables us to recognise that the notion of sacrifice has deep roots in human cultures; in our century this notion has tended to be misunder-stood. In a sense this line of reflection will lead us to pinpoint one of the fundamental problems of our times!

I The Paschal Mystery: a cultural revolution

On Holy Thursday we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist. This is a "memorial" in accordance with the very command that Jesus gave: "Do this in memory of me." Day by day in the course of the whole of Holy Week the Church lives with Christ everything that he accomplished at Jerusalem for the salvation of the world. This is strictly according to a liturgical calendar that is unalterable in unfolding events that are closely related to what took place historically at the heart of our faith in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of David, God's Son.

The Lord Jesus told us on that evening of Holy Thursday: "now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe" (Jn 14:29; 13:19; 16:4). He has already given us sacramentally everything that he was to accomplish in the fol-lowing days at the cost of his Body handed over and his Blood poured out for us and for the multitude. It is the same today: each celebration of the Eucharist addresses us and gives us the entire mystery of salvation that Jesus carried out "once for all" two millennia ago at Jerusalem (Heb 7:27; 9:12.28).

The readings of Holy Thursday focus on the event of the Passover. In the first place, chapter 12 of the Book of Exodus reminds us of the departure from Egypt that Jesus celebrates with his apostles in accordance with the traditional Jewish liturgy.
In Psalm 30 the psalmist, who prays like Jesus, expresses the loving offering of his liberty in spiritual sacrifice.
Then, in the First Letter to the Corinthians (chapter 11) St Paul provides us with the ac-count that has become part of the ritual of our Eucharist: this is the memorial of the last Passover that Jesus celebrated.
Finally, St John in chapter 13 describes for us how Jesus washed his disciples' feet. Such a gesture symbolises the love to which the eucharistic sacrament gives us access.

The liturgical narrative of the Eucharist by St Paul is ingrained in our memory: "I re-ceived from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said: 'This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me'" (1 Cor 11:23-24). Jesus broke bread, which in the words of the traditional blessing is called "the bread of suffer-ing", because it signifies the bread of the slavery of the people in Egypt; and he said: "This is my Body which is for you." The realism of these words is startling. Like St John who gives his version also (6:22ff.), St Paul intended by this account to point out the "flesh" of Jesus: "Given up for you". The fragile flesh of the humanity of Christ, the Messiah, is his vulnerable flesh that shared in the frailty of all human flesh, which no le-gion of angels would come to protect (cf. Mt 26:53). This flesh, given up for our sins, becomes the Bread of Life.

How can we overcome the immediate shock experienced on hearing such a startling statement as this? "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (Jn 6:53). The astounding clarity of his words can blind us, as it blinded those who first heard them.

The love that Jesus gives in the sacrifice of offering his life frees us from our sins. In be-coming our nourishment, this love calls us to be eager to carry out the same loving of-fering, here and now two thousand years away in the circumstances in which the Lord has placed us. In offering our lives with his, we unite with the Risen Christ, who contin-ues to give his life in the Eucharist for the life of the world.

The blessing pronounced over the cup is also astounding: "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant that will be poured out for you and for the multitude for the remission of sins." In the phrase "the blood of the covenant" (cf. Lk 22:20; cf. Mt 26:28; Mk 14:24), Jesus quotes from the book of Exodus (24:4-8), which refers to the communion sacrifice celebrated by Moses. Through this blood, the covenant between God and his people was sealed in the desert of Sinai. This blood poured out for us is the blood of "the new and eternal covenant" that had been announced by the prophet Jeremiah (cf. 31:31).

The apostles ate the flesh of the lamb sacrificed in the Temple. The meal recalled the freeing of the children of Israel, who had been saved from death when the destroying an-gel passed by on that night in Egypt; in seeing the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the houses, he spared those living within. Jesus is identified with the Pascal lamb; John the Baptist pointed him out as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29); there is an echo here of the words of Isaiah regarding the Servant of God, dumb as a lamb that is led to the slaughter (cf. Is 53:4-7).

The entire history of salvation is focused on this hour. Jesus is not killed like an animal. He freely surrenders himself to the events that he had spoken of beforehand: judged, condemned, he will carry his cross, suffer and die. When he eats this last Passover with his disciples, his prayer, his intercession and the offering of himself takes over and trans-figures a ritual that is so ancient that it goes back to time immemorial of humanity, when it was celebrated by the earliest pastoral and agrarian civilisations. The Holy Spirit had taught Israel to recognise here the sign of its liberation from the land of death. Jesus, the celebrant, turns this into the memorial ritual of his sacrifice that saves the world.

The Messiah, in the verse of Psalm 30, announced: "Behold, I come to do your will, O God." Jesus is not merely a victim brutally struck down, his innocence covering up the crimes of mankind. The dying Christ does not accuse his executioners. He interceded for them. He forgives them. By his death he brings freedom from hate, from rejection of God, from sin, to all human beings, including his murderers, Judas, and even us. By his freedom-giving deed, by an act of love, he comes to seek out the hardest-hearted person, whom he frees from a prison from which it is impossible to escape. He restores this per-son to the true condition and complete vocation of being a child of God. He becomes at one with this person in his offering, which is not made without him the Messiah, the unique Son, who was put to death for our sins and was raised up for our life (cf. Rm 4:25).

We are refreshed by his Flesh and his Blood, freed from our sins, restored in the cove-nant, filled with his life, possessed as the dwelling place of the Spirit; we thus share in this incomparable thanksgiving since darkness has been removed from human life. We, who are creatures, are called to live the divine life in our human way. The cultural revo-lution required by the Eucharist consists in this: to transcribe into our human condition the supremacy and beauty of this charity of God.

II Historical gestures

The Catholic liturgy of Holy Thursday adds only one rite to the normal eucharistic cele-bration. It is the washing of feet. In retaining this rite we should weigh up the difference between this symbolic gesture, which was culturally part of a particular environment and epoch, and fidelity to a sense of carrying out the biblical Memorial of the sacred story in accordance with what Jesus ordered us: "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you" (Jn 13:14-15). The Church has not wanted to substitute the gesture of the Lord by other rites that are considered to be more expressive in some cultural settings. Certain people have, for instance, suggested that the faithful wash one another's hands. The Church preserves in its liturgy the historical de-tails of her Lord: she does not cease from contemplating and ritually enacting the ges-tures of him who was among us only once and who abides in our midst until the end of time.

Jesus washed his disciples' feet. He became their servant. This reversal of roles upset them. What a strange definition of love! But far from being a destruction of oneself, the humility of love displays the highest kind of human generosity, which is drawn from its fountainhead that is God.

Down the course of the centuries and across different cultures the ritual of the washing of feet remains a prophetic and, as it were, sacramental sign of what Jesus accomplished once and for all during his mortal life, so that we may love one another with the love with which he has loved us. "You too should do likewise!" Obedience to this command of humility has not been without having its impact on the history of Christian practice: the service of the poor and of the common good, the wonderful discovery of serving the least - these are qualities making up a Christian culture. They are not restricted to only one epoch; they belong to all times in which a heart full of love encounters human mis-ery.

These events, irrevocably etched into that moment and that place of history, have changed the course of the world and are constitutive of transfiguring it until the end of time. These gestures of Christ are not buried in the distant past of which there only re-main outdated cultural traces. In the power of the Spirit of love, Christ's actions do not cease to be spread and grow in so far as they touch other disciples, other men and women, who, being seized by the same love in every cultural setting, feed on this Flesh of the Word and drink the Blood of Life.

The deeds and gestures, the words and events of the Lord's life strike at everything op-posed to love in us, about us, and among our brothers and sisters. The love in question, however, is a struggle in which the vanquished is the victor; in which the one who gives receives more than is given; in which joy belongs to the one who, in self-forgetfulness, becomes a follower of Christ; in which, at length, human life blossoms into divine life, which is bestowed on those for whom Jesus overcame death.

The liturgy of Holy Thursday reminds us of this. The celebration of the Eucharist in all its breath throughout the centuries faithfully carries out in its essential rites the words and gestures of Jesus. It is clear that these gestures pertain to one single story, that of Is-rael's two millennia, that of Jesus.

There have been debates, however, whether the bread and wine may in some places be more appropriately replaced in future by using millet and sorghum, rice and tea! But no attempt to accommodate customs, tastes or practices has succeeded in altering the litur-gical Memorial of the eternal charity poured out once and for all.

The Eucharist, which is the heart of Christian faith, has formed the culture of the people of Europe for two thousand years, just as it had shaped the cultures of Asia Minor and North Africa for many centuries. Thanks to the radiation of charity, thanks to the glory of loving, the Eucharist is and will become for all nations a source of culture.

Christian worship, like the liturgical festivities long ago prescribed by the Bible, does not ritually express myths characteristic of only one culture. It is the memorial of the unique historical event that opens the moment of salvation to all people. This deed of the Sav-iour continues to be made widely available because it is signified and accomplished in his Memorial. The different cultures come into their own through him as they are gathered into the sweep of that history in which the solidarity and unity of the brotherhood of all human beings become revealed.

Our contemporaries have given the name "colonialism" to the extension and domination of Western culture. They have blamed colonialism for destroying the ancient cultures of America before Columbus, the culture of Africa, that of Oceania, while the old civilisa-tions of Asia seem to have resisted being engulfed by it.

The violence that enslaves and the injustice of exploitation must be denounced; these things that have accompanied European domination are not a reflection of pure evangeli-sation. On the other hand, in Western culture there are many fruits produced by the di-vine event of sacred history, which the Eucharist symbolically expresses. Certainly, Europe has imbibed from many wells of stagnant and noxious streams, rather than from the pure fountain of incorruptible Life; the West calls itself Christian without being so in all its depth. Christianity moreover did not originate in Europe. However the Christian faith has made Europe fruitful and enabled it to bear the humanising fruits of beauty and truth that have been spread abroad despite being transmitted through European messian-isms. Human cultures differ from one another; while they are opposed to one another they co-exist. But Christian faith in the Son of Man handed over for us and for the mul-titude does not cease to teach the world that humanity is one, that it is in solidarity, whatever may be its diversifying and contrary elements.

But today technical progress is bringing to birth a new culture: a culture of the image in-stantly transmitted. The world is rapidly moving towards uniformity. The resurgence of asserting individualism, it is said, would seem to express a defensive reaction that has to be made against being crushed by this steamroller effect. The tendency to level every-thing to world-conformity ["mondialisation"] would be the last stage of the making of cultures uniform. The unavoidable disappearance of traditional cultures is the price that humanity would have to pay for its unification.

We should weigh up the extraordinary upheaval happening before our eyes. This is tak-ing place in museums, which have become conservatories of memory, where the treas-ures of already dead or dying cultures are on view. The new world-culture, however, is bringing about the appearance of new types of diversities. This comes about as a result of the pressure of market forces that promote the production of objects to satisfy the con-sumers' demands. In order to be convinced of this, it suffices to consider the vast enter-prise of the cinema, Television, fashions in clothes and food, tourism, architecture and style and their criteria in creating objects. Sociologists might well usefully meditate on Jesus' words: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Mt 6:21).

III A living culture

Since television permits the viewing of the Eucharist celebrated by the Pope in all conti-nents and the crowds gathered into communion at the same liturgy, should we therefore consider that the spectacle of society's world-conformity profitably applies the Memorial of Holy Thursday?

To respond to this new question, I suggest that we examine three models that I shall sketch, taking my clue from the biblical readings of Holy Thursday: the model of Phar-aoh, of the Exodus, of the Passover of Holy Thursday.

The model of Pharaoh:
The Hebrews' history in Egypt began well; Joseph was the all-powerful minister of the Pharaoh, his brothers and relatives had been integrated into Egyptian society at that point when Joseph went to bury his Father Jacob in Canaan. The Hebrews were called "Egyp-tians" by the people (cf. Gn 50:11). But, the integration of the Hebrews into the Egyp-tian culture failed. It resulted in the drama of their slavery, then to their Exodus, from which came the first Passover. Pharaoh tried to absorb the Hebrews into the workforce of his subjects by imposing on them codes of behaviour, language, and customs that did not tolerate any deviation. To become Egyptian the Hebrews had to renounce the mem-ory of the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had to share, above all, the convictions and manner of living of Pharaoh's subjects.

It would certainly not be right to reduce the Egyptian culture to the way the Hebrews were able to perceive it. It comprises vast riches: a monumental labour that built the dwellings of mummified humanity; a refined wisdom that believed in reading in the mir-ror of death the image of life that would be of benefit to the living; a civilisation that pro-duced monuments for the dead by consuming the living. This culture of the Pharaohs was overwhelming in so far as it wholly absorbed the individuals who shared in it. This model is moreover similar to that of many other cultures that made society the ultimate end of the life of individual persons. Such cultures misunderstood the spiritual destiny of human beings and estranged them from their freedom, the source of history. Is this not the model of pagan civilisations that entered or still enter into conflict with the witness given by the biblical revelation? Would this be the case of the new world culture?

The model of the Exodus:
Israel was born from a fundamental event, its liberation by God. The Lord created his people by saving it. The memorial is not in this case a monument of stone, but a ritual celebrated each year; in it generation after generation acknowledged its sense of belong-ing to this chosen people. Each one discovers the significance of sharing in this event of deliverance, in this Exodus. He was present to it since he is present today in the midst of this people. He can insist today on being part of this people because of confessing that he also was saved centuries ago from Egyptian servitude.

Belonging to a people is fundamental for each one, because God constitutes a people. Whereas belonging is transmitted through physical sonship, this sonship is ceaselessly qualified by the relationship in which each one is called to enter into communion with God, the Creator and Redeemer.

This model of the Exodus is unique and is not known apart from the Jewish people. However, it has been tragically imitated in our century by political messianisms, the European totalitarian states. It is not strange to our argument to note here that this simulation reversed the message of the Exodus. It introduced a culture of death, while the Exodus revealed and brought about a culture of life, which is manifest above all in its products and works, as in the civilisation of the Pharaohs. But here this culture concerns those living in conformity to the promise made by God to Abraham, that his descendants would increase "as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore" (Gn 22:17); it encompassed the blessing of all peoples.

We should notice the biblical sense given in Pope John Paul II's teaching on the culture of death and on the culture of life. There are not two distinct cultures, but the conflict between them is envisaged as leading to universality. In the biblical model culture is not defined by a uniform organisation of society and by the objects produced. It is defined by human beings becoming committed in freedom through the covenant with their sovereign Good; this pertains to all humanity.

The model of the Passover of Holy Thursday:
Jesus "earnestly desired" (Lk 22:15) to celebrate his last Passover with his disciples. In celebrating the memorial of the Exodus, Jesus the Messiah transformed it into the Me-morial of his sacrifice for the salvation of all people. His disciples, taken from all nations of the world, are not merely restricted to the first group of those who followed him from the lake of Tiberius. Following God's design, each one will be "incorporated" into the Messiah himself and identified with Christ. Through baptism, each one becomes one with him. In the Eucharist, each one receives his Life. The Church celebrates the Eucharist. But Christ is the Head of his body the Church. Every Christian in the eucharistic mystery is personally identified with Christ himself by being established in communion with all the other members of his Body.

The Church is the sacrament of this universality, which is the meaning of "catholic". This catholicity is radically different from the narrow sense of universality resulting from the levelling-process of world-conformity ["mondialisation"]. In the Bread of heaven, in the person of Christ, each person and each culture are brought into communion with the whole of humanity. In the eucharistic catholicity of culture the victory of entire humanity is present from its creation to its fulfilment until the Body of Christ attains its fullness (cf. Eph 1:10, 23; 4:13) and until the Lord will come in his glory.

CONCLUSION: Unspeakable Beauty

The Eucharist is not the source of culture in the same way as empires or human powers produce aesthetic, industrial or scientific wealth by devoting themselves to the quest for beauty and a harmony of living and by discovering their pleasure in amusement and sports competitions. Whatever human life, both personal and collective, is able to pro-duce and leave as its heritage, whatever modern civilisation has calls "culture" and stores up as precious in its "museums", like the pyramids of the Pharaohs, can all fall down into the dust of death, unless transfigured by the Paschal light of sacrifice.

The Eucharist introduces into each culture original features and enables it to bear new fruits. It is not a question of achieving this through violence, as happens through cultural domination. Divine freedom, manifest in the love of the Son who took our flesh, ad-dresses the freedom of human beings. The Eucharist brings about the freeing from the age-old enslavement of humanity because it offers the Saviour of our sins and, in him, access to divine life.

The Eucharist reveals the orientation and purpose of the biblical model: the Passover is not repeated, because it is a passage to the Eternal; it has no boundaries; as in the case of the enslaved people of Israel, the Passover liberates all nations from the oppression of their taskmasters.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will be delivered from the guilt that in-evitably burdens human conscience. For a human person is not judged only in the condi-tion of his or her own solitary conscience or by the assessment of peers. Everyone is brought face-to-face with the love of God "rich in mercy", who is made known in Christ the servant.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will ceaselessly tend towards overturning the order of values set up by human society: those distinctions between the powerful and weak, clever and ignorant, masters and slaves... For Jesus, the Lord and Master, became the least and servant of all and commands us to do likewise.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will know how to assess in a new way the evils that afflict us, since persons who are most estranged from one another, enemies who think they are irreconcilable, are brought into communion in the Body and Blood of him who handed himself over to take away the sins of the world.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will not be able to consider the gift of life as a joke of death, since it ceaselessly drinks from the source of life that is more powerful than death; it learns through the weapons of love and forgiveness to realise the victory of the truth hidden in the union of men and women bonded in Christ.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will recall constantly the word that Jesus addressed to his own: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide" (Jn 15:16). Freely each one responds to a prior call that is greater than human existence. From this call each one receives courage to face the trials that may lead to resignation or revolt.
A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will teach people to give thanks and to enjoy the gifts that they do not cease receiving by turning towards God, our Creator and our Father. This culture will lead people to appreciate the messianic mystery of salvation; it will put them on guard against substituting themselves, each and every one, for the unique Messiah. It will initiate them into that divine compassion which is the source of communion among people that brings about respect and peace. It will open up, Sunday after Sunday, the long road of Love.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery will accustom people to recognise in this moribund world and in the fragile light in which their sight is strained the beauty radiat-ing from the resurrection and from immortality - that beauty which already captures and transfigures our bodies while they still visibly bear the marks of Christ's Passion.

A culture nourished by the eucharistic mystery should ceaselessly rediscover the highest need to point out the beauty of the world, since in all things there is the resplendent re-flection of the glory of the invisible God whose Image is revealed to us. But nothing of the world can suffice to express the unspeakable beauty of which the Eucharist is both the revelation and at the same time the veil.

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger
Archbishop of Paris