Transubstantiation*
Miracle or Superstition?
Before The Heart of Darkness
The year is 1875, more than twenty years before the ivory trader Kurtz, made famous by Conrad’s retelling through Mallory on the Thames, would travel up the Congo River into the heart of darkest Africa.
A holy man, a minister from Flanders, traveled by dugout from Kinshasa past present day Bumba to where the Aruwimi flows into the Congo River. Maertens by name is a devout, ordained man of Jesus determined to save the primitive ones from the folly of their false beliefs. Thinking that God smiles on him, Maertens enters a small village just as a celebration is about to begin. The chief of the village explains that his warriors have just defeated a rival tribe that sought to capture their village, kill all the men and make the women and girls theirs. The warriors have been soundly defeated. Their dead have had their hearts removed — yes, some were still beating — and prepared over a fire for consumption by the victorious warriors of the village.
Maertens is appalled by the savagery of it all. More than that, he is disgusted by the belief behind this superstitious consumption. A village elder tells him that by consuming the heart of a defeated warrior, the defeated warrior is given eternal life through the victor’s consumption of the warrior’s heart. Thus, the victorious warrior is made stronger for the consumption.
Maertens asks to address the village elders before the feast begins. His request is granted. He tells the elders of Christ’s victory over death on the cross and that He died to give all men (and perhaps some women) eternal life through believing in Him as their savior. During the Christian ceremony Maerten’s offers to perform, unleavened bread will be transubstantiated into the actual body of the Savior, Jesus, the Christ. The Elders can scarcely believe Maertens’ words, alien as they are to their world view. This holy man from afar causes them to smile. They tell Maertens that he is wrong. They know his Christ can not be real because they can not see him. For generations they have followed their own practices, surviving and prospering through many battles with warriors they can touch. They ask Meartens if he has ever see this person/God Jesus as they have seen, fought and venerated the warriors they have battled for generations. Maertens admits he has never seen Jesus.
Maertens is agog as he is led to the warriors’ table. They offer him a small portion of vanquished heart as a gesture of peace and respect even though they find Maertens’ ideas no more than silly superstition. Maertens declines the proffer and thinks only of how he might use the Belgian troops in Kinshasa to root out the savage beliefs of these villagers by killing them thereby putting an end to their superstitious practices.
* Pub Theology StJ. The topic was Superstition. Transubstantiation was denied a discussion by the cleric in charge. Better to discuss throwing salt over one’s shoulder, knocking on wood or ways to ward off the Evil Eye. So typical of organized religions with dogmas that have too often turned deadly……Beware and stay away.