Lambert explores “The Sacramental Sickness”

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February 25, 2018 -  

Illness has often been a site for moral and theological inquiry--in medieval times and in our own. For a while now, House Scholar Mark Lambert has been thinking theologically about stigmatizing illness, and writing about it while drawing on medieval thought and contemporary medical ethics. His efforts have culminated in a dissertation proposal which has just been accepted and is entitled, "The Sacramental Sickness: The Perceptual Interplay between the Eucharist and the Vestigial Leper-Christ in Medieval Theology."

Mr. Lambert explains, "Leprosy as an illness serves as a site for moral and theological inquiry; it frames and manifests moral and theological questions about the nature of bodies, vulnerability, and social responsibility in light of bodily frailty. But most importantly, the evocative and ambiguous visage of leprosy renders this illness a potent, symbolic lens for exploring questions of perception, exemplified in the vestigial leper-Christ: veiled divinity embodied in visceral materiality."

He will focus principally on "medieval theologians’ creative employment of a network of theological symbols—the leper/leprosy, the Eucharist, and Christology—to grapple with the ambiguities and anxieties of corporality." He explains, "The guiding thread of this project is the assertion that medieval leprosy was interpreted as masking a deeper, hidden reality. For a medical hermeneutic, leprosy was the shockingly visual manifestation of an internal disorder or imbalance. For a theological hermeneutic, leprosy could serve as either the visual betrayal of a hidden sin or the grotesque veil of the divine. But both hermeneutics reveal a preoccupation with perception and appearances: a preoccupation shared with medieval discussions of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Consequently, this dissertation will focus on the medieval concern with perceiving the divine in the material: primarily embodied, on the one hand, in the hagiographical topos of a leper disappearing to reveal a veiled Christ, and on the other, eucharistic miracles wherein Christ is literally-bodily perceived in the Host (as a finger, baby, etc.). These twin topoi are combined in Franciscan theology."

The conclusion shifts to the 19th century and an "iconoclastic ministry" in the leprosy settlement on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. "Father Damien and Mother Marianne serve as constructive models for imaginatively and sensitively reconfiguring theological symbols so as to address the relational disruption wrought by stigmatizing illness."