Daniel Salzgeber CRB
Translated by Anna Clart
There can be no doubt: Christianity is the religion most closely linked to wine. The Bible mentions wine and vines no fewer than 443 times. Even the first sign that Jesus wrought, according to John the Evangelist, was centred around this liquid – the transformation of water into wine at the wedding of Cana (Jhn 2:1-12). And when, the night before his execution, Jesus stood firmly within his Jewish tradition and celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples in the form of the Passover Seder, he did so with bread and wine, and charged those with him to continue to do so in his memory (Mt 26:17-29, Mk 14:12-25, Lk 22:7-38, Jhn 13:1-20 and 1 Cor 11:23-26). Ever since, Christians (now worldwide) celebrate the holy Eucharist as “fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (Lumen gentium, no. 11).
Discussions about how essential the substances of bread and wine truly are to this celebration have surfaced repeatedly through ecclesiastical history, yet the Catholic teaching office has always held firm that they are mandatory. Only in exceptional cases may wine be substituted with grape juice. In missionary history in particular, this has confronted more than one priest with the difficult logistical question of how to get his hands on altar wine.
For most China missionaries, this posed no problem. Grape wine (called “grape alcohol” or putaojiu 葡萄酒 in China) may have long been relegated to a niche position behind the more popular rice wine, yet archaeological findings suggest that wine production in China began around 9,000 years ago. Chinese poems from multiple dynasties describe this wine, including one by Confucius, whose saying “Intoxication is the fault not of the wine but of the drinker” is frequently quoted.
Yet those missionaries chosen for the Tibetan mission faced a different situation. Wild vineyards were scattered and very scarce in Tibet (found south of Lhasa, for example, from where the missionaries who managed to lead a mission station there for several decades in the early 18th century produced their altar wine). Grape wine was little known, in contrast to the popular chang. This drink, made of fermented barley or millet and categorised as beer or wine, has remained an important part of Tibetan culture to this day and is consumed both on festive occasions and in daily life.
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