At long last I have the time I wanted to blog about the Eucharist! Please forgive the wait.
As most Christians know, the Catholic Church believes that the Eucharist is the actual Body and Blood of Christ, that he is fully present in the “bread” and “wine.” I am not trying to explain how this works, nor am I here to call out heretics or anything mean, I just wanted to blog about something very dear to me and billions of others throughout the world and all through history, all the way back to the Last Supper. I hope that it proves enlightening and interesting not only to Catholics who stop by, but to all Christians and all people who read it.
*deep breath*
The oldest mention of the Eucharist, as far as I have been able to learn, is from St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians 11:23-25. It is believed by scholars that St. Paul was writing this letter in the 50s (as in the decade following the year AD 50; yeah, that’s a long time ago!), so it seems to me that Christians even within thirty years of Christ’s death had a clear notion of the real presence of Christ, the reality of his Body and Blood, in the eucharistic offering of bread and wine. The Didache, which is a document written around the end of the first century/beginning of the second, has a beautiful outline of a Eucharistic prayer that reminds me a lot of the Eucharistc Prayers the Church uses today (which are themselves very ancient). Here is an example that illustrates their understanding of the bread and wine being the Body and Blood of Christ:
“Thou, O Almighty Lord, hast created all things for thine own Name’s sake; to all men thou hast given meat and drink to enjoy, that they may give thanks to thee, but to us thou hast graciously given spiritual meat and drink, together with life eternal, through thy Servant. Especially, and above all, do we give thanks to thee for the mightiness of thy power.”
The words from St. John’s Gospel which I quoted from in my previous post are thought to have been written as early as AD 90. So it seems to me that, based on some of the earliest Christian texts that have survived for our viewing today, Christians believed that the bread and wine offered in the Eucharistic celebration were no longer what they were before, but instead had become, truly, the Body and Blood of Christ. I’ve only provided a couple from amongst many sources to suggest this.
As I also quoted in my previous blog, this teaching by Christ, which was taught to his apostles who taught it to all Christians, who in turn taught all others and so on through the ages, is hard by some to accept. “This is a hard teaching; who can accept it?” Even among Catholics there are some who have a hard time believing it, and it is a great struggle for them to do so. God bless them for continuing to try! For something so miraculous is far beyond the scope and ability of human comprehension, yet that is why it is a revelation and not the “aha!” of a brilliant mind. This is a teaching given to us by Christ himself, something no mere man could just come up with. This is something that is true, because it comes from “the Truth” himself, and so we must have the faith to accept even what we do not understand, because if we accept Him as true, then all He says must be true as well.
St. Ambrose, I think, has tackled this struggle well in saying, “Be convinced that this is not what nature has formed, but what the blessing has consecrated. The power of the blessing prevails over that of nature, because by the blessing nature itself is changed. . . . Could not Christ’s word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature.” For example, at the Wedding at Cana he changed water into wine. It seems to me that to change bread into his very self, even without changing the accidental qualities of the bread, would be just as doable for Christ.
Anyways, the above was just to help you to understand a little bit from where I am coming from with my belief in the Eucharist. It comes from an ancient and historical tradition, full of thought, philosophy, prayer, revelation and countless miracles. People have been martyred for their belief in the Eucharist, people have risked their lives to protect it, demons are terrified of it… how could any of this be true unless there was more to the bread than a symbol or a metaphor?
In novitiate it occured to me that if the Eucharist is indeed the Body and Blood of Christ, then that means something. Big. That means that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, virgin-born, King, Savior, Servant, eternal… that means that the altar, be it stone or wood, is like the table of the Last Supper and we, to whom all has been told and nothing hidden, are all his friends and apostles gathered around that table. We are not merely remembering or reenacting the Last Supper; we are there, for Christ is beyond time. We are there, we are participating in an eternal moment. Likewise when, after the sign of peace, we sing or say…
“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us… Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us… Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace…”
… I am reminded of St. Peter, denying Christ three times. And even as we say those words, the priest is breaking the bread into pieces for us, just as Christ was broken on the cross. Just as we were present at the Last Supper, so we are present at Our Lord’s crucifixion. The priest then holds up the Body and Blood of Christ and says, “This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.“ We are sinners, yet Christ calls us to his table; what joy!
So there we are, kneeling before Christ, held above us as he was on the cross, except now the cross is the body of the priest, who is a sinner like the rest of us, and instead of nails holding him up it is our sins pinning Christ to the cross. Yet we are joyful, kneeling there and worshipping the Christ who came down from heaven to save us! We remember that we are not worthy of such a gift, and we repeat the words of that most faithful centurion in saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
What a beautiful moment! That is one of my favorite parts of the Mass.
After the priest receives the Body and Blood of Christ he comes forward to the edge of the sanctuary to offer Christ to all assembled. There he stands at the edge of the sanctuary, that holy place, as we approach the Calvary of the altar (yes, living_embers! For there Christ’s eucharistic body was broken, just as his body was broken on the cross!) and rececive Christ, broken for us. We come forward in a long line, like the spear of the centurion, and as the spearhead pierced Christ’s side and caused blood and water to pour out, so does the long line of sinners pierce the sancuary and witness the pouring out of Christ’s love and mercy on all present. We stand before the priest (or deacon/bishop/extraordinary minister) as though before the cross…
The cross… what a powerful statement in itself! It is so cruel, so bold, so rigid. What once was a beautiful and living tree, giving shade and shelter, its pliant branches swaying in the wind, its leaves whispering a song to the heavy-hearted is now the resting place of crows, the straight and immovable fact of death, the towering realization of mortality. The cross bearing Christ holds him up and proclaims matter-of-factly, with no shame, “The Body of Christ/the Blood of Christ.” The cross offers to us Christ’s whole being without any reservation, with nothing hidden. There upon the cross is literally the naked Truth, and even though the tree it was hewn from is long dead, long years having passed since last it bore the flowers of spring, here from the dead stump of Jesse, here from the “barren womb” the tree has born the fruit of Salvation. Truly the cross, dead, has become the Tree of Life of which we now have God’s blessing, nay not blessing, but his plea- “Please, I beg you to eat of this tree that you may live!”
So there we stand at the edge of the sanctuary, before the human cross that bears for us the broken Body and poured out Blood of Christ, and this cross, now alive in Christ, says to us, “The Body of Christ” or “The Blood of Christ,” to which we say, “Amen,” and eat or drink.
Amen.
This is perhaps of all words the one most powerful and the one taken most lightly. It means, “So be it.”
This is no mere, “yep,” and more than even the most profound, “yes.” When a person is presented with a statement which includes the offering of “bread” or “wine” and the person offering it states as a fact, “The Body/Blood of Christ,” and a person says very publically, “So be it,” before holding our their hands or their tongue and receiving it into their very bodies, that is HUGE.
Do you know what you just did?
You said to the whole congregation, to the entire Church in heaven and on earth, to all things under the earth, to Christ’s face and thus to God’s, that this is what you believe to be true and to prove it, you receive it into your very body and become one with the truth that you profess. So if you really, truly mean that “amen” that you profess before receiving the Eucharist, that means a few things that come to my mind:
We believe, as we profess in the Creed, that Christ is, “seated at the right hand of the Father.” When we take Christ into our bodies, we become one with him in a way that cannot be divided. While we do not suddenly become Christ, we are completely one with him, and all we are and have becomes his, and vice versa. How else could we possibly come into a faith that could move mountains, unless it was Christ within us moving them? How else could we possibly live forever unless we were united to he who is eternal? How could we possibly be freed from sin unless we were one with he who is sinless? There is so much that is opened to us when Christ dwells with us… so much… heaven itself is opened, and if we are truly united with he who sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, if this is true, then in the Eucharist we enter into heaven as well; it is as though we are in two places at once. Can you imagine the grace and blessing you receive? Living in the Eucharistic reality is like dwelling upon the very threshold between heaven and earth, being in neither place at the same time, though it must be that we lie with our head on earth’s side while our feet lie in the warmth of God’s house. The Eucharist calls us forward to heaven, to dwell ever more fully with God, but it also provides for us every grace we need for the journey.
In the Eucharist we become one with Christ. Each person receiving the Eucharist becomes one with the SAME Christ. If we are all united with the same person, then we are not simply all spokes of the same wheel, rotating around the axle of Christ but are united with one another. When we sin against another person in the Communion, likewise when we serve them and love them, whatever we do for “the least of them, we do unto him.”
If the Eucharist is truly Christ, then it follows that spending time before the tabernacle in prayer, and even Eucharistic Adoration and worship is not strange; it is completely natural. We should worship Christ, we should adore him (O come, let us! as the song says), we should pray with him. How blessed are we as Catholics to believe that not only can we be with Christ in reading the Word of God, not only do we see him and serve him in other people, not only can we speak to him in prayer and experience him in so many other ways, but we can actually go before him physically, in his complete person, as though we were having audience with the King? Some churches have Perpetual Adoration chapels that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year round. What worldly king, what leader offers that to his people? Ours is a King that does not sleep, does not get sick, who is always present and ready to spend time with us, is willing to hear us. What a gift; what an honor!
The Eucharist is not a one-time thing, or even a “Christ is with me until I’m done digesting him.” Ha! Christ does not come and go; he is with us “until the end of the age.” He is ever-present, for the rest of time. That means that when we are a part of the Eucharistic communion, we have a constant companion in Christ, and many more besides. All those who shared in this communion, from the apostles to Polycarp (one of the earliest known martyrs), to all the saints known and unknown, to Mary who was the very first to bear the Body and Blood of Christ within her own body, all the way to today- they are all united in Christ. To you who go to Church and receive the Eucharist and still despair in loneliness and wonder why you even bother- you are never alone; all of heaven resides within your heart through Christ. Through the Eucharist this whole earthly existence becomes as merely the coatroom of heaven, and once Death comes to remove our gloves, untie our bootlaces, unwrap our scarf, hang up our hat and remove our heavy, heavy coat, the door to the household will be open and all those friends and relations we only knew and spoke to over the one-way phone of prayer will be there to greet us. We will no longer be dwelling on the threshold; we will dwell within the house of the Lord forever.
There are many other things that follow, if indeed we truly believe that the Eucharist is Christ, as I do. Again, for all my non-Catholic friends, do not take offense! I present this update as a way of sharing my faith-life, my beliefs, the things I hold dear; I do not present this in judgment or condemnation. I hope it is helpful to someone out there, and please feel free ALWAYS to ask questions! God bless all of you!
