The Eucharist
We know when we receive the Sacred Host we are receiving the flesh of Jesus.
How do we know it, because He said so:
"…I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger”
"…the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”[1
When some of His followers questioned this, He didn't pussyfoot around. He stated it again, sternly and emphatically, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in you. For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink.”[2] HE MEANT JUST THAT!!!
The bread and the wine we see on the altar have the appearance, the color, the taste, the smell, and the substance of bread and wine — until they are consecrated. Then, they still have the appearance, the color, the taste and the smell but no longer do they have the substance of bread and wine. Their substance now is the Body and Blood of Christ. It is Christ!
See, in God’s plan, what a simple way Christ gives Himself to us. If He gave Himself to us, or came to us in His glorified, resurrected body, we would not be able to endure the resplendence of Him. Like the apostles who saw Christ on the mount of Transfiguration, we might faint and fall flat on our face, or we might die outright from the shock of His radiance. Instead, wisely and kindly, He comes to us in the simple form of bread — the staff of life. This way our human limitations can understand and assimilate what is happening. With relation to the Eucharist, St. Francis said, “Just as He appeared before the holy Apostles in true flesh, so now He has us see Him in the sacred bread.”
We might think about that a minute.
God manifested Himself to the Apostles and others of that time in His Word made flesh, in the human Christ. He manifests Himself to us now, also in His Word made flesh, but now under the appearance of a little round wafer of bread and under the appearance of wine.
Long ago Christ left the earth in bodily form and ascended into Heaven; but He, with His own superlative generosity, left Himself here on earth for all of us in His flesh and blood in the Sacred Host.
Quoting Francis again when he referred to the Apostles, “Looking at Him with the eyes of their flesh,” he said, “[they] saw only His flesh, but regarding Him with the eyes of the spirit, they believed He was God. In like manner, as we see bread and wine with our bodily eyes, let us see and believe firmly that it is His most holy Body and Blood, true and living. Living — that last word is electrifying.
Living! Not an inanimate, tiny piece of bread, but the living Christ!
This is a real mystery of our faith. How many of us truly, truly, believe Christ is living every hour of every day for us in bodily form in the Holy Eucharist? He is present to us and living in us, a living part of us, when His Flesh and Blood in that little Host mingles with our flesh and blood. This should be the center of our existence. It is the source of our hunger for spiritual perfection. To taste the sweetness of Christ is to have an insatiable hunger for more. To grow in awareness of this mysterious truth is to realize we have in our possession right here on earth something so far removed from anything earthly. We can but bow our heads in humility and immense gratitude that we have this privilege — this Holy Eucharist — this Christ-With-Us, Holy Eucharist!
Our Franciscan Constitution states, “Secular Franciscans shall be on fire with love for the most sublime sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,” It also states, “If it is possible for them, Franciscans shall strive to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass daily, and to go frequently to Holy Communion with devotion. Those unable to do so shall take care to make a spiritual communion. Thus, united with the Eucharistic Christ, either sacramentally or in the spirit, shall start their daily work with confidence.
So, for those who are unable to attend mass daily, it is recommended that they try to keep this rule in mind. All of us, whether at Mass or when we make our spiritual communion at home, can unite ourselves with Christ, our brother, when we offer Christ, our Redeemer, to God our Father. We can also offer our day and whatever our day may bring; and unite our hearts, our intellects, our will, our immortal souls, in short, our complete redeemed humanity. Thus we find ourselves involved in the act of sharing in the Divinity of Christ and are in full participation in the activities of the Kingdom of God right here and now.
If Christ is the Mass, then the Mass is Christ. What else in the world do we need to make life meaningful? Do we believe in Christ? Do we love Him? Then how can we not want to attend Mass. As St. Paul said, “…I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me”[3] At Mass, since we are united with Christ, who is the Head of the Mystical Body, His Church, we are never alone, even though there are only 5, 10 or 20 people in the church. We are united with the entire Church, the entire Mystical Body all over the world and, as one, make our offering to God. The Mass is never a private devotion. We never stand alone; we stand together with all our brothers and sisters in Christ.
When you and I receive Christ in Holy Communion, and everyone in all the churches of the world, think of the tremendous power of unity we have in Christ — millions of hands clasped together around the world like a huge rosary of love linked together by the chain of Christ’s Sacrament of Love.
At Holy Communion we are sitting at table, so to speak, partaking of a holy meal together, they and we, a grand and unlimited family, eating the same holy food with Christ at the head of the table. Truly we are a community; a community of committed partakers of Christ's Holy Meal.
The fact that Christ gave us this gift of His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist is a living, spiritual force in our lives. There is also another aspect of the Eucharist which is a part of our Catholic heritage, it is the covenant aspect.
There was an article by Father Eugene Maly in the Florida Catholic of June 14, 1974. He reminded us, first of all, that a covenant, in the biblical sense, is a pact between two parties. He went on to tell us that in Genesis a covenant was made between Abraham and the priest-king Melchizedek, who brought him bread and wine. The sharing of this bread and wine by Abraham and Melchizedek was the rite by which their pact of friendship was sealed. This is looked upon as a foreshadowing of the Eucharistic bread and wine.
From the New Testament we have Christ’s words, “…Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “ Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.” [4]
The word this is looked upon as sealing the pact of friendship between God and His people. When we partake of this sacred meal, we indicate our willingness to become parties to this covenant of friendship with God. We are united in this covenant with all the other participants throughout the entire church. To violate it is to violate our covenant both with God and with all the other members of His church.
We can see again from this what a great bond of unity there is among all of us through the Holy Eucharist. As Father Maly says, “the common reception of Christ's Eucharistic body is the inner bond and outer sign of that unity.”
We can look back, too, to the time in the Old Testament when God gave His law to Moses and made a covenant with him and the chosen people. Moses by the rite of sacrificing animals to God on the altar before the people and then sprinkling them with the blood of the sacrificial victims sealed their covenant with God. This, again, was a foreshadowing of Christ, the Victim’s sacrificial shedding of His blood in His Passion and death.
Christ said, "I have come not to abolish [the law] but to fulfill it”[5]
When we attend Mass and receive Holy Communion we are telling the entire world we are ready to fulfill Christ’s new covenant.
To conclude, some of the remarks I have made about the Eucharist are repetitious, but I don't mind being repetitious when the subject is worthwhile. If we love a Beethoven symphony we don’t listen just once, we come back to it again and again. Christ’s Church is a symphony, too, played in a heavenly harmony, but unfortunately, sometimes, with a great deal of unheavenly dissonance added here below.
It is our aim as Franciscans and Christians to eliminate the dissonance and allow the divine melodies of Christ’s music permeate every nook and cranny of our reawakened beings, our human desires, our hearts, our intellects, our wills, and our immortal souls.
Amen