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TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT: FOR THIS IS MY BODY WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.
We hear these words at every Mass...but do we listen? There's a frightening statistic going around: less than one third of American Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Most likely, you are among that 31%, and like me I am sure that this fact has driven you to tears once or twice.
The percentage of Catholics who actually meet their Sunday Mass obligation most of the time is also just under one third (29%) - so you might be tempted to say that the one third who go to Mass are also the ones who believe in the miracle of Transubstantiation. But that is not quite the case - only about 60% of weekly Mass-goers believe that Christ is truly, physically present in the Eucharist.
Jesus Christ has a threefold role as Priest, Prophet, and King. He offers sacrifice for us, teaches us, and leads us. But it doesn't stop there - He is not simply the Priest who sacrifices on our behalf. He is the Sacrifice.
It's an odd sort of paradox that I try to get across in Take and Eat. I could describe all of the symbolism (most of which was initially unintended), but I'll just focus on a piece of it for Corpus Christi.
There's something that tends to get lost in our modern Novus Ordo Masses in which the priest celebrates ad populum, facing the congregation. We might get the false impression that the priest is offering the Eucharist entirely to us; this is partially true, in that the priest in persona Christi does offer the bread and wine as food for us. But it is more than that - the role of the priest is also to offer sacrifice to God on behalf of the people (this is the role of the priest in Judaism and in ancient pagan religions, as well).
It’s one of the great paradoxical mysteries of our faith: At every altar, it is our God who offers the Eucharist, our God who is the Eucharist, and our God who receives the Eucharist.
This is not a mere symbol. Corpus Christi reminds us that the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Heaven touches earth. Eternity breaks into time. We approach not bread, but the Lamb who was slain for our sins.
An old monk told me a story once - he sat in a taxi, and the driver happened to be Muslim. They talked about their respective religions for a while, and the cab driver made a statement to the priest: "If I truly believed that the wafer in the church was God come to Earth, I would approach on my hands and knees."
I made an assumption at the beginning that my readers are among the believers. I still think that's a fair assumption. But even if you do intellectually believe in the Real Presence... I hate to ask, but do you act like it? From the outside looking in, would those who don't believe think that you do?
“Take and eat,” He says.
It’s not just an invitation.
It’s everything.
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