There is a prayer said by the Roman Catholic priest before he receives the Holy Eucharist, the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ, usually muttered so quietly that the congregation cannot hear. I’ll give you the version from the New Translation, because its awesome, you’re awesome, and thus you and the New Translation are going to get along dandily: “May receiving your Body and Blood, Lord Jesus Christ, not bring me to judgment and condemnation, but through your love and mercy let it be my protection in mind and body, and a healing remedy.”

This prayer is beautiful because it is frightened. It is awesome because it is awestruck. The priest is begging that he be made worthy for the sacrament, but the prayer also admits a rather breath-taking truth: If the Eucharist is not the amazing gift we say it is, than it is the most hideous blasphemy practiced on this earth. If we truly believe we are eating God, and we are wrong to, then we are the worst kind of blasphemers.

Christ was very clear when He told us, “this is my body,” and we Catholics take Him at his word. Apparently we trust this Jesus guy. But in obeying our Lord at every Mass, and receiving the Holy Eucharist, we often forget just how bizarre and radical the whole idea is. The truth is that Catholics can never be ‘fit into’ modern Christianity, for no matter how socially acceptable the prayer, music, Scripture, or declarations of faith in the Liturgy, we will always wrap it up by eating God. In case there is any wonder of what that actually means: We chew Him with our teeth, break Him down with our saliva, absorb him through our tongues, swallow Him, where he is soaked and pulled apart in our stomachs, and distributed into our blood and body. We are often accused of cannibalism. It is one of the few accusations that I like.

For we who chew on the flesh of the son of Man (In John 6:54-58, the Greek word used for “eat,” “trogo,” means literally to “chew” or to “gnaw.”) there is no doubt of whether we really, truly receive Him – why would we doubt Christ? – but there should always remain the slight fear that we will be smited, razed to the ground for our blasphemy. There’s always the prayer, “Let it not bring me condemnation…” And I believe there’s great value in restoring the sense of the inappropriateness of the Mass. If you cannot view it in its fullness, the next best thing is to view it as if you stumbled upon the event in a hidden grove, as if you spied on a secret rite. If you cannot return from recieving the Eucharist with the words, “Lord, could such beauty be possible?” on your lips, the next best thing is to whisper, “Good Lord, could this possibly be allowed?” Because the truth Jesus Christ professes is shocking; it must either be rejected as ludicrous or accepted as incredible, but woe betide the man who works to accept it as boring.

There was no boring acceptance in the crowd Jesus instructed, when he laid before him the world’s most maddening ultimatum: ”Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you.” There was no recording of a group of men who realized that it was all just a symbol, nodded politely, and stayed. There were those who stayed, and those who left. And I have sympathy with the the crowd who left Christ that day. They stumbled upon a declaration so bizarre and seemingly blasphemous; they must have thought the earth would swallow the man whole. But Christ did not rephrase his words, he did not say, “Wait, come back! I was being metaphorical!” No, he repeats himself. “Eat me and live,” he says. And they leave. He turns to his disciples and asks them – I imagine with eyes blazing and face flushed – “do you want to leave me too?”

Note Peter’s response. It is not,”Oh yeah, Jesus, chew your flesh, we get it, makes sense.” It is the prayer of the priest. It is trembling faith in the person of Jesus Christ. “To whom shall else we go? You have the message of eternal life.” Peter holds Christ to his word. What else can he do? The people that stayed did not stay out of understanding, though that would come later. They stayed out of their radical trust in Jesus Christ. What awestruck reverence we would give the sacrament if we approached with this thought, “I am about to commit what would be the ultimate blasphemy, the eating of God, if it were not demanded by the only person with the power to allow such a thing; God Himself. And thus I receive His Flesh and Blood with fear and trembling, aware that Christ loves me so intensely that he would humble himself, even to the form of simple bread and wine, to dwell within me and I in Him.”

And that’s what we Catholics offer the world; the controversial view that Jesus Christ meant what He said. To a world obsessed with blaspheming God in every new and boring way possible, we present the one blasphemy God has allowed us, the beautiful contradiction, the terrible humility of our God. He, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, is our fierce pride and passion. And so we do things like this, and it’s awesome.

(Spoiler Alert: The Eucharist is God in the form of bread and wine.)

To hear your average Catholics – alright, let’s be honest, to hear some Catholics who actually care about the faith – speak on the Eucharist, I would sympathize with the modern eavesdropper who would leave the conversation thinking that he had overhead a couple of junkies praising a life-consuming drug. Our phrases our peppered with a fiendish, ravenous hunger, from Flannery’s “it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable” to any beautiful Catholic girl’s need for Communion. There is a certain element of desperation that is associated with the Eucharist; and sure, we say we need Mary, that we love Christ, but never with so much physical, gut-wrenching feeling as when we say we need Holy Communion. And it makes sense, in the end, that such a physical gift would have such a physical reaction. Have you noticed that? If not, read St. Thomas Aquinas, or any of the saints, really. They might be dry as bones on the value of chastity, banal and boring on the Creation of the world, but I guarantee it, the subject of the Eucharist will wring the poetry out of the driest of prose. Probably because the Eucharist is the only true Poem. But that’s another post.

So we are addicts. There’s a truth to St. Augustine’s classic line that we forget, ”You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.” First, it’s no mere want for God in general; St. Augustine was no atheist. This line, from his Confessions, came from his conversion to Catholicism, and thus, the experience described is essentially Eucharistic. Secondly, the phrase isn’t what I would call happy, nor about some calm and peace found in God; if anything it’s intensely needy, agitated, something more along the lines of a heroin addict than a Saint. The Eucharist doesn’t calm Augustine, it burns him.  How important it is to realize, in an age where all that matters is that we are happy, feeling fine, that God wants to set a desire for Him in our hearts that burns, that hurts?

Have you ever been in the state of mortal sin for a prolonged amount of time, and had to avoid the Eucharist? It sucks. There is physical longing, unfulfilled desire, dark agitation that seems to have no cause; nothing is the same. I wouldn’t recommend trying it, obviously, but take this sinner’s word; life without the Eucharist isn’t life at all. But all this leads to an obvious complaint: What about the large portion of the world that doesn’t receive the Body of Christ? It’s not as if they walk around with a ravenous need, an unfulfilled void. Well, perhaps some do, and I imagine we’ve all met a few souls we’ve wanted to grab, shake and scream in their faces, “I know what you need! I have the answer! I’ve found God, I have, come follow!” but for the large part, people aren’t walking corpses. That’s not to say the world is ecstatic all the time, but surely it is a point against the reality of the Eucharist that we have billions of people who “do not eat his body and blood” yet seem to have life within them just fine.

But as any druggie will tell you, “you just ain’t tried it yet.” A man who has created a family would not go back to the life he had before, though he might have said he was fine when he was single. So it is with the Eucharist. And anyways, that’s not the point. The point is that the world’s ‘fine’ is no longer even enough. Humanity might indeed be doing fine without the Eucharist, I am not one to doubt them. But ‘fine’ does not satisfy me now, and I truly believe it does not satisfy a single human being. If it did, why the superheroes? Why the drugs, the alcohol, the sex? Why the books, the video games, the music, the sky-diving or the movies? If all we want is to be fine, why do we spend such a large part of our lives seeking to be so much more?

The beauty of Augustine lies in that truth, that man is not meant for mediocrity. That’s why the phrase “I’m fine” is the world’s most common lie; we don’t know what it means, it doesn’t fit, it is an inherently unsatisfying answer to the question “How are you?” To those who consume God, and to a world redeemed by Christ, the answer to anyone’s “I’m fine” should be, “I’m sorry! For you weren’t made for shallow contentment, you were made to be hungry, panting, searching, a lover and a priest and a prophet!” Augustine’s whole idea can be restated for the modern world as, “I was content breathing in oxygen, but you set my lungs on fire with your love, and now I can barely stand breathing anything else!  I was doing fine living, making money, eating and drinking, having sex and watching TV, but you rudely made “being fine” ridiculously banal, and now I want this very agitation, this desire, this hunger that pushes me towards you.” So yes, we’re Eucharistic addicts, not only because the Eucharist elevates us to new spiritual heights, but also because it makes life without the Eucharist unthinkable. But isn’t that just typical of the church Christ has left us? So good it makes good seem boring.

Happy Sabbath!

Today – in a rather pointed rebellion against Protestant boredom – we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ meant what he said and said what he meant, when he told that confused and bewildered crowd to eat His flesh and drink his blood. It’s really what separates the person of Christ from the “good moral teacher” the crowds of the world wish to consecrate Him into. No matter how peaceful and tolerant the lecture, and no matter the extent to which you are convinced that he “just wants everyone to get along”,  if your good, moral teacher ends his lessons by offering his own flesh to eat, chances are you’ve missed something. (“Alright class, your homework will be due on the 7th, make sure to write it in pen, and eat my flesh and drink my blood, you’ll live forever, and I’ll see you next week.”(Hehe))

You’ll notice that my Lenten promise of posting everyday was yesterday destroyed by a twelve hour workday and a midnight holy hour, but since it was destroyed – in part – by the adoration of the Lord of the Universe, if you get mad at me, thou shalt be smited on. He told me something painful to hear, this Eucharistic God, as I struggled believe in His real presence:

Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
For your hands are stained with blood,
your fingers with guilt.
Your lips have spoken falsely,
and your tongue mutters wicked things. 

It really is Lent, when God gives the “it’s not me, it’s you” speech. But how true it is! If we turn away from God with our hearts – if our lives and our pasts run away from him – then to face him in the Eucharist is a contradiction of intent. We are at war with ourselves – how can we be open to the peace of His presence? Realizing this makes the Catholic teaching, that you cannot receive Communion in a state of mortal sin, light up  with sensibility, because you cannot reject God with your life and accept him with your hands. You cannot spit him out spiritually and chew him physically, for what peace can be found in that war of spirit and flesh? It’s tough to hear, but such hope ensues! For I do believe that God’s words through the prophet Isaiah are words of laxity, not harshness. He does not say, “You cannot see my face because you are of infinitely less intelligence and cannot possibly comprehend my Love.” or “You cannot receive my consolation because you aren’t really convinced in my Eucharistic presence.” No. We’ve sinned. And that’s something we can fix, something we – by grace – can change. In fact, we can be reconciled to God rather easily, thanks to this whole Crucifixion thing, and the establishment of a Church with the power to forgive sins. Isaiah offers us this hope:

The LORD looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one,
he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm achieved salvation for him,
and his own righteousness sustained him. 

Like a pent-up flood, yes, yes, yes says my heart. What are the areas in our lives that we dam God’s grace? (Don’t act like there aren’t any, I’ll smite you.)

It’s happy, happy thought, to realize that God is held back be these, that He is forced against walls that – if we were to crack them but a little – would crumble under the might of his love and mercy. Think of that, the next time you see God in the Eucharist. There, contained in a piece of bread, is a pent-up flood. Release it, for our God is humble beyond reckoning, and waits for our decision.