The Eucharist: True Food and True Drink

Our understanding of the sacrament of the Eucharist comes right from our Lord.  In today’s Gospel of John Jesus clearly states, “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 within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” 

There are a number of misunderstandings when it comes to the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist.  The first is that people think we understand this in some cannibalistic fashion.  The second is that Jesus still dies and suffers at each and every mass we celebrate.  Both are not true. 

When it comes to what we receive we believe that we truly receive Jesus at communion but we are definitely not consuming the “earthly Jesus,”  a carnal Jesus if you will.  We receive Jesus truly but in a supernatural way, i.e. The Resurrected Jesus.  If we were receiving Jesus in a carnal sense we would be cannibals and also there would not be enough of Him for all the communions we have celebrated over the last 2,000 years, which in itself proves we receive supernaturally. 

Supernatural, however, can be a confusing word, a word we cannot wrap our minds around.  Catholics love definitive answers and things to be simple and straight forward.  The Church teaching on the Eucharist is simple and straight forward; we receive Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity – all of Him when we go to communion. 

When Jesus gave us the Eucharist during the Last Supper His understanding was a Jewish one, for the Eucharist is borne out of the Passover.  During Passover the Jewish people sprinkled the blood of a lamb on their door posts so that the angel of death would pass them over, now, however, the blood is no longer on door posts but inside of us, so that when God sees us He sees Jesus.  St. Paul’s beautiful words, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

Another understanding would be like that of a marriage.  Husband and wife come together as one, they are no longer two but one.  This exchange occurs in their vows and in their intimacy of love.  It happens when we approach at communion.  We take our vows when we hear the priest say, “The Body of Christ.”  We respond “I do” in the form of “Amen.”  The act of love occurs when Jesus becomes one with us as we consume the Eucharistic Bread and Wine.  “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

The second misunderstanding we hear often is that Jesus dies and suffers again at each and every mass or that Jesus still suffers in heaven.  You hear all kinds of things, such as Jesus’ wounds still bleed in heaven when we sin here on earth.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Jesus does not die again nor does He suffer any kind of earthly suffering in any way shape or form.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews makes this quite clear, “It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens. He has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered himself.” (Heb. 7:26-27) and “For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf. Not that he might offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own; if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly from the foundation of the world. But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice. Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment, so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him. (Heb. 9:24-28)

Sometimes we learn what a thing is by knowing what it is not and the Eucharist is not a carnal meal nor is it multiple sacrifices, it is only sacrifice.  This is what makes mass very important.  One must be present at the sacrifice in order for it to be effective, efficacious.  Since the sacrifice occurred two thousand years ago what would give us the means to be present at the events that took place during the Paschal Mystery.  It would have to be the Holy Spirit.  Those events are present to us right now, right here at this mass.  It happens by our remembering, “do this in remembrance of me” and also by the action of the Holy Spirit, making that sacrifice present here on our altar so that we can become one with Christ and receive forgiveness of our sins.  Today’s Solemnity is an important reminder of what it is that we do here.  We are partaking in the sacred.  How Catholics who place anything before the mass is hard for me to imagine? 

This (Jesus) is what we receive every Sunday, eternal life.  These are the means (the Eucharist) provided us by Jesus Himself.  Sure there are exceptions since God does as He wills and works out the Divine mystery of salvation as He sees fit, nevertheless He provided ordinary ways for this to happen and Jesus left it to us in the Last Supper, His crucifixion and Resurrection.  There is no more beautiful thing in this world than to be called up to communion in which Jesus offers Himself to us completely, “The Body of Christ,” and we respond, “Amen”  Truly, “Amen!”