Mark 14:12-16, 22-26
Last Sunday we attended the baptism of our twentieth grandchild, now almost two- and one-half months old. JJ was adopted. His mother had a narcotic habit, and JJ needed to begin life by being weaned off of his own addiction acquired in the womb. This meant extended hospital time, and my daughter in law had to spend seven weeks living in a different state, fending for herself, four hundred miles from my son. Needless to say, she and baby JJ bonded.
Most of her relatives and many of ours were present for the pre-baptism dinner, the baptism, and the post baptism party. There were many ladies and a couple of men who wanted to hold the baby. He seems to have a pretty even temper, and in general put up with all this holding for a bit, but sooner or later, he needed to be given back to his mother, who would put him on her shoulder and walk around making soothing noises, until JJ was comfortable and often asleep.
Today we celebrate the fact that Jesus left us himself, to be consumed, to be worshiped, to be confided in, and to be comforted by. There has been a lot of theology written about the Eucharist. Surveys show that when you ask Catholics if the Eucharist is really the body and blood of Jesus, a sizable percentage will say no, they don’t believe that. And in a way, you can’t blame them. Because when we put this mystery into words, words are never enough, they don’t do justice to the miracle. I suspect there are Catholics who couldn’t live without the Eucharist, but when you ask them to explain transubstantiation, they can’t do that. If you ask them if eating the bread and drinking the wine is the exact same thing as biting Jesus on the arm and sucking his blood, they might very well say, “no, that’s disgusting”. And they’d be right. Oddly enough this was a big controversy in the Middle Ages. What do we mean by the real presence? What happens when we eat the bread which we claim is Christ's body, and drink the wine which we claim is Christ’s blood? And then we say that if you eat the body or drink the blood, it’s all the same, because since the resurrection his body and blood can’t really be separated.
There was a school of theology in the Middle Ages which insisted that taking the Eucharist was exactly the same as if you ate his body and drank his blood when he was walking around on the earth. That position was condemned, and I think that’s what gets people about the real presence -- it’s so obviously not that. But as the author Flannery O'Connor was to say about the Eucharist, “If it’s only a symbol, then to hell with it.”
Thomas Aquinas as usual had something to say about the Eucharist, as about most things. He starts with a definition of a sacrament - it’s a sign that causes what it signifies. When water is poured over a child and the words ``I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” are said by the minister of baptism, the child enters into a new and permanent relationship with God. And when Father says the words of consecration over the bread and wine, what is there is no longer bread and wine, but the body and blood of Christ. Thomas distinguishes between the Jesus who walked around on the earth and was crucified and died -- that’s the proper presence. The presence in the Eucharist Thomas called “sacramental presence”, meaning that through the power of God everything Jesus intended to achieve in the sacrament happens, and we witness his presence through faith, not through our senses. I should point out that Thomas himself, after offering this explanation, wasn’t happy with it. The story goes that he set down his writings before a crucifix and asked Jesus what he thought. Jesus replied, “You have written well of me, Thomas. What do you want me to give you?” And Thomas replied, “Only you, Lord.”
And that’s the mystery of the Eucharist. Jesus, through Godly power, made it possible for us to truly enter into an intimate relationship with him, a relationship we cannot have with any other person. It’s a little bit like JJ and his new mother. You can be handled by many different people but sooner or later, you just need to be with your mother. When we receive Jesus in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, he picks us up and comforts us; he fills up the god-shaped hole that is in our being; for a moment, we touch heaven. No explanation can make this happen, only faith. That’s why some people come to adoration. That’s why some people come early to Mass or leave late; that’s why some people bow to the tabernacle and come to church in their Sunday best. If we act on what we know - that Jesus is truly present, it will become more so for us and someday like Thomas we will realize that we only want one thing -- only you, Lord.
