December 20th

The Institution of the Eucharist

I was still thinking about my elaborate call out of myself for my fear of the contemplative life this morning when I prayed my decade in the car. I was trying to work some of the issues that arise with this admission out, and it occurred to me happily that the Eucharist is a large part of the answer - or at least a healthy portion of the conversation.

After all, the closest I have ever come to such an experience is definitely the Eucharist. I've even done stints of Eucharistic Adoration - even a couple attempts at regular visits (this never lasted long - possibly because they tended to be at around 5 o'clock in the morning). I remember every time I would think how blessed I was to have come here and how I would not remember that when deciding to get up in the morning the next time. It would be guilt or obligation that got me to the chapel, where all the rewards lay.

As for the actual experience of receiving the Eucharist, I wondered if the reason I could so often truly connect to God in that way, respond to Him and allow myself to really pray and feel that blessing fully (if you can experience such a thing "fully" ever) was, in part, the guarantee that it will end.

I actually know (possibly because of Eucharistic Minister training and possibly just because of childhood - or childish if it was later in life - curiosity) how long the experience of having God Himself present literally within us lasts: fifteen minutes, the amount of time it takes our stomachs to dissolve the wafer.

There's something completely literal about the Catholic faith - something very tied up in the body itself (our bodies, not just the Body of Christ). Everything exists physically and actually, not symbolically and metaphorically. The body is important and fully incorporated. At the end of the world, our bodies will be returned to us and then our salvation will be complete. Our bodies are a part of us and belong to us and experience God as much as our souls, in a way now found in many other religions.

Jesus didn't come down just to dwell in our souls, as the Holy Spirit does when we let Him(/Her/It). Jesus comes down and dwells in our bodies themselves. That's magnificent. A truly magnificent gift.

And perhaps that's why it's easier for someone like me, in love with the world, to connect to God in that way that involves my earthly body. I'd like to think it's not just the guarantee that it'll last fifteen minutes rather than three years. But the actualness, the reality, the literalness, the physicality and perhaps even the earthliness of that connection to God - that I can work with easily.

The connection to God through the Eucharist has been an important part of every saint and contemplative's life that I have encountered in enough detail. I remember a discussion in a prayer group once about the children of Mejugorje (or perhaps it was Fatima but I think that group focused much more on Mejugorje) who would rather go to Mass than have a vision from Mary. And I remember I always totally got that.

I recently thought for some time about whether or not the contemplative life, rejecting earthly joys in pursuit of heavenly ones, was in some way a betrayal or at least rejection of God's gift of an earthly life. I realized (fairly quickly?) that what the contemplative is doing is reaching out for the highest and closest relationship with God available in this form of life. And that is beautiful. It's not rejecting the Earthly means of having a relationship with God in favor of trying to cheat into heaven sooner, because our relationship there will be very different I imagine. Religion is its own reward, here and now on earth. Otherwise it's just a Posthumus Fire Insurance Policy.

The Eucharist is at the heart of that goal to reach out for God in the ways available to us on Earth, in our present form. Because I don't know if we will ever have that kind of experience, of receiving God literally and physically into us, after death even after the Second Coming. This is our only chance for this magnificent gift, because the beauty of it is how God made it so that He could be a part of our physical, dirty earthly lives in a very literal way not just once two thousand years ago but daily (though most of us prefer weekly, including me). He didn't meet us halfway, He came all the way down. Still is.

How amazing that God made the same thing, the same gift, the same ceremony both the gateway and the pinnacle. At the very least, every Catholic experiences this, and every saint who has seen more of God than almost anyone else says that still this, this thing that happens every day, is the ultimate - by far the best. Like if the first step out the door had the most spectacular view.

If the top of the mountain is our call to which we must climb and from which we must descend, if the Mountain is so real and important it scares the pants off of me, then the Eucharist is the experience of the divine, more profound of a connection than even the mountain has to offer, available at the corner church (as I'm fond of saying, fifteen minutes of Heaven before the pancake breakfast).

Heaven on a street corner, I read once.

That's magnificent. And so lucky for someone like me. He loves us enough to join us in the world, although He wishes we would stop making such a mess of it I'm sure. But He loves us enough to join us down here not just once but again and again.

Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

My favorite part of Mass, every time.