The Mystery of the Word made Eucharist 

Today, perhaps more than in any other time in history, when supermarkets abound with a surfeit of a vast variety of products, the temptation of consumerism leaves us experiencing an emptiness, a craving for more. This sense of emptiness may arise from feeling frustrated at being unable to change the condition of countless people in the world. It may also be because of having neglected to reach out to the needs of one’s immediate neighbour, or even to find out whether he or she needs some help. There is, moreover, a sense of emptiness that no amount of material commodities or comforts can fill. This stems from a hunger etched deep in our hearts: that yearning for God for whom, as St Augustine said, we are created. “Man shall not live by bread alone,” Jesus pointed out to the Tempter who sought to allure him to misuse his power over material things, “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4; cf. Deut 8:3).

Of all the many things recorded in the Gospels about what our Lord said with divine authority, his words uttered at the Last Supper have multiple implications. They issue an instruction to remember to take and eat his Gift in the Bread and Wine. It is true, as Dom Gregory Dix pointed out, that there has never been a commandment that has been observed so faithfully as that which Jesus so graciously gave his disciples. Yet, the remembering of this Gift has to be enacted not only in properly celebrating it as a liturgical ritual. Moreover, this Gift’s inner depth of meaning is unable to be encompassed by rationalistic approaches, sometimes evident in theological debates that miss the point of it as “the Mystery of Faith.” The Eucharistic Gift of our Lord’s Real Presence is not some object that can be examined like all other things of the world of phenomena. For, as C.S. Lewis put it most sensibly:

The command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take understand. Particularly, I hope I need not be tormented by the question ‘What is this?’ – this wafer, this sip of wine. That has a dreadful effect on me. It invites me to take ‘this’ out of its holy context and regard it as an object among objects, indeed as part of nature. It is like taking a red coal out of the fire to examine it: it becomes a dead coal. (Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer)

Mention of the ‘red coal’ recalls the words of one of the Fathers of the Church, Theodore of Mopsuetia, who interpreted Isaiah’s vision about receiving the burning coal taken by a seraph from the altar as an image of the transformation of the material elements of bread and wine by the Holy Spirit into the Eucharistic Sacrament that becomes spiritual and immortal nourishment purifying those who receive it reverently. Similarly this imagery is employed by another Father of the Church, John Chrysostom: “The burning coal is the Eucharist that sets us alight.” St Peter-Julian Eymard, the great apostle of the Eucharist, frequently cited this phrase and expressed his yearning to spread the fire of the Eucharist to the four corners of the earth.

The immensely rich significance of this Gift, which reveals the mysteries of the Kingdom of God to mere children (cf. Mt 11:25ff.) has to be truly carried out. To carry out in-deed “the many-splendoured thing” of our Risen Saviour-Lord’s Paschal Mystery – symbolically expressed in the Corpus Christi procession - requires us to give and share ourselves with all our brothers and sisters in the Lord through a life of table fellowship and hospitality.

True worship of the Eucharistic Mystery brings about the transformation of human persons – ‘deification’ as Fathers of the Church pointed out – a transformation of them into Communion, in which their finest worth is realized by being re-membered as part of the Body of Christ. St Augustine reminded the newly baptised that when they respond ‘Amen’ on receiving the Holy Sacrament they are truly affirming their identity. In another sermon he urges them to become their Mystery which is on the altar. The true and deepest worth of being human is expressed in worship “in spirit and truth,” as Jesus told the outcast woman of Samaria (Jn 4:24).Thus, alluding to a phrase from St Thomas Aquinas’ splendid hymn (Adoro Te devote) about God’s hidden but real presence in this Sacrament that points to and is a guarantee regarding sharing in the Glory of God, C.S. Lewis stated:

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat [‘truly hidden’] – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. (The Weight of Glory)

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Image above:

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

By Hubert & Jan Van Eyck

Altarpiece (1432), St Bavo Cathedral, Ghent.