The first, the most basic definition of a human being is that of priest. Humans stand in the center of the world and unify it in their act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God
and offering it to God—and by filling the world with this eucharist, humans transform their life (the one that they receive from the world) into life in God, into communion with Him. The world was created as the “matter,” the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and human beings were created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament.
-Alexander Schmemann
About 30 years ago, two Jesuits I know were driving through the Alaskan bush, arguing about theology—as Jesuits can do. The older Jesuit complained that the younger men were not teaching the Eskimos about transubstantiation (i.e., St. Thomas Aquinas’ explanation of how the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus). “Well,” said the younger Jesuit, “the truth is that I am not sure I understand that whole view of the world.” At this the older Jesuit started to sputter and yelled, “Then what do you tell people about the Eucharist? What do you believe?” The younger Jesuit looked thoughtful and said, “I believe that whatever it was that happened between Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper, happens every time we gather around the altar and break the bread and share the cup. I am not sure exactly of how it works, or what it all means in metaphysical detail. . .but I know it’s something real and powerful that changes everything.”
“Something real and powerful that changes everything.” In the end, for all the theologies of the Eucharist, this is perhaps the most important thing we should keep in mind: that God’s love and embrace of the world was not a one-time event, but happens every day and is changing the world in a constant and quite irrevocable way. Indeed, the world itself is becoming Eucharist—an offering of praise and thanksgiving, a blessing given to humanity and returned to God—through each moment of sacrifice and celebration. At the heart of our faith, we are called to believe that the Eucharist of the Mass is not a complete and isolated incident, but is the visible outcropping of the Eucharist that is unfolding in the whole of the Church, where the dichotomies and divisions we cling to are being overcome by a love that takes flesh, and by a God who will not be reduced to our simple, one-dimensional intellectual boxes. Eucharist—which is both a communion with God and with each other, a communion of the products of the earth and of the powers of heaven—proclaims that God cannot be categorized by a simple “either/or” but insists on being “both/and”: both divine and human; both Creator and creature; both ascended into heaven and present in the food we eat and the wine we drink. We gather at an altar of sacrifice which is also—at the same time—a table of celebration, and we consume the living God who consumes us in the process: who becomes our flesh and bone, our spirit and our substance, while never taking away our own unique identity.
If this all sounds terribly confusing, that is because it is. It is as confusing as love. As confusing as any of the great truths which call us to think with our hearts and our bodies, as well as with our heads. Such truths are always multivalent—i.e., existing at multiple levels at the same time—and so demand a symbolic and not a merely literal expression. Yet, we must sustain this “confusion,” this multivalence, or risk reducing the Eucharist to one element or to one moment or to one object, and thus losing the real presence of Christ at every level of reality.
Yet, like the elderly Jesuit in the Alaskan bush, there are many in the history of the Church (and even in this present age) who are uncomfortable with the “mystery” at the heart of the Eucharist, and who have sought to somehow “explain” it, and thereby contain it within a theological and intellectual framework. Thus, they take a notion such as “transubstantiation”—which St. Thomas himself saw as an analogical understanding of Eucharist—and fixate upon it, as though it were a complete definition. Such fixations often, in turn, become materialistic, reducing the Mass to a magic act, in which we summon Jesus into the bread and wine by the incantational words of the Eucharistic Prayer. In such thinking, the object of the Eucharist—i.e., the consecrated bread and wine—becomes more important than the community for whom the Eucharist is given or the communion it is meant to provide. Thus, adoration of the host becomes more important that reception of it by the faithful, and worthiness—not desire—becomes the principal criterion for the communicant.
But while we believe that the true bread and true wine become the true body and blood of Christ, it is not because of magic—and certainly not because of the priest’s power— but by the fidelity of God to our need and our plea. It is not the object of the Eucharist, then, that is most important, but the communion it affords between God and the People of God—a communion effected now, as always, by Jesus. Hence, Eucharist is not magic, but miracle, where the faithful God responds to our pleas and allows us to enter—how we cannot know—into the Paschal act of Jesus. Though we cannot be worthy of the gift, yet in remembering Jesus, we are “re-membered” ourselves, united with him in that sacrifice of the Cross, by which he ascends to God and then returns as the presence of God in the food we consume. In faith we join ourselves to Jesus, and the Spirit who raised him from the dead shares with us the gifts of his risen body and blood, in the form of bread and wine. It is, it must be said, an exchange beyond our understanding.
This need to embrace multivalence is why, when I train Eucharistic ministers, I encourage them to say, simply “Body of Christ” when they distribute communion, and to avoid the more emphatic, “This is the Body of Christ.” While the latter stresses the real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread, and so is not wrong, it is not enough, and can limit our encounter. To say “This is the Body of Christ” suggests that “this alone” is the Body of Christ, thus missing the beautiful richness of meaning present in the moment of communion—a richness that transcends one single definition of the Body of Christ and includes many. For while it is true that the consecrated host is the Body of Christ, so too is the person who comes to receive it. And so, too, is the community of giver and receiver, and the action of sharing (as Christ did at the Last Supper). All are, at the same time, the Body of Christ—a mystery of multiplicity in unity.
The real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist is inseparable from the real presence of Christ in the Church—indeed, it is the Church (i.e., the Body of Christ), encapsulated in a single moment. For this reason, we venerate the consecrated bread and wine through genuflections and bows, but we also consume it as a gift given for our refreshment and celebration, our strengthening and union. We honor Christ in the tabernacle, but honor him fully only when we become what he called us to be: his living body given and received for the consecration of the world.
In the Eucharist, Jesus Christ—who became by the Holy Spirit the body and blood of Mary without ever ceasing to be the Son of God—becomes our body and blood, as well, by the same Spirit. He communes with us in our very flesh, as well as in our souls and minds. How can that not “change everything”? How can that not make our lives different, and move us to make the world different? In this Communion of God with each of us (and all of us), we are not withdrawn from the world, but enter it fully, to sanctify it and to offer it back to God in a never ending cycle of love and gift, sacrifice and celebration. We—the body and blood of Christ—become the Sacrament of redemption we receive, and so offer ourselves as food for the life of the whole world.
Fr. John Whitney, S.J.