“What good is that for so many?”
This week’s scripture begins
a series of Eucharistic controversies that will haunt the Gospels over the next
four weeks. I wonder
if it is a strategic gift of providence.
A few years ago the New York Times reported that almost two-thirds of American Catholics
believed the consecrated bread and wine to be “symbolic reminders” rather
than the body and blood of Christ. This seems a little startling, even if it
was unclear what the respondents actually meant by “symbolic reminder” or “body
and blood.”
For some people, the word “symbol” can indicate the most sacred of
realities. For others, “body and blood” has to mean actual physical
properties. Even this year, for example, I encountered a young Catholic who thought
the sacred host, if cut, should bleed.
Regardless of the exact interpretation of the questionnaire I think the Times-CBS poll
does reveal a challenge to contemporary faith.
There certainly seems to be a lack of reverence, now and then, for the reality
taking place at the liturgy. A university student, intelligent and gifted in
leadership, observes that he wished fellow students would give as much attention
to their dress and appearance for Mass as they do for a date or job interview.
An old priest, after a Mass in the infirmary, thanks me for genuflecting before
the Eucharist. After a high school Eucharist, one of the theology teachers advises
me to put consecrated hosts into a bin to be consecrated again the next time.
The problem of reverence, however, is nothing new. In the pre-Vatican II church,
there were at least some priests who gave Communion as if it were a fast-food
option. It is also not merely an American phenomenon. Perhaps the most unreverential
distribution of the Eucharist I have been a part of was in Rome, where the hosts
were delivered rapid-fire like quarters from a fist.
We naturalists and materialists are ill-fitted for miracles and transcendence.
We seem unable to handle much more than appearances and style. Deeper realities
are suspect. But if this is so, not only will real presence and transubstantiation
seem improbable to us. Creation, redemption, resurrection, sin, and grace will
seem so as well.
It is wonderful that our Eucharists have become more immediate, understandable,
and participatory since Vatican II. But perhaps the cost of making it understandable
has been the embarrassing realization that the Mass, if we actually believe what
it proclaims, is uncomfortably miraculous.
If Christ really has given us the Eucharist, he is doing something far greater
in our midst than Elisha’s feeding of two hundred with twenty barley loaves or
even Jesus’ own stupendous feeding of five thousand. What we will find in the
subsequent passages of John’s Gospel is Christ’s promise to become our very bread.
In faith we hold that this promise is not some mere human symbolic projection.
No, we are witnessing the holy of holies in our very midst.
Many may still be skeptical. For those who believe it, awe is only appropriate.
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