The Mystery of the Eucharist

I am the bread that came down from heaven

The mystery of the Eucharist alone - that Christ left his Body and Blood for us to eat and drink - I could ponder forever and not fully plumb its depths. That it's his actual (real) Body and Blood - not "virtually real," "not a symbol." That he literally becomes part of us and we become part of him. That by leaving us "food" to eat and drink, he acknowledges and appeases our ravenous spiritual hunger. That eating human flesh is the deepest, darkest, most unmentionable of taboos: not cannibalism, though, because he gives it. The very worst thing a human being could do - butcher a man, torture to death a person who's completely innocent, and eat him - Christ says, I'm going to let you do it: I'm going to offer myself up. I'm in solidarity not only with your humanity, your brokenness, your sins; I'm in solidarity with your pathologies. And in offering up my very flesh, I am going to transform the consciousness of all humanity, for all time. I'm going to descend to the depths and ascend to the heights of the human spirit and, to all who want to avail themselves, open up the possibility of becoming truly awake and alive to reality. 

While I could never plumb the depths of the Eucharist - yet a simple fisherman would understand all that needs to and probably can be understood about it: it's a gift, and it's holy. Someone sacrificed himself and left his very Body and Blood to us as a gift, an offering, the answer to our deepest prayer: Oh, please let there be something beyond me and my sadly, pathetically limited powers. Let there still be something holy in the world, let there be something we haven't wrecked with our greed, our fear, our lust. Let the terrible, terrible suffering of me and every other human being on earth have meaning. The Mass is a celebration and reenactment of the sacrifice: the consecration of the Host, the bridging of the gap between life and death, light and dark, heaven and earth, the material and spiritual. The Eucharist is the eternal coming-into-being of the power that on the one hand has the ability to shake the foundations of the universe, and on the other, perpetually, gently assures us that we are known, seen, cherished; that God hungers for us, thirsts for us.

— HEATHER KING, Heather King is a convert to Catholicism and a writer from California.
— Magnificat, Vol 14, No. 6, August 12, 2012 Pp. 153-154.