Jesus Christ, risen and ascended: by the gift of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost, the gift of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit who is God—a Trinity—he comes to us today, our Lord, every day, as food, as silent food and drink. Into a world often too busy to notice, before hearts which underestimate the gift, this silent God’s gift.

This incarnate God we’ve followed since Advent, from his baptism and his death and resurrection, his entering the locked room with his wounds and words of peace, and to his ascension: this same God we can now taste, we can now eat and so be “changed”—Saint Augustine heard the voice say—“changed into me.”[1]

This is the simple thing we celebrate today, that what Jesus said at Capernaum remains true, that it remains true here in this church, upon this altar. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”[2] That’s what remains true, that miracle, that gift. The Eucharist: as Saint Justin Martyr, whom the Church celebrated yesterday, put it, “it is not common bread or common drink” but instead the “flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.”[3] His first century faith and our twenty-first century faith are the same. What he knew, we know. This is the faith of Catholics. It’s a truth bigger than we are.

Yet we must be mystics—at least a little bit—to see it. We must be the sort of people who can recognize the spiritual nature of reality and not just the material nature of reality. Anyone who loves anyone and can think of why that is can begin to see the spiritual nature of things; I mean, if you really know what love is. I mean, why do you love her more than any other woman? Why do you love this person more than another person? Is the answer only biological? Is it only cultural? Wouldn’t that be sad and creepy if that’s all love is? Is there nothing spiritual at all to love? Something more than material?

Now, I’ve wandered off the path a bit, but my point is this: to understand at all the truth of the Eucharist, you must know how to see things with love. That’s what I mean by saying you must be at least a little mystical, not a pure materialist—as stupid and superstitious a metaphysical belief as there ever was, a ridiculous atheism. Anyway, what I mean—to pull myself out of the philosophy of the thing—is that it’s just more beautiful to see the material world as a spiritual thing—as creation, as matter shimmering with a truth bigger than itself. Like art, or like bread that is Body and wine that is Blood.

Catholic tradition is clear. The Scriptures are not difficult to understand. Anyone who looks at it seriously grasps the claim. In the Eucharist, as the Catechism says plainly, Christ is “really and mysteriously” present.[4] When one rejects an obviously false materialism (or at least when you admit that materialism is by no means obvious) and when you make yourself a genuine student of the Bible and the Catholic theological tradition, what the Catholic Church teaches to be true about the Eucharist is not a hard thing to get your head around. But, of course, that’s what is mostly the problem, that we live in a world where we simply do not do this much anymore. We do not go below the surface of much of anything anymore; and so, of course, believing in the Eucharist is difficult. But so is believing in anything else, which is the wider tragedy consuming us all, which explains that dreadful sense of crumbling so many people feel—our forgetting how to believe in anything.

What I’m trying to say is that to be a person, to be a people, that believes in the miracle of the Eucharist, that it is possible for the priest to make “this thing other,” the bread into Body and the wine into Blood, is to be a person, and a people, that believes there is indeed more than what we see, something more than the sadness, banality, and despair that is often all too visible, something more than even the beauty that fades.[5] Which is what hope is—the ability to see more. Which is something I think we need to do again: to dream again, to imagine a world that might indeed someday become a heaven. Which is what the Eucharist helps us do.

I perhaps have gone a bit too deep for a homily; my apologies. What I’m saying is of limited value for anyone in a rush; maybe someday we can all go deeper. What I want to say simply is this: that the prophet and king, David, he dreamed once of a table set in the wilderness, of a cup that overflows, all while walking through the valley of the shadow of death; and Jesus, on the night before he died, the night he instituted the Eucharist, prayed that those who loved him would remain with him.[6] Which is what the Eucharist does; it keeps us close to God in a dark world. It’s why we are never alone. But it’s also why we know we should stick together—at least as believers, as the Church, as a parish—because the Eucharist makes us kin, it makes us a sacramental family, a family fit for the kingdom of God, for heaven. It makes us sisters and brothers, inspiring us to love one another, help one another, give for the good of one another, and as Paul said, to “wait for one another.”[7] In a world tearing itself apart, the Eucharist brings us together. Which is a beautiful thing, something I think the world desperately needs to see. It’s something you need, me too. But you only need to believe in a miracle. You only need to be that sort of person. The word for it is faith. The other word is love. Amen.

[1] Augustine, Confessions 7.10,16

[2] John 6:54-55

[3] Justin Martyr, The First Apology 66

[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church 1357

[5] David Jones, The Anathémata

[6] Psalm 23:4-5; John 15:9-10

[7] 1 Corinthians 11:33

© 2024 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield