Saturday, October 10, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Is God Edible?
Holy Communion
an uncommon feast
I think I am beginning to get it. Most Christian denominations do not believe that Christ is literally present in the Eucharist, that bread and wine becomes literally body and blood of Christ within us. Most acknowledge that He is symbolically present and that is good enough. And it would be..if that is truly all He gave us. Most of us believe that God is credible, but Catholics take it a step further, a rather big step. Catholics believe tha their God is..edible!
He gives us all of Himself, to be eaten as food. When we receive the Host, we receive Him whole, body, blood, soul, and divinity. How strange is that? It is not so strange to the someone who is making up the rules, the Creator of all things, natural and supernatural. The universe is ordered by Him in the first place. Unnatural to us is natural to Him, for He defines the natural and the supernatural. All is in Him, with Him, through Him...duh!
How does one separate body from blood, soul from Divinity..in Jesus case. He is body, blood, soul, and Divinity. He is the Whole. If we believe that in the host is His Divinity, then we believe we literally receive Him, body, blood, and soul – all integral parts of Him, the whole of Him. He is a fully integrated Being, not to mention, non-created.
Hey, I have no way of really explaining this, even to myself. I do know the big picture is just that, a picture. The reality of Who He is, Who the Eucharist is, is of course not a picture, but the Whole Truth, Reality, solid as a Rock. He is big on body, blood, and soul, ..and eating and all the rest that goes with being, ugh, human. He loves it all. He invented it. He is part of it. We are part of Him. He wants to come within and be part of us.
He was not willing to leave us unfinished and without His Spirit when He went back to the Father. In His generousity, which is near impossible for us to really understand, He has given more than enough. We don't get this kind of abundant love. It is not an either or: He gives it all up to us, in an almost wasteful way, it seems. We cannot really comprehend more than enough because we have a never enough mentality, and instead of expecting abundance, we avoid scarcity.. by constant scrambling, hoarding, feeling hungry..and acting greedy.
Maybe other denominations don’t go there literally because it is too human, even too cannibalistic, or just plain too bad to be true that we are really eat the Divine in such an almost repulsive and confoundingly simple and available way. Or maybe it just seems too good to be true, that He would make Himself so teeny and easy to eat, too ordinary, too absurd, too unbelievable.
Yes, His ways are too far-reaching to be contained in such ordinary, easily dispensed, lifeless (like Lazarus), morsel of food, white bread of all polically incorrect things, but apparently He can handle how little and simple we need Him to be. He can conceive the reality far better than we can even conceive such a possibility. Yes, He can make it happen, no matter what we think. And, yes, it is too good, too humble to be true. But is not the whole story, ridiculous truth of our Christian faith too good to be true and yet,...it is.
The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.
Go ahead, chew foolishly on It, let It melt effortlessly in your mouth, swallow It whole, as often as you get the chance. Let yourself be What you eat. It will sustain you day by day, from here to eternity, whether you feel His presence in it...or not.
We may be but stupid dust, but a chosen dust, a resplendent dust, a dust He has lovingly made able to reflect His own Splendour, if intermingled with...Him and at quite a cost, the cost of His body and blood.
Come,
Radiant Host
Enter me whole.
With body and blood,
Come, fill my
soul
soul
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