“…for the life of the world.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas writes of the Blessed Sacrament, “O precious and wonderful banquet, which brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value?” We value romance, glory, honor, faithfulness, love, joy, virtue, etc. These are the things that movies and songs are made of; we are drawn to them because of their value. The author, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son:
"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth..."[1]
The Blessed Sacrament is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, and has more value than anything else on earth. It is in the Eucharist that Jesus gives the gift of Himself, where He shares His divinity with us. "...happy are those who are called to his supper...”[2] This is the banquet in which man can “taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:9). We are called to the supper and there we taste, see, and experience the love of God. Once we taste and see the love of God, we change, and nothing else satisfies. We rid ourselves of all that leaves us empty, and we draw close to the one who gives a “…fatness of spirit to them that eat him.”[3] Man is hungry, but how he will feed his hunger? Christopher West said, “We hunger for the banquet and settle for the dumpster.”[4]
Where is the dumpster and what is offered there? “The dumpster” signifies the things that St. Peter says we will leave behind when we begin to “long for pure spiritual milk” (1 Peter 2:2). The “dumpster” includes malice, deceit, insincerity, envy and slander. In the “dumpster” is found the perversion of all that is good. Instead of romance we feed on lust; instead glory, shame; instead of honor, disgrace; instead of faithfulness, infidelity; instead of love, hate; instead of joy, despair; instead of virtue, vice or sin. The dumpster and the perversions that are found within it are offered to us by the world and its temptations.
Where is the banquet and what is offered there? The banquet is the Eucharist, which is “the source and summit of the Christian life.”[5] This source and summit is only offered at the Mass; Divinity is offered at Mass. “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”[6] This divinity is the greatest of gifts and since “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.”[7] We are called to this banquet, “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast [banquet] of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).
How can we proclaim the banquet and not the dumpster? We must live out our baptismal vows in which we were asked if we reject Satan and all his empty promises. The dumpster contains the empty promises of Satan. We are to reject not only the dumpster, but all that is contained within it and any propaganda that promotes the dumpster as the source of life.
Living the Sacramental life means living a life that feeds from the banquet. We make the vow at Baptism that we will feed from the banquet, not the dumpster. We are strengthened in Confirmation to resist all temptations to feed from the dumpster and to realize the gift we have in the banquet. Then in the Eucharist we actually feed from the banquet.
We go to Confession to clean ourselves from the trash and stink of the dumpster. Just as we clean our hands before we eat, we clean our soul before going to the banquet. If we are in mortal sin, we clean ourselves through Sacramental Confession; if we are in venial sin we clean ourselves at every Mass, during the penitential rite, when we say the Confiteor and the Kyrie.
The Church is the Bride of Christ and the Eucharist is the act of union between Christ and His Bride. The Church has shouted out its love for Christ from the time of the Apostles until now and will continue to shout out its love. When a person is in love, they talk about the one they love. There is no other mystery or Sacrament that is more discussed among the Saints of the Church than the Most Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist is the “source and summit” for the Christian.
Why is the Eucharist the summit? Why is it the source?
The Eucharist is the “summit” of Christian initiation and all apostolic activity, because the Sacrament presupposes membership in the communion of the Church. At the same time, it is the “source,” because the Sacrament is nourishment for her life and mission.[8]
Any good work that we do or receive, finds its source in the Eucharist. Any good that we seek in the natural and supernatural order, finds its perfection in the summit of the Eucharist.
It is the hunger/desire of humanity to reach for divinity, to climb toward the summit. It is the mercy and love of God to condescend, sharing in humanity, so that humanity can share in divinity. We are reminded of this mystery at Mass. “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”[9]
God alone can satisfy the hunger/desire of man. This hunger/desire is part of the human condition and it can be our greatest ally or worst enemy. It is an ally when it leads us to God. As the Psalmist says, “O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry weary land without water. So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see you strength and your glory.” (Psalm 63:2-3). Jesus is the sanctuary and He comes that “we might have life and have it to the full” (Cf. John 10:10). Satan comes to “steal, kill and destroy that life” (Cf. John 10:10). Desire is our enemy in two ways: one, when desire is disordered (pride, envy, wrath, lust, greed and gluttony) or two, when there is no desire (sloth).
Unfortunately we are willing to live in the slavery of sin, live under the false illusion and subscribe to the empty promise that a life of sin can satisfy our hunger/desire. When, through God’s grace, we finally escape the slavery of sin, we are tempted to return back in reality or memory. The Israelites, who passed over from slavery to freedom, became hungry in the desert and wanted to return to their former life just to satisfy their physical hunger. They said to Moses “Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into the desert to make the whole community die of famine!” (Exodus 16:3).
God gave the Israelites manna from heaven to satisfy their hunger and give them food for the journey to the Promised Land.
"…the manna was not heavenly bread, but only earthly bread. Even though it came from ‘heaven,’ it was earthly food – or rather a food substitute that would necessarily cease when Israel emerged from the desert back into inhabited country."[10]
The Blessed Sacrament does not cease but rather “…preserves the soul unto life everlasting.”[11] The Eucharist is not “salvation in purely material terms”[12] it is not just from God, but is God.