“Take our bread, we ask you/Take our hearts, we love you/Take our lives, O Father we are yours/We are yours/
Your holy people standing washed in your blood/Spirit filled, yet hungry,/We await your food/We are poor, but we’ve brought ourselves/The best we could/We are yours, we are yours/
Take our bread, we ask you,/Take our hearts, we love you…..”
Do you remember this song from the 1960s and 70s? For the past two weeks it has been playing in my head over and over. It’s not in our hymnal now, and I wish it were, because it contains a key to understanding the Eucharist that makes the Real Presence come alive.
That key is that when Christ comes in the Mass as Presence, there is much more to the action and the story than that God comes when the priest says, “This is My Body which was given up for you” and “This is the Blood of the New Covenant.”
God comes first in the gathering—people and celebrants come together to worship. As we come together, Christ is spiritually present in the people, in the words and actions of the whole liturgy and in his ministers. This is a presence in a spiritual fertile ground sense.
Then God comes in his Word—in the Scriptures read and the priest’s or deacon’s homily about those Scriptures, as well as in Universal Prayers. This is the real presence of the power and wisdom and effect of God’s Truth made present through words. The liturgy here intends to touch our minds and our wills to draw us toward the Eucharistic prayers as ready and willing to meet God there.
This prompting of our minds and hearts is to prepare us to join Christ on the altar. The offertory song, collection of money at weekend masses, and the Presentation of the Gifts are part of a very important element of the mass. They are to lead us to spiritually walk with Christ to Calvary—Calvary on our altar.
They are to lead us to spiritually offer ourselves, too, so that we become one with Christ in his self-offering. As the song says “Take our bread, take our hearts, take our lives.” we are meant to give ourselves up to God in a unified action with his giving himself up to us.
The words and actions of the Eucharistic prayers at every mass re-create Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. They are a Memorial in the Jewish sense of how remembering and re-creating a great religious action makes it come alive, makes it real, makes it happen again. God comes. The Real Presence in the hosting bread and wine is real. It becomes Really Alive, Really Present in Christ’s willing to once again be a sacrifice—this time for US, at our regular mass in our ordinary parish.
And Christ does not come for us to just watch. He comes for us to join him. He comes to share Calvary so we can share in the self-giving Love, Truth, and Fidelity which is God’s Life—share it individually, share it as community, share it as “His life with us yet” to then go out to create the Kingdom of God in the world around us.
Research data says somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of us who call ourselves Catholic believe the Real Presence of God in the Eucharist is symbol, not reality. We are shocked to hear that, but should we be shocked? The deeper question is, “Do we realize that we are to spiritually meet Christ on the altar?” If we truly offer ourselves to God at the consecration, if we feel our hearts breaking open at the fraction, if we experience how God changes us, empowers us, enlightens us, makes our lives DIFFERENT because the physical Jesus has entered into us when we receive communion—if we do that, there will be no doubt in our souls that the Eucharist is the REAL PRESENCE because we will know that he is acting on us, in us, through us. Our lives will be transformed.
Transformed?
This transformation can be a radical turning around—as it was for St. Paul on the road to Damascus or for St. Augustine, St. Ignatius of Loyola, or St. Francis of Assisi. Still, if you read their biographies, you see that even radical conversions took time.
For most of us, though, the transformation that happens as we encounter the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a baby step by baby step process. A homily this week leads us to trust God a bit more, and so we pray a bit more intensely. Next week, we have a conversation after mass to learn someone we know now has cancer, so we begin to pray for them…and drop off some soup later in the week. Perhaps the next week a song at mass touches us, and our heart feels God’s presence. Then we go to confession and find we have a deeper contrition for a sin we’ve confessed before, and, as we do our penance, we beg God with tears to help us truly change. And we do change. We don’t notice until our response to the same old temptation is different. Then, Wow!
Within our Benedictine tradition we call that baby step by baby step process conversatio morus—lifelong conversion. My own experience is that participating in mass this way, combined with frequent confession and a daily routine of prayer makes God working in us a doable, practical, adventuresome way to spend our lives growing toward an intimacy with God. And it isn’t too long before we are absolutely sure that Christ is a Real Presence in the Eucharist. We know!
JumpStart Helps
Because this is Corpus Christi and the US is in a Eucharistic Revival, there are several helps available to help, if you would like to magnify your current understanding of the Eucharist, ongoing conversion, and how God so very much wants to come to you and be in intimate relationship with you. Here are a few:
Ignatius Press is releasing a film on the Eucharist in theaters this week, Jesus Thirsts, The Miracle of the Eucharist. You can view a trailer and find out about local showings at jesusthirstsfilm.com I have not seen the film, but Ignatius Press movies are generally well done. Grab a couple of friends and go.
The three-year Eucharistic Revival of the USCCB is to culminate in a National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis July 17 through July 21. You can find information at eucharisticcongress.org There is a bus going from our Lexington diocese for one day that still has room on it if you are in Central Kentucky. You might check through your parish or diocese to see if there are groups going from your area. If you really want to go, but prices are beyond you, you can go as a volunteer. Information about that is on the website under the heading, “Get Involved.”
The chapter I spoke about last week in my reflection by Father (now Abbot) Kurt Stasiak, OSB, is the best explanation of the mass and our call to join Christ on the altar that I have ever seen. If you write to me at mary@skillswork.org I will send you a pdf of the chapter. If you are more interested in ongoing transformation, a chapter in the same book, The Tradition of Catholic Prayer, by Fr. Mark O’Keefe, OSB, might be helpful. I can send you that if you ask.
For reference, read this in the catechism: Paragraphs 1356-1372
For inspiration, here is a link to “Take Our Bread,” the song at the beginning of this reflection.
Prayer
Or say, in your own words that reflect your heart a prayer something like the one below, and see how the Real Presence becomes really evidentially present in your life.
Lord, I come to You like the disciples in the reading last Sunday—I worship, but I doubt. Make Yourself so clearly present to me in the mass and Eucharist that my doubts disappear. I am poor in what I can offer You, but I bring what I have: me-just-as-I-am, my yearning for You, my life, my struggles, my joys. At this mass I put myself on the altar with You. I thank You, that You are here. I thank You, that You continue to give Yourself to save me and will transform me to be more filled with Your Love, Your Truth, Your Obedience. Do with me as You will.
