The Eucharist - God Breaks Into Time

Do you like a good mystery? What about this one?

Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Matthew 26:26-28

As Catholics, we recognize these as the words of consecration, spoken by our Lord at that moment in time when he instituted the Eucharist. Like so many of the interactions between God and man, the Eucharist presents to us many facets, many mysteries within a mystery. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states it this way, “The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament…” We can spend lifetimes reflecting on the Eucharist and never fully plumb it’s depths. Perhaps then we can be content knowing that around each theological bend, is something new our hearts may ponder if ever they grow restless. Lately I have be dwelling on one of those mysteries I can’t fully unpack. It delights and mystifies me. I do love a good mystery. The Blessed Sacrament is, I posit, the greatest mystery of the human experience; inside and outside of time. Will you join me for a few moments and share in my reflection?

When I speak of the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament, you might assume I’m speaking of the mystery of how simple bread and wine might be transformed (transubstantiated) into the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ under the mere appearance, or accidents, of bread and wine. This is truly a mystery. If you’ve ever read a theological or philosophical treatise on this subject and you understand it - congratulations! I’ve read several and I’m always left feeling a little richer for it, but never quite satisfied. Yet, I’ve decided wrestling with these explanations, which always seem to be just beyond my cognitive ability, is okay. In the end, all that God seems to require is that I simply trust the words of Jesus when he says, “For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” (John 6:55). St. Peter, as if anticipating our own doubts, responded to Jesus with the words in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." Somehow it’s assuring, amidst my personal doubt, that even St. Peter had to struggle with the reality we call the Holy Eucharist.

As theologically significant as the Eucharist is, and I can’t over-stress its significance, my focus in this reflection is a related mystery. One I looked past most of my life. Not long ago, I was listening to a recording of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He was teaching that God is outside of time. That all of time is ‘present’ to God and so there is no yesterday, today or tomorrow for God. All is in the eternal now, at least that’s the way I remember him describing it. Everything is present as if in a single moment that is eternal. Just hurts my brain thinking about it. And I was sure we could never experience a taste of this reality short of heaven. At least not until I paid closer attention to the account of the Last Supper.

For this next part you have to do something quite impossible. You have to close your eyes and read at the same time. No? Okay, then imagine you’re eyes are closed and read on.

You and I are sitting on the floor in the corner of an upper room in a house in Jerusalem; we are silent to the event occurring there. Two disciples of Jesus acquired this room earlier in the day. It is a large room and furnished. Just as the Master said. And his disciples prepared it as he instructed, for it was the first day of Unleavened Bread.

You and I arrived just before evening, as the disciples were finishing preparations. When it was evening, Jesus and the twelve arrived and reclined at table. They are talking but the night is solemn and so are they. This isn’t a jovial dinner party. You and I remain still and silent in a shadowy corner as the flickering oil lamps cast shadows upon the distant walls; they dance and skip from time to time as the flames flicker in the rustled air from a passing disciple. Though we are too distant to clearly hear what Jesus and the apostles are saying, we recognize this event- it is the Jewish Passover meal.

Scripture scholars tell us that the Jewish understanding of remembrance of the Passover isn’t a fond recalling of a Jewish event from thousands of years ago, but rather, remembrance means to place one’s self in that original moment. When Jews celebrate Passover they aren’t bringing the event into the present, they are making themselves present to that past event - at least that’s my humble understanding. And the same is true for you and I each time we participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

As you and I continue to observe the Passover in that upper room, we clearly hear Jesus speak. This is how Matthew records it. “Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:26-28.

This moment elevates us in our Catholic faith; it is the high point of the divine liturgy. Paragraph 1324 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states,

“The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.”

You and I are still there in the upper room and Jesus has just given himself in the Eucharist. Of this Pasch, the CCC gives this definition,

Jesus’ saving death and its memorial in the Eucharist, associated with the Jewish feast of Passover (or Pasch) commemorating the deliverance of the Jewish people from death by the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the doorposts in Egypt, which the angel of death saw and “passed over.” Hence Jesus is acknowledged in the New Testament as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world; he is the Paschal Lamb, the symbol of Israel’s redemption at the first Passover.

Jesus is that Paschal Lamb at the Last Supper, the same lamb John speaks of in Revelation 5:6, “I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain…” You and I are silent in our deep awe of the Paschal Mystery unfolding before us, but you nudge me because your losing circulation in your leg after hours of sitting on the hard floor. “It is good that we could share this moment. Is this what you brought me to see?”, you ask. “Yes, and more!”, I respond. “What else?”, you ask. “Shhhh, it’s a mystery! Just rub your leg and I’ll explain.”

Yes, it’s a mystery, but not because Jesus has veiled it from our sight. He literally laid it all out there in the open. Right there on that table in that upper room. Please understand, we are watching eternity intersect with time and space.

So the Church tells us that the Eucharist, on that Passover night, is the Lamb of God, the Passover sacrifice. But guess what? As you and I sit in the corner of that upper room and Jesus gathers the apostles to go out to the Garden of Gethsemane, an event has happened and it hasn’t happened. Jesus gave the apostles himself, sacrificed and resurrected, body, blood, soul and divinity. But how could he? He hasn’t suffered and died; he hasn’t been sacrificed and resurrected! My friend, what just happened isn’t natural - it is supernatural! In that Passover meal, the heavenly reality breaks into human history and joins with it. Jesus, flesh and blood in acting in this earthly realm, reaches beyond the boundary of time and space to make himself once for all sacrificed present to the apostles. Peter, James, John and the rest have consumed what the Church calls the unbloody sacrifice upon the cross - from the hands of the one who is yet to be crucified! Isn’t that amazing! Jesus, in the last supper, presents us with this wonderful and amazing paradox!

Is this interjection of the eternal into time and space a unique perspective? No, though I thought it was when I first recognized it. But then I started researching the CCC and what did I find? I found (you can get off that floor now and return to your 21^st century home) paragraph 1340.

“By celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning. Jesus' passing over to his father by his death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated in the Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, [emphasis added] which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom.

The Catechism affirms that the Last Supper ‘anticipated’ his eventual death and Resurrection. How can that be? Well…it’s a mystery! See, didn’t I tell you this would be a good mystery?

Jesus demonstrated during the Last Supper that God is not bound by space and time. If the unbloody sacrifice of Jesus could be made present in this world, before Jesus’ crucifixion even occurred, then is it really so hard to accept that Jesus makes his unbloody sacrifice present to us continuously all over the world after his crucifixion, death and resurrection?

Yes, each time Jesus is made present in the Mass, it’s a mystery. Each time he offers himself, flesh and blood, in an unbloody manner through the accidents of bread and wine, it’s a mystery. He knows we can’t understand how he makes it a reality. He invites us to trust that he can. And I think, while the timeline of the Last Supper and Good Friday are logically necessary in this world, they also afford us an insight that Jesus has the authority and power to make real his presence - without being bound by space and time.

Oh, how I do love a good mystery!