The American author Flannery O’Connor was once at a dinner party with other writers, and the topic of the Holy Eucharist came up. Someone said that they thought the Eucharist was a “pretty good symbol.” Here’s how O’Connor responded:
I then said, in a very shaky voice, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, … except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reminds us every year that the bread and wine that we bring to the Mass do not remain bread and wine, mere symbols of Christ. They really become the Body and Blood of Christ. Their appearance remains the same but their reality is transformed by the very words of Jesus who declared “This is My Body. This is My Blood.” He didn’t say they were symbols of His Body and Blood.
How this happens is a mystery. That it happens is what we believe without knowing how.
Think of it this way: The element of water or H2O can take on three different appearances: liquid, solid (ice), and gas (vapor or steam). The substance or reality of H2O remains the same but the appearance changes. With the Holy Eucharist just the opposite happens. The appearance (bread and wine) remains the same but the substance or reality (what it is) changes.
Jesus promised at the Last Supper: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14: 18). And after His Resurrection he said: “I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28: 20). Jesus meant what He said: that He would really be with us here on earth after He ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. How? Not through a symbol but through His Real Presence, through the Blessed Sacrament.
On this feast we honor the great gift of Jesus’s Presence with adoration and processions with the monstrance containing the Sacred Host. If the Host were simply a wafer or flat piece of bread, we would be guilt of idolatry when we bow before It. Our adoration expresses our belief and our thanksgiving for the way Jesus chose to remain with us always.
Can you say, in the words of Flannery O’Connor, that the Eucharist is “the center of existence” for you? Can you say that “all the rest of life is expendable”? And if you can say that, do you show it by making every bow or genuflection before the tabernacle an act of adoration and not simply a mindless gesture?