Eucharist As Touchstone

Fr. Richard Rohr

The mystery of Eucharist clarifies and delineates Christianity from the other religions of the world. We have many things in common, but Christianity is the only religion that says that God became a human body; God became flesh, as John's Gospel puts it (1:14). 

Incarnation is scandalous, shocking—cannibalistic, intimate, sexual! He did not say, “Think about this,” “Fight about this,” “Stare at this;” but He said “Eat this!” A dynamic, interactive event that makes one out of two.

It is marvelous, that God would enter our lives not just in the form of sermons or bibles, but in food. God comes to feed us more than just teach us. Lovers understand that.

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The hiding place of God, the revelation place of God, is the material world.

You don’t have to put spirit and matter together; they have been together ever since the Big Bang, 14.6 billion years ago (see Genesis 1:1-2 andJohn 1:1-5). You have to get on your knees and recognize this momentous truth as already and always so.

The Eucharist offers microcosmic moments of belief, and love of what is cosmically true. It will surely take a lifetime of kneeling and surrendering, trusting and letting go, believing and saying, “How could this be true?” Gandhi also said, "If I really believed what you believe, I wouldn't get up from my knees."

The only trouble is that many fervent Christians kneel before the Eucharistic Body of Christ but not the Human Body of Christ that Paul brilliantly describes (1 Corinthians 12:12-26). Remember, it is much easier for God to transform bread than to transform people, and the bread is for the sake of the people.