Eating Jesus

The Homilist for the Feast of Corpus Christi kept it very short: He said that the Eucharist is 1.) Alive, 2.) a Person, and 3.) the Vehicle to Salvation. If you dismiss the first two as nonsense, then you dismiss the third. And then he sat down.

Wow. And he was a Franciscan.

The physicality of Catholic worship throws off many people, just as it did when Jesus addressed the multitudes. If a Protestant asks a Catholic, "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?", the Catholic can truthfully respond, "Yes, I eat Him every Sunday."

Let's be clear: are people not receiving the Eucharist saved? Well, the reason the Eucharist is THE Vehicle to Salvation is because Jesus is THE Vehicle to Salvation; and everything Jesus is, the Eucharist is. If you accept that Jesus is the Vehicle to Salvation, meaning that to know Jesus is to be saved, then you should have no problem receiving the Eucharist. You can't know Jesus more intimately than we do when we consume His Flesh for the Life of the World.

And to know Jesus in the Flesh is something very physical, very incarnational. It means becoming Jesus' Real Presence in the world, acting in personae christae, something all baptised Christians are called to do as the priestly people they are. In the Eucharist, we become the Body of Christ. We become priests, prophets, and kings like Jesus. That means we are to love our neighbor, spread the Gospel, and uphold the Law. WWJD, indeed.