Vocation

Happy World Communion Sunday! Any occasion that has a larger, worldwide ecumenical focus is an event that gets my attention. There are many reasons for this, among them my pension for dramatic, worldwide things. But on a more serious note, the Eucharist is, for me, the most potent mystery and challenge of being a Christian. There are so many layers to comprehending the Eucharist that I don’t think I am even close to a cursory knowledge of what it all means, be it metaphorically or theologically. However, I have encountered a deepening of this mystery in some of the most unexpected ways.

I have always been interested by the old-time Catholic rule about not eating for an hour before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. I had never really understood it, and never followed the rule on purpose. What would happen, however, was I would often go to mass having skipped breakfast, so indeed, Jesus was my first meal of the day. On one such day, I had gotten up early and had not had the chance to eat breakfast, and then went to mass three hours after awakening. I was absolutely starving and genuinely looking forward to communion because it would be my first morsel of food that day. When it came time for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I could barely stop myself from drooling when the priest held the bread in front of everybody, as if he was taunting me. I got in line and when I finally received the Eucharist, my hunger was quenched and I felt fulfilled and satisfied (at least until coffee hour). What was unique about the situation was that in that moment when I received the host, I was struck by the awesome power of the hunger metaphor for receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. My literal hunger somehow deepened my sense of the metaphorical hunger for Christ that I experience.

It has been interesting clocking different aspects of my spiritual development since I started this internship a year ago. One of the various markers that I have been following has been my relationship with the sacraments. It has been easy in the past for me to accept the idea of sacramental mysteries on a surface level and be content about it just staying a mystery, and I am now coming into a phase where I that simple acceptance of a mystery is not good enough; for it to be a mystery, I need to understand why it is a mystery. I’m curious to keep tracking this onwards.