The Gift

 Catholicism is not just one religion among many.  If the purpose of religion is to allow us to share in the life of the Divine Presence and Love, Catholicism offers the Gift of the Presence and Love of Jesus Christ in a unique way -- in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

As I near my own death, I gather up all the joy, all the love, all the richness of life that I have experienced and with great desire, wish that I could offer it to those I love, to enrich their lives.  I wish that I could say to them: Eat This; Drink This -- Let it become a part of you.  

And Jesus, the night before He died, offered us not only His death, but all that He had experienced of this human and divine life -- His great love for the Father, His great love for mankind, His immense enjoyment of all of creation!  "Take and eat," He said; "the richness of my own life and joy will become a part of your life and joy."

He gave us a way to enter into his mind, his soul, his strength, his will.  "Put on Christ Jesus," Paul tells us in Romans, "and make no provision for the weakness of the flesh" (Romans 13:14).  When St. Augustine read those words, he understood for the first time what it meant to "put on Christ" -- to share in His humanity as well as in His divinity.

All that Christ is, is offered to us in the Eucharist.  We don't have to "think" it to receive it -- it is freely given to us.  "A great king gives a banquet," Jesus tells us in the parable, but we are too busy, too preoccupied, too not-interested, to partake of the Gift of Himself.  He left us a way to share in His own life, but our own lives are more interesting now.

"This is my body," He said -- more than just his flesh, but His Life: what He loves, what He thinks, what He appreciates, what He understands -- all of who and what He is, what He did, what He does.

"This is my blood," my health, my antibodies, my Life -- Drink this, and you will have zoe (joy, energy, zest, spirit, the divine spark of life) in addition to biological life.

If you do not eat my body, said Jesus (John 6), you will have no life in you.  And this He was speaking to living human beings standing before Him:  you will have no life in you.  What was He talking about? they wondered.

I wish I could wrap up my own life in a package and offer to others.  "Take this," I would say, "and eat it.  You will love it!"  But of course, my life, rich as it is, would not even be a brief taste of the eternal life He offers us week after week.  "Take this," He says, "you will love it!"