A lot to swallow

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:53–56).

Any Wednesday evening, between 6-8, this new bloggin' blogger can be found at his wonderful parish, for Eucharistic Adoration. Although this is in one way considered a sacrificial act, I must admit that I truly need this time in my Brother Jesus' presence. On more than one occasion, when my broken and trampled heart seemed impossible to carry, I wished nothing more than to curl up in a pew and rest in His arms (which is maybe why the idea of the homeless sometimes sleeping in the back pews, doesn't bother me . . .they too, are in their Brother's arms).

Anyway, last night, I was meditating mostly on the idea of the bread becoming Jesus (the miracle of transubstantiation). The biblical truth of the Eucharist was actually the catalyst to my taking my first step towards Rome, always feeling cheated somehow in my old church when we had "communion" , a spiritual-less exercise in "Catholi-phobia"(fear of appearing Catholic, a future blog on this to come), where the pastor (unconsciously?) accents the word "remembrance" above "this is My body". This always felt wrong, even fake, to me,especially as the pastors themselves never actually explained why the heck we were doing it (and they say Catholics have meaningless rituals?). There was of course a glimpse of the truth, and my desire to know and understand that truth, is that which lead me to my first Holy Communion.

Talking to other converts and reverts, this seems to be the case with many of them as well.

The main thought that came to me was how unbelievably prideful it is for us Christians to easily accept that the Creator of the universe would choose to become a human, yet deny He would become our food. In humility I realized that our physical selves are far more closely related to piece of Wonder bread or a glass of Manischewitz, than we are to being anything like the Almighty.....but that didn't stop Him from becoming one of us.

Limiting God in this way, in any way, isn't just ridiculous; but could be seen as a form of almost exalting ourselves.

When my thoughts shifted to God's motivation in becoming our supper, the lyrics of one of my favorite love songs " I CAN SYMPATHIZE "by the seminal punk (and to my knowledge, not Christian) bands, 7 Seconds. My favorite lines below:

"When you cry I wish I could be,
a salty tear running from your eye
I wish you'd swallow me, so I could be
So much closer to your soul"

Closer to our souls! and our bodies house our souls....OK, you can do the math (O:

I will be babbling further on this, as I am preparing a week of blogs on the Sacraments, but I just wanted to throw this out for now, as to keep my millions of hungry readers at least partially fed.

Peace of Christ,
mike