The Eucharist, Part 2

The Eucharist, Part 2

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.[1]

It seems most Christian churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, have taken what Jesus specifically intended to be a regular, everyday experience for everyone – celebrating the Eucharist or receiving communion – and made it into an elaborate religious sacrament that removes it from its mundane, everyday context. We’ve made sharing the body and blood of the Christ seemingly inaccessible except to members of various churches. And most of the participants completely miss the significance because it is overshadowed by the ritual. Jesus wanted for us to become consciously aware that as we eat and drink, we are not only nourishing our bodies but also acknowledging the spiritual significance of eating and drinking, too. Everything created is spiritual at its core, and by remembering that we feed our soul and body as one, we draw ourselves closer, consciously, to the body of Christ of which we are a part, consciously or unconsciously. It is a necessary activity to be done daily and with conscious attention to both our physical and spiritual health.

Jesus used bread and wine because they were common elements of most meals eaten by most people of all social strata in his day. Today, we might use bread and water or chips and soda or cereal and milk. It doesn’t matter because bread and wine are not the point. Food and nourishment are the point. We must be fed, both physically and spiritually, in order to attain and retain wholistic health. If we are faithful about giving our bodies healthy foods in reasonable amounts but fail to acknowledge the spiritual aspect of the physical food, we may nourish our body but starve our spirit. Thus, Jesus pleaded for us to remember – remember that the Christ is ever-present in everything we take into our bodies. A life has been given (as our food) so our life can be extended, whether the life of a plant or animal, and we should never take that exchange casually. We should also remember that one day, our bodies will be given for the nourishment of the plants and animals we consume today. There is a spiritual aspect to everything and we need to align our conscious awareness with that reality if we are to feed both body and spirit.

When we remember the Christ as the conscious reuniting of the physical and spiritual, as modeled by Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus’ words that we must eat his body and drink his blood become less jarring. None of the elements making up the physical aspects of any created being is ever lost, only reconstituted. As such, we know our bodies share the same elements once making up ancient stars and all manner of plants, animals, and people from times past. It is also true of the food we eat. Every time we eat or drink anything, we consume something that has been a part of food, drink, and created life for millennia, united and reconstituted by the Spirit. Once consumed, it abides in us.

At his Last Supper, when Jesus took the bread and wine and shared it with his disciples, he affirmed the eternal, interconnected nature of the food and drink. The component parts of that particular bread and wine had been present in all of life preceding them, just as those elements would be present in all life after their own. One expression of the One Life was sacrificed for them that night, just as their lives would be sacrificed for others in time – but the spiritual essence animating the formation of the sacrificial meal is eternal. We, too, are an inseparable part of that One Life, sustained by its eternal existence.

And this is the essential message we miss in the rituals that have evolved into today’s Eucharist and communion. We must eat and drink the body and blood of Christ in order to abide in the Christ and for the Christ to abide in us. But it is not only in the physical act of eating, nor is it what we eat; rather, it is the conscious awareness we hold as we eat. We cannot fully live or express the reality of our Oneness with and in the Christ until we become consciously aware of that Oneness and our place within it. The physical and spiritual natures of everything united as One in our conscious awareness – that is the body and blood of the Christ. If we only eat as an act of physical sustenance or as a symbolic remembrance of a Last Supper long ago, we miss the spiritual significance that calls us back to conscious union with the Christ right here and right now.

This is the 38thin a series titled Crucifying Christianity, Resurrecting the Way.Life Notes are my explorations into mysteries that interest me. They are invitations for readers to explore more deeply into life’s mysteries. Engage with me or explore contemplative spiritual direction at ghildenbrand@outlook.com.

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[1] John 6:54-56