You all may or may not be aware of this, but our church in the United States is beginning today on this feast of Corpus Christi a period of several years when our bishops are hoping that we will focus on Christ’s presence in the eucharist. And there’s a story behind why they want to do this. It all started a few years ago when a survey was conducted among American Catholics that suggested that most Catholics don’t believe that Christ is truly present in the eucharist, that it is “just a symbol” of his presence with us. And not only don’t most Catholics say they believe it, the survey suggests they don’t know it’s what they’re supposed to believe.
Now surveys are odd things, since a lot of times the answer you get depends on how exactly you ask the question, and in this case if you look at the details I wonder if people actually were as mistaken as the bishops seemed to think. Now I could take a show of hands here and maybe we could try to settle it, but it’s not the right way to take this forward, I think, and besides, what would happen if it turned out that the people at the 4:00 mass were right, but it turned out the morning masses were a big problem? What if word got out about this? It would be very divisive for the parish. So let’s do this instead. I thought that on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ we could all reflect for a few minutes on what having Christ’s body and blood with us is supposed to be like for us. What are we expecting, and how do we know when we find it?
Let’s start with the word “real,” as in “real presence.” Some people use the word “physically” present to describe how Christ is present, but I will tell you that’s not what we believe, we don’t believe that the bread isn’t physically bread any longer, and that it is now actually somehow human flesh if only you could look closely enough. But we do believe that it has been changed into something that is much more than a sign of his presence, it is him with us in reality. The word “real” has kind of been ruined for all of us forever, we’re cynical about everything that says it’s real, and what we call reality TV is actually TV that is even more fake than regular TV. But think about this, have you ever had someone sit and really listen to you, so that you knew they were listening, not just hearing the words that you said but understanding it and taking it in, like they would never forget it, like you were for that moment the most important person in the world? Do you know anyone like that, or have you ever had a moment like that? You’d probably end up describing that experience by saying you felt that person was really present with you for those moments, not half present, not faking it, but really there. It’s hard to find an image that shows us exactly what “real” is supposed to mean for us, but Christ is at least that present with us if we are willing to allow it, because he has that same kind of desire to be here with us, that same kind of love for each individual person. He died to give this to us, he said that after his resurrection he would be more fully present than he was when he lived his human life. And this is what he meant, he wanted there to be an era where every barrier is broken down in our relationship with him. It doesn’t matter what a mess we think we are, or how far away God sometimes seems to us. Jesus is not somewhere far away, inattentive to us or the misery of this world. We don’t need a symbol for him. We have him.
But here’s part B, and forget about the survey, here’s really the thing that I wonder if we believe. The Body of Christ is not only really present in the eucharist. The whole point of this real presence of his is not to be contained in bread, or to be captured there. It is to be present just as fully in us. This real presence was meant to be eaten, and then to transform the person who eats it. If you believe that Christ might be present in the eucharist but elsewhere not so much, then we misunderstand what Jesus’s mission still is. It is not to get the church going, it is not to help us get to heaven by going to mass, it is to transform the earth which starts with transforming us. He wants to transform the earth into the world we heard about in today’s gospel, where through Christ everyone is fed and cared for, whether they earned it or not. The eucharist doesn’t end when mass ends, it actually starts then.
So, how does this become real for us? In some way, all this depends on what kind of God you are looking for when you come here, or the one you are looking for outside of here too. If you believe in a God who works from a distance, who holds back, who you can’t know very much about, who may not really care, who is just watching, who you have to prove yourself to, that’s not the God who our scriptures say is at work in this world, or the one who is desiring to give himself to us in bread and wine. The God we actually have is different, still trying to work out the redemption of this world at every moment, through imperfect people he wants to fill with the power of his presence. This is a God so in love with this world that all of us are meant to be his body. So which God would we really want to give our lives to, the one who isn’t able to be really present with us or doesn’t want to? Or do we want the one who can’t imagine any other way that his work will ever get done, who comes so close to us that sometimes we have a hard time believing it’s real.