| "Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses..." In reflecting on this Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, I am drawn back again and again to this thought of C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, setting side by side the holy Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the holy presence in the human person. As Catholic Christians we believe in the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist, not only in the act of receiving communion, but in the Eucharistic elements, the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. This year we celebrate this mystery on what would normally be the Feast of St Norbert who famously defended the Catholic understanding of the Real Presence of Christ.
Yet I am drawn to the need to avoid isolating the Eucharistic Presence from the sacred presence of God in the human person, created in the image and after the likeness of God. While there is a unique dimension to the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, that reality does not negate or lessen the presence Christ Himself claimed in the human person. "What you do to the least of these, you do to me. (Matt 25.40). "Where two or three gather together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matt 18.20). Honest devotion to Christ in the Eucharist is a good and holy thing, but if that "good thing" is isolated from the larger context of the Eucharistic action and authentic human communion, we risk a disconnect from the Gospel.
I note that the Gospel passage regarding - the feeding of the crowd - clearly has Eucharistic overtones: the taking, blessing, breaking and sharing, (the classic "shape" of the Eucharistic action is unmistakable) but it is set within an act of loving compassion, a crowd of people in need and hungry. We have the Divine Presence at the service of people.
The presence of Christ in the Eucharist cannot be isolated from the presence of Christ in the human person. If we believe in the Eucharist, then we are bound to recognize Christ in the human person, especially in the poor. My beloved St John Chrysostom confronts us with this reality in one of his homilies:
"Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: "This is my body" is the same who said: "You saw me hungry and you gave me no food", and "Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me"... What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger? Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well."
And so we know that our reverence for Christ does not end at this altar but is fulfilled beyond this place, in a liturgy beyond the Liturgy.
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