Reflection on the Eucharist

When in doubt, You are there in Your word
When in fear, You are there in Your strength
When abandoned, You are there as love
When tempted to the darkness of despair, You are there as light
When in confusion, You are there as peace
When nothing else makes sense, You are I AM

For what it was worth, I knew in my heart that I was Catholic and that I never wanted to be anything else. Even when I was in college, not practicing my faith and studying other religions, with a particular attraction to Eastern mysticism, I never desired to join another church. All those other religions came up short when I compared them to the Church. Yet, still I was too presumptuous, perhaps too oblivious, to even think about what I was missing by not participating in the life of the Church. At times it was in the back of my mind as something that would be nice to do, but I did not make a serious effort to do it.

EucharistThen, like many other souls, I had a conversion experience. I may not have realized exactly what was happening at the time, but looking back on my mother’s funeral, the memory that is strongest is getting up to go to Communion. In the midst of my grief, that moment is filled with light in my memory. I later described it as the moment Jesus grabbed hold of my heart, when I received him in the Eucharist. Although I had not yet been to Confession and therefore should not have received Communion (unaware as I was), God in His love and mercy still used that moment. It was a point of departure to a new direction, where I would begin to pursue the love that He held out to me.

It took a little while to get there, but He kept calling me, and my husband and I finally started going to church on a regular basis again. Besides the obvious benefits of participating in the Mass, two other wonderful things happened. First was attending a local “knowing and defending your faith” seminar in the early days of apologetics, a series of classes led by a knowledgeable and enthusiastic priest. My love of history and of the Church was renewed and my desire to learn more and more increased. Second, I was blessed to be a part of a parish that offered Adoration (Exposition) of the Blessed Sacrament, and for several years most of my Friday nights were spent in an hour or more before Jesus, Who was patient with me as I learned to love Him and see my own sins and developed a desire to know His will. Sunday Mass was never really routine again and was no longer something I even had an option about; it became a given. I wanted to be there to worship God in thanksgiving for the most beautiful gift of His son by receiving the gift.

Then came the day when my parish first lessened the hours of Adoration so I could no longer attend after work and then (due to a directive from the Diocese regarding Exposition) they discontinued it all together. There is a unique, heavenly quiet that I found in Adoration, a uniqueness to the prayer, the relationship with Jesus, that I found nowhere else, and it was being taken away. My heart was broken. And even after so many years, I felt the work in me was just beginning. How would it proceed? How would I now express this devotion that He had inflamed in me and to which I believed He was calling me? I was at a loss.

Then God showed me another way to channel that flame and lead me into a deeper relationship of love with Him. He led me to Carmel. This calling took a little while to sink in also, but I finally realized I was called to a vocation as a lay Carmelite, through which He would continue His work in me. As part of my vocation, I began attending daily Mass as often as I could, and I learned from Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus how to better take advantage of the time after receiving Jesus in communion, a most profitable time of prayer. She advised me to attend to the guest in my house and make Him welcome, for what host would ignore such an important and much loved guest Who comes for a visit to her house? In The Way of Perfection, she also instructs: “These moments are very precious; the Master is teaching you now; listen to Him, kiss His feet in gratitude for all He has condescended to do for you, and beg Him to remain always with you. Even should you be deprived of sensible devotion, faith will not fail to assure you that Our Lord is truly within you.” So this has become a new form of Adoration for me, attempting to quietly visit with Jesus each day after Communion, even when it seems I have nothing to give Him but my time.

While I’m still far from pure of heart and single-minded in my devotion, having Christ in the Eucharist as the center of my life is my goal and a calling, and I can see more and more how that plays out in my own difficulties and growth. The Eucharistic Jesus has become the point of reference for my faith, for “He is my rock, my fortress, my stronghold, my savior, my shield, my place of refuge” (Psalm 18:2). When I am tempted to doubts and despair, the Eucharist is my source of reasoning that leads me back to faith. When I have doubted the existence of God, I could never doubt His existence in Jesus, because I have experienced this existence in the Eucharist. I have found peace there that is an other-worldly peace. I have found stillness, release, acceptance, comfort, healing of hurts, and nourishment and strength in brokenness. I felt time disappear. I have felt His presence. Therefore, God exists. And when I don’t “feel” anything, I recall these things that He planted in my memory and this recollection feeds my faith.

When I have doubted whether Christ really meant to establish such a huge institution as the Church structure is today, I remember that He is present in the Eucharist because of the Church He established. And when I hear others complain against the authority of the Church, sometimes causing further doubt in myself, I realize that Christ gave that authority to His Church and the Church has lovingly used this authority to make Christ present in our midst, following His command to “do this in memory of me.”

When I have found it difficult in my self-centeredness to be thankful to God, I can usually feel humility welling up inside of me when I remember the gift of Christ’s sacrifice He gave and is continually giving to me. So the Eucharist has become my wellspring of gratitude. When I’m tempted to judge others and I find love difficult, I remember Jesus in the Eucharist and I ask myself, “Who am I that my Lord should come to me?”, and if I let it, my heart becomes a little softer and gentler and expands with the mercy He places there.

And when I despair of the suffering in this world and wonder how Christ could choose to be present in it the way He is, indeed how He could choose to be present in a Church whose members, like me, sometimes do ungodly things, I remember how He chose to become incarnate in our broken world in the first place, how in human flesh He delivered Himself into the hands of sinful men, and He still does so. I think of how He was treated when He walked the earth, and how He still loved us and promised to remain with us always, “even until the end of time” — and so He has remained in the Eucharist. Because His divine love is greater and stronger than any suffering, He inspires the certain hope that there is meaning in all of this and that it will lead us to joy on the other side.

While Christ is present to us in many different ways, His presence in the Eucharist is unique and is unmatched this side of heaven.

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