In the city where I live there is a reproduction of Jesus and the apostles at the Last Supper. The figures are made out of wax, and are patterned on Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco painted on the wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan, Italy in the late 15th century.
The wax forms are very realistic. They are fully clothed, and life-size. Each has human hair, every strand of which was individually placed. You can see the facial expressions. The apostles are depicted as listening intently to Jesus, many with a look of surprise, as he tells them that one of their number will betray him.
For most people who see this beautiful and life like work of art the experience is much like their understanding of the Eucharist. It is a memorial which evokes thoughts about a historical event 2000 years ago in a room in Jerusalem. It may even strengthen faith. However, it remains a memorial of something in the past, and nothing more. It is similar to what happens at Christmas when everyone huddles around the crèche, and the talk is historical, about when Jesus was on earth so long ago.
But as Catholics we know (are supposed to know) that the Eucharist is not merely a memorial, but that the Jesus of the manger in Bethlehem and of the upper room in Jerusalem is the same Jesus of the Eucharist who is present with us now and to the end of days. It is anything but mere history.
Indeed this is the most fundamental truth of our faith, and the key to entering more deeply into the mystery of the Eucharist. Jesus Christ, He who is true God of true God, of one being with the Father and by Whom all things were made, is really and truly present to us in the Eucharist, body, blood, 
soul and divinity. Put another way, the Eucharist is the prolongation of the Incarnation. And that we are frequently oblivious to this notion, and not humbled to the very marrow of our bones or grateful to the core of our beings for this Gift of all gifts is sad and unfortunate.
So what do we do when we come before the tabernacle? Do we acknowledge that we are in the presence of the Word Incarnate? Or do we focus on everything but the face of God?
Jesus asks us to put our distractions aside and be with Him and listen to Him. “As they continued their journey he entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary (who) sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.’ The Lord said to her in reply, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her’ ” (Luke 10:13-15).
There is a need and a time for serving, but how often do we choose the “better part” and place ourselves at the feet of the Eucharistic Lord?
In a tiny chapel I frequented some years ago, where no one was more than a few feet from the tabernacle, the power of the Eucharistic Presence was palpable and undeniable, pulling minds, hearts, and souls like a great magnet. But even in that confined and powerful space there was a visible resistance to the divine pull. People talked and moved around, seeming to focus on some object, any object, other than the Divine Object. The same behavior is on display in many, maybe most, churches.
Some of this is indifference resulting from the laziness of unchecked familiarity, from which a diluted reverence or even disbelief can follow. But there is an uneasiness and ambiguity present as well. And in that uneasiness and ambiguity it is not hard to detect a certain resistance to the Real Presence, sometimes even an opposition to the idea that Jesus Himself is truly present with us in the Eucharist. We think to ourselves: Can it really be that He is present with us, body, blood, soul, and divinity? “This is a hard saying; who can hear it” (John 6:60)? Like Peter, we waiver and sink in the stormy waters of doubt and weak faith.
This resistance arises from a difficulty in accepting the fullness of the Incarnation. Mankind, from Bethlehem to the present, appears to find it hard to fully accept the fact that the transcendent and omnipotent God did in fact become man, that He really did become one of us to save us as he promised, and that he did and still does dwell among us. Indeed, the earliest heresies in the Church – Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, and Monothelitism – were denials of this very truth.
Those heresies, which have appeared in various manifestations throughout the history of the Church and continue to re-appear to this very day, each in some way denies that God truly became man, and so each denies the Incarnation. But as such, these heresies are also denials of the Eucharist. If Jesus is not truly God and truly man, if there is no hypostatic union of the divine and the human, then we cannot truly eat the flesh and drink the blood of God become man, as He said we must do to have eternal life.
On the other hand, even if we do believe that the person of Jesus was the mystical union of both His divine and human natures, but nevertheless deny His Real Presence in the Eucharist, which is His continuing presence on earth into our own time and until the end of time, we also deny the full truth of the Incarnation. It is a denial of the very words of Jesus at the Last Supper: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Mt. 26:14-16). (Emphasis added.)
In part that is the problem with the theology of our Protestant brethren. There is a resistance to the Incarnation. They do not accept the immanence of God in His Eucharistic Presence, and do not understand the Eucharist in its true and full reality. Therefore, they do not understand and cannot accept the fullness of the Incarnation.
Sadly that same resistance to the prolongation and continuation of the Incarnation in the Eucharist exists today even in the Church, with the liturgical innovators and theological deconstructionists, who denigrate the Eucharist to the level of a happy meal, and in so doing denigrate the Incarnation itself. Like the 11th century heretic Berengarius of Tours, they reduce the miracle of transubstantiation to nothing more than a memorial. No ontological change. No reality beyond the appearances.
But, in fact, there is so much more! “Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you. The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Unlike your ancestors who ate and died nonetheless, the man who feeds on this bread shall live forever” (John 6: 52, 56, 58).
Finally, that the Eucharistic Presence is the continuation of the Incarnation should not be such a strange notion to us. Jesus promised us that upon His death, resurrection, and ascension He would be with us always. He continues to be with us in and through the action of His Church, and the Eucharist, without which the Church would not exist, is that action. It is through the Eucharist that the Church makes Christ manifest and present, and reveals to us who He is, which ultimately is the revelation of the Trinity, our true and final destination. In its essence the Eucharist is the revelation of the interior life of the Holy Trinity, and the eternal relationship of love of the three Persons in one God.
So when you go to church and put yourself in the Eucharistic Presence, clear your mind and focus on Him Who is present. Contemplate the living and risen Christ Who is with you. Are you anxious or distracted? Do not be. “There is need of only one thing.” You kneel there in the Real Presence of Him Who is keeping His promise to be with you until the end of the age. Receive His Body and His Blood that you may live forever. You have chosen the better part.
