Sometimes when I think of
some of the different things that people of different faiths believe,
and how strange they seem to me as a Catholic, it also makes me think
of the Eucharist. For those who do not believe as we do, it
must seem like the craziest notion of all; that God makes himself
present through the hands of a priest, in a tiny piece of bread and
some wine. What could be more bizarre than that? And we
don’t just believe that it is a reminder of Jesus or a symbol of
Jesus, but really and truly the body and blood of Christ. It is
a teaching so extreme that only God could come up with it and get
away with it, so to speak. What human being would try to
convince others that a piece of bread becomes the body of Jesus when
a priest says certain prayers over it?
In the second reading—which
is the oldest account of the mass in writing—St. Paul says to us,
‘This is what I received from the Lord and in turn passed on to
you…’ (1 Cor 11:23). He doesn’t even say that he received it
from the other Apostles, but from the Lord himself. Jesus, as you
probably remember, appeared to St. Paul and turned his life around.
He appeared to him several other times as well. And Paul was so
affected by what happened to him that he dedicated the rest of his
life to preaching about this man Jesus. But the line that always
strikes me is where he says, ‘This is what I received from the
Lord…’ He is saying, ‘I didn’t make this up and neither did
any other person. Jesus himself taught us this and taught us to do
this in his memory.’ And so every time an ordained priest says the
words of consecration at mass, Jesus becomes present in the form of
bread and wine. How are we supposed to understand this? We aren’t!
I do not understand it at all, but I believe it and I believe it
because it was Jesus who taught it. That is why we fast for an hour
before receiving Holy Communion and why we don’t eat or smoke in
the church, to remind us that this is something unlike anything else
we do in the world. It is also a beautiful sign of how close God is
to us that He would continually come to us in the middle of our
lives, each week, each day, to help and encourage us. He comes to us
as we are; not as we should be, but as we are. And it is God himself
who makes it possible to receive him, because we could never be ready
or worthy enough to even come close to the divine presence, not to
mention receive him. That is why we always say the prayer: ‘Lord I
am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the
word and my soul shall be healed.’
There are two extremes that
I often come across with regard to the Eucharist. One is where
someone will say to me, ‘Father I don’t receive the Eucharist
because I really am not worthy enough.’ Correct! No one is worthy
enough nor ever could be, but since the Lord himself is happy to give
himself to us this way, we should not be afraid to receive him. We
try to confess regularly, but we should never be afraid to receive
the Eucharist unless there is something really serious stopping us.
Remember it is God who desires to come to us and He does not want us
to be afraid of him.
The other extreme is where
people feel they have a ‘right’ to receive the Eucharist without
any kind of repentance or need to confess every once in a while. This
is also wrong. There is no question of this being a ‘right’ on
our part. The Eucharist is pure gift from God and for our part we
must try to approach it as well as we can, especially by confessing
every so often. The most important thing to remember is that the Lord
wants to give himself to us, and so we should not be afraid to come
to him. Remember that ultimately it is God himself who makes it
possible for us to receive him. ‘Lord I am not worthy that you
should enter under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be
healed.’
For me as a priest this is
also a very special feast for two reasons. First, because it is
the feast of my ordination, the feast of the Body and Blood of
Christ. It is probably the most appropriate feast for a priest to be
ordained, because this is what the priesthood is all about. God gave
us priests so that we could have the Eucharist, so that his word
would continue to be preached, so that his forgiveness would be
available to as many people as want to receive it. The Lord Jesus
wants to be available in the Eucharist to as many people as possible,
but without the priesthood there is no Eucharist. The two are
intimately connected. To be able to celebrate the mass for God’s
people is really the greatest thing that I can do as a priest. It
doesn’t mean that I am worthy enough, because no priest could ever
be worthy enough to do this, but God delights in using ordinary
sinful people, like me.
Why did Jesus give us the
Eucharist at all? Very simply because He loves us and wants us to
know that He is with us all the time and that we can receive his body
into our bodies every day if we wish. It is an extraordinary gift of
intimacy that the Lord gives to us. Jesus gives himself to us purely
because He loves us and He knows that we are all struggling most of
the time, but when we have the Eucharist we are reminded how close
God is to us.
I want to finish with this
story: In the late 1500s there lived a woman named Margaret Clithero
in the town of York in England. She was a convert to Catholicism at a
time when it was against the law to be a Catholic. Priests used to
come to her disguised as cloth penders, bringing her the Eucharist
and she would hide them. She never saw mass in a public church or
heard a Catholic hymn being sung even though she lived next to York
Minster Cathedral. It was an Anglican church at the time.
She was eventually found
out and she was dragged from the butcher shop where she worked and
brought before magistrates and ordered to plead guilty or not guilty,
so that she could go on trial. She refused as she didn’t want her
innocent blood to be on the head of twelve jurors. She said, ‘If
you want to condemn me, condemn me yourself’. The judge said’
‘Because you are a woman I will let you go free, but you must
promise never to hide these priests again.’ He handed her the bible
and told her to swear on it. So she took the bible in open court and
held it up in the air and said, ‘I swear by the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, if you let me go free, I will hide priests again, because
they are the only ones who can bring us the body and blood of Our
Lord Jesus Christ.’
So, just over 400 years
ago, she was brought to St. Michael’s bridge in York and given the
punishment, worse than being hung, drawn and quartered. It was called
in English law, ‘The punishment most severe’. She was pressed to
death under heavy weights. It was to take three days and she was to
receive only a little muddy water to drink to keep her alive. The
executioner was bribed and he put a stone under her head so that she
died within an hour as her neck was broken. She was the mother of
eight children, and some of them were there when she was executed.
In the little chapel that
is there to her memory in York today, there is an inscription over
the door, which is a message for our times. It says ‘She died for
the mass’.
So the next time that you
find yourself bored with the mass, or just not too bothered to go
because you’re tired, think of her and think of the many priests
and men and women who have been executed for carrying the Eucharist
or for celebrating the mass. God has given us an extraordinary
treasure in the Eucharist. May He give us new eyes to see what is
here before us.