Sometimes when I think of some of the
different things that people of different faiths believe, and how
strange they seem to me, 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 that it represents Jesus, but that it really and truly is
the body and blood of Christ. I also think that 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 actually becomes the body of Christ when a priest says
certain prayers over it?
The first time that Jesus gave the
people this teaching, which we have in today's Gospel—“Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood
you cannot have life within you”—it says that many of the people
who had followed him up to that point left him. They said “This is
madness. Who could accept it?” It is interesting how Jesus
responded to them. He didn’t. He just let them walk away without
changing anything he said. He then turned to the disciples and said,
“What about you, are you going to go away too?”
In his first letter to the Christians in
Corinth (1 Cor 11:23-26)—which is the oldest account of the mass
that we have—St. Paul says straight out, “This is what I received
from the Lord and in turn passed on to you…” He doesn’t say
that he received it from the other Apostles, but from the Lord
himself. Jesus, as you probably remember, appeared to St. Paul while
he was persecuting Christians and the event turned his life around.
Jesus 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, “This is my Body… This is the
chalice of my Blood…” 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. That is why we try
to 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 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. It is also 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 also 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” (just as the
Roman soldier said when Jesus offered to come to his house to heal
his servant).
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| Remains of a 'mass rock' where priests celebrated mass in secret during times of persecution |
There are two extremes that I 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 come to us this way, we
should not be afraid to receive 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. That
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
our sins every so often. But the most important thing to remember is
that Jesus 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 to
receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
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 sellers, 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 (Episcopal) church at the time.
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| York-Minster Cathedral |
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 then 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 are
tired, think of her and think of the many priests and men and women
who have been executed for carrying the Eucharist or for saying mass.
God has given us an extraordinary treasure in the Eucharist. May He
give us new eyes to see what is here before us.
“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.” – St. Margaret
Clithero.
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