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The Eucharist Is the Meal to Top All Meals

To too many Catholics, the Eucharist is just a thing to do occasionally—but it is really so much more than that

It is November, and Thanksgiving is upon us. My family gets together every year to celebrate the holiday with turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. After we catch up on the family chitchat, we fill ourselves with food and then fall asleep watching football.

But suppose Thanksgiving Day arrives, and, although I have not seen many of my family members for some time, I find that I am unmotivated to go participate in preparation and eat the meal with them. Everything will be the same as last time; I won’t be missing much. I mean, they’re my family—they have to forgive me. So I decide to sleep in. After I finally roll out of bed, I throw on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and my coat. I arrive at the family meal late. They have already said the prayer and begun eating. Oh, well—the food is what I came for anyway. I sit down and eat the Thanksgiving meal. Before the meal even ends, I decide to leave. I want to beat the traffic home.

The Thanksgiving meal presented above is a sad depiction of how many of us Catholics approach our real thanksgiving meal—the Eucharist—every Sunday. We show up late, we don’t want to be bothered with the other believers, we dress as if we were going to a football game, we go only for the food, and then we leave early. Not only do we offend our Catholic brothers and sisters, but we also offend the host. We have lost our appreciation for the Eucharist and have begun to take it for granted. Is it any wonder that there are misconceptions regarding the Eucharist among mainstream media and Protestants? To them, it is just bread and wine. How are we to convince them otherwise if our actions don’t reflect correct thinking?

Often times when talking to non-Christians, I get the argument that Jesus never claimed to be God. They say he claimed only to be the Son of God. They point to such passages as “If you see me, you see the Father” and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) as speaking symbolically and not literally. These skeptics argue that Jesus was saying he was more like God than many of the Pharisees of his day, but not actually God incarnate.

I then ask, “Why was Jesus killed? Why did his Jewish brethren beat him, spit at him, mock him, and crucify him? What did he do that offended them so much that it required his death?” The only interpretation that can answer that question comes from a literal reading of Mark 14:61-65. The Jews who had heard him preach understood that Jesus was claiming to be God. To non-Christian Jews, that claim was regarded as a clear blasphemy.

During his trial, when Jesus was asked, “Are you the Son of God?” and he said, “I am,” the high priest ripped his clothes as a sign of outrage and condemned Jesus as a blasphemer. Why did they consider this blasphemy, worthy of death, if it was symbolic language, not to be taken literally? These Jewish scholars would have realized the possibility that he was speaking figuratively if his words had allowed that interpretation. Moreover, if they had misunderstood Jesus’ words, why didn’t he correct them and avoid the punishment that followed?

To many non-Catholics, the Eucharist is a thing to do occasionally as a remembrance of the Last Supper, but it is not the body and blood of Christ. They argue that passages such as John 6 are to be read symbolically. So when Christ said, “Eat my flesh,” he really meant not “Eat my flesh,” but “Believe in me.”

In defending the Eucharist to a Protestant, we can ask the same question we used in defending Christianity to a non-Christian: What did the people who saw and spoke with Jesus think he was saying? Did they think he was using symbolic language? If they misunderstood him, why didn’t he correct them? Christ repeats himself to three different groups to emphasize his point. He does not withdraw it.

When Jesus first made his claim, his hearers began to argue with one another. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They thought he was saying to literally eat his flesh and drink his blood. And so they rejected this teaching and left. Did Christ change his teaching? Did he tell his hearers, “No, no, you’ve misunderstood, here is what I really meant”? He did not.

Many of the disciples who followed Christ—like many people of today—had this to say about the Eucharist: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” When they left Christ, did he try to correct their thinking? It is unlikely that he would have allowed them to remain in error. Unlike the Jewish leaders he would later stand before, these were his followers, the ones favorably disposed to him. But even to them he repeated rather than retracted this hard teaching (John 6:60-66).

Next, he challenged the twelve apostles on the issue: “Do you also wish to go away?” He did not correct the “misconception” of his audience or the Twelve. Why? Because their understanding was true. They had not heard him wrong. There was no misconception. Just as he didn’t correct the members of the Sanhedrin when confronted over his messiahship, he did not correct even the thinking of those who loved him most because there was nothing to correct. There was no misunderstanding; the teaching was true and to be accepted. The disciples responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the holy one of God” (John 6:67-69). They were saying, in essence, “Yes, this is a hard teaching, but we will take it on faith, for you are the Christ.”

When we look at how Christ’s audience, his disciples, and the Twelve interpreted his teaching, we soon discover that there was no other option left open to them other than the literal teaching of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. The merely symbolic reading wasn’t left open to them, and it isn’t left open to us.

When John wrote his Gospel, receiving the Eucharist was already a common practice. The readers of this Gospel account would have understood that the above passage of John referred to the Eucharist. He deliberately included words to emphasize the literal interpretation of the Eucharist. In fact, John uses types from the Old Testament to make his point stronger.

It is said that the New Testament is concealed in the Old and the Old Testament is revealed in the New. This is never clearer than when studying the Eucharist throughout Scripture. Doing so will help us defend our faith to others as well as lead us to a greater appreciation of this sacrament.

Typology is the study of things from the Old Testament that foreshadow or prefigure things in the New Testament. There are numerous types in the Old Testament—for example, Abraham’s uncompleted sacrifice of his son, Isaac, to the completed sacrifice of God’s only begotten son, Jesus. Typology can help show us that eating Christ’s body and blood was God’s intention throughout time and was later fulfilled. There are many types that could be examined in depth, but for the sake of space, four examples will suffice.

“Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High, he blessed Abram” (Gen. 14:18).

Melchizedek is referred to only twice in the Old Testament, but his meaning should not be overlooked. Paul writes extensively about him in chapter seven of his letter to the Hebrews. He compares Melchizedek to Christ and shows that Christ is a non-Levitical priest of the same sort as Melchizedek, and thus not in the order of Aaron. Thus, the law of the Levitical priesthood does not lead to salvation. As Melchizedek went out to bless Abram, he brought bread and wine instead of a bull or a lamb. Melchizedek was a priest prefiguring the Christ to come, and the bread and the wine prefigure the Eucharist.

“‘Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.’ But the priest answered David, ‘I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here.’ . . . So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away” (1 Sam. 21:3-6).

Here David, leading his soldiers, stopped to request some food. The priest did not have regular bread and so gave David and his men consecrated bread. This bread was known as the Bread of the Presence—an example of the “Bread of Life” to come in Christ Jesus as well as the Eucharistic meal. We see here that consecration of bread is not a Catholic invention starting at New Testament times, but an ancient tradition going back thousands of years, long before Christ was born.

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I will prove them, whether they will walk in my law or not.’ . . . And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as hoarfrost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.’ . . . And the people of Israel ate the manna forty years . . . till they came to the border of the land of Canaan” (Exod. 16:4, 14-15, 35).

This is a type from the Old Testament prefiguring the manna to come: Christ Jesus. Jesus refers to himself as the “Bread of Life” and then compares himself to the manna that his audience’s forefathers ate (John 6:25-40). John places this teaching directly before he writes Christ’s teaching of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Those who read this account would understand the comparison John is drawing. Notice that the Israelites ate this bread out of obedience to God and in order to survive. Likewise, we need Christ to survive in our daily lives.

“Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats. . . . Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. . . . And you shall let none of it remain until the morning, anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s passover” (Exod. 12:5, 7-8, 10-11).

Christ’s passion began with the Last Supper, the beginning of Passover. Christ is the Lamb of the greatest Passover of all time, the human race. John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This lamb is our sacrifice. He died for our sins so that we might have life. It is by consuming his flesh through the Eucharist that we partake in the Christian Passover. This is no accident. When Christ says, “It is finished,” he is saying the Passover of the human race has been accomplished, the Law fulfilled, and communion with God restored. The Eucharist then becomes the sign of this New Covenant and also the means of building communion with God not just once, but continually (Matt. 26:27; Luke 22: 19).

Dinner is an important event in my household. Each evening, my family sits around the table and talks about our day and our goals for the future. No matter how busy we are or how cruel the world was toward us, we come together to talk, help each other, and enjoy each other’s company.

Before our meal begins, we say our family prayer. It is not a very complicated prayer. But its simplicity does not obfuscate the expression and desire of our heart to give thanks for the work God has done in our lives and meal he has given us. This time of prayer and fellowship unites us as a family and gives us each the strength to go out and be a light to the world, making a difference everywhere we can.

Likewise, the Catholic Church gathers every Sunday for a family meal. This meal unites us and brings us together as a universal family. It defines who we are. As in the home, we begin the sacramental meal with a family prayer expressing how glorious God is and thanking him for the meal to come.

If we apply these truths about the Eucharist in our lives, our spirits will be renewed and refreshed. We will rediscover Christ and his kingdom as if we were falling in love for the first time. Our actions will then reflect a proper attitude and response toward the Bread of Life. This in turn will be an example to everyone that Christ is really present in the Eucharist. The holiness of the sacrament should overwhelm us so that at its consecration, we drop to our knees out of respect, reverence, and awe, regardless of whether there are kneelers in the pews. Our passions will be so stirred that we will come to Mass early and leave late. We will have a longing to be together as a Catholic family, eat the thanksgiving meal, and pray the family prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”


This article comes from Catholic Answers Magazine, our print publication. It is slightly adapted for publication here in CAMO.

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