My Deacon husband and I belong to a small, inner city parish, in which you are greeted with hugs and kisses by almost everyone. During the recitation of the Our Father, during which almost everyone holds hands, including our Deacon, priest, and servers, I saw a beautiful sight. One man, an Anglo, who cannot kneel, sat back in his seat, hands upraised in praise. An Hispanic grandmother directly behind him held hands with her two little grand-daughters. Seeing that the man had no-one to hold hands with, the smallest grand-daughter whispered something to her grandmother, who nodded. I watched the child's small hand move slowly, trustingly, into the hand of the man ahead of her, who gently held it. Warm flesh, to warm flesh, friends and strangers, we all prayed the prayer that Jesus taught us, knowing that we are one in Him. We are one here with the risen Christ in spirit; once we reach eternity and our transformed bodies join us, we will be one with each other and Christ in soul and body.
During the "Holy, Holy," a lovely, lively Caribbean melody, I tapped my foot, swayed, and shook the shaker which our Choir Director gives me to play - and play with - every week. I remembered the three young African-American altar servers at this Mass last week, who, from the altar, clapped with me, grinned, and danced in place to this song of praise, joy brightening their adorable faces. They knew that God gave us our bodies to use in praising Him! Isn't it strange that we live in a society which thinks nothing of using the human body in pornography, thinks nothing of promiscuous sex, and yet so many would be aghast at the thought of moving our bodies to praise God in Church! Our souls are NOT more important than our bodies! Who we are is a beautiful integration of flesh and spirit, working as a whole. Jesus' Incarnation in the flesh proves to us how much God values human bodies!
So often those who do not understand God, heaven, or the holiness of the human body, are so lonely, and their loneliness drives them to seek sexual union with others in superficial ways. Speaking of a lonely man who visits a prostitute, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser says "However misguided his search may have become, that man is looking for God....He is restlessly and desperately being driven by his own inner dynamisms to look for infinite love and life. Like all persons, he has been made with a heart that is lonely and thirsty for God's Kingdom, for union within the body of Christ. Furtive union with a prostitute is simply a pseudo- and counterfeit attempt to fill that gap. Like all persons, this man was created hungry, that he might desire to eat the bread of life....we are incurably human and sensitive to the fact that God made us for an ecstatic togetherness in a body with divine love and with all others persons of sincere will." (in "The Restless Heart").
Holding hands together, praying fervently together, gives us a sweet foretaste of that final ecstasy when we will truly be totally one, still the individuals we are, but united at levels of oneness and understanding with God, Love, that we cannot begin to understand here.
If Heaven is this ecstatic togetherness, body and soul, in the One Body of Christ, is it any wonder that Jesus comes to us body, blood, soul, and divinity, in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist? Jesus told His followers, "I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world....I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, asking how this could be possible, that this was a hard saying. Even Jesus' disciples murmured among themselves. Jesus said to all of them, "Does this shock you?...But there are some of you who do not believe." He did NOT say to them, "You're misunderstanding me, I was only using a figure of speech. Even when many of his disciples left him because he said this, he did not call them back.
Think about it, my brothers and sisters. When you love people, are you content to see them and feel close to them by looking at photos? Or sending emails and texts? Or Skyping or Face-timing? Or talking on the phone? Are any of these forms of communication and loving enough for you? Of course not! You want to see those faces in the flesh, give and receive those hugs and kisses in the flesh, hear that beloved voice breathing into your ear. Would the God Who loves us so that He plans to be eternally one with us, body and soul, in Heaven, be content with less than being present to us body, blood, soul, and divinity here on earth? My friends, we so underestimate the importance of our bodies and Jesus' body to God when we do not believe this. The Eucharist is not cannibalism - it is the total, total Real Presence of Jesus united with us!
Not all Christian Churches have the Eucharist, only some. Many celebrate the Lord's Supper with only bread and wine. If you believe that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Christ, how you hunger and thirst for His Presence! How you kneel in adoration when you have received Him. He has come into you, but as you consume Him to become part of you, Christ, the Fire of Love, is consuming you so that you become another Christ, consumed by and animated by His Love for the world. And, if those you love have died, you also believe that you receive them with Him, for they are now part of His Body as well. For we receive more than the human Jesus; we receive the cosmic Body of Christ. Christ reaches out to the entire universe to unite all creation with Him, to renew all in Him. As generation after generation comes to earth and then dies, His Mystical Body expands. St. Paul tells us that all was created through Him; all was created for Him; and He lives to bring all into one in Him: this is the cosmic Christ.
One small Catholic Church contains more than a small group of people. It contains a family. It contains a treasured part of the Body of Christ who are growing into one at every level. Tasting a foretaste of their eventual union in Heaven, they help to erase each other's loneliness. And, in the Tabernacle, a Catholic Church contains the Eucharist, the Real Presence of Christ. Not only the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the One Who walked this earth, but also the cosmic Christ, the One Who contains the Universe, making all one in Him. This is the Christ whom we belong to, whom we will be one with in ecstatic union, as well as all others of a sincere mind and all creation, body, blood, mind, and soul. How mind-blowing. How amazing. The Body of Christ. "Happy is the soul that knows how to find Jesus in the Eucharist, and, in the Eucharist, all things."