The Eucharist is the presence of God embodied in the form of bread and wine. It is the embodied mental food. It is the ensouled physical food. Symbolically, the Eucharist refers to the reality of God’s presence within our body and blood just as God is present within the body and blood of Christ. As the mere bread and wine are consecrated, the church has taught they transform into the body and blood of Christ. This transformation (or transubstantiation) means nothing if those who feed on the Eucharist do not transform themselves. Our cultivation of the presence of God within must align with the virtue of generosity. Generosity of time, presence, compassion, grace, resources, forgiveness, hope, and love.
Here’s the poem to reflect with the gospel lesson: All Bread by Margaret Atwood All bread is made of wood, cow dung, packed brown moss, the bodies of dead animals, the teeth and backbones, what is left after the ravens. This dirt flows through the stems into the grain, into the arm, nine strokes of the axe, skin from a tree, good water which is the first gift, four hours. Live burial under a moist cloth, a silver dish, the row of white famine bellies swollen and taut in the oven, lungfuls of warm breath stopped in the heat from an old sun. Good bread has the salt taste of your hands after nine strokes of the axe, the salt taste of your mouth, it smells of its own small death, of the deaths before and after. Lift these ashes into your mouth, your blood; to know what you devour is to consecrate it, almost. All bread must be broken so it can be shared. Together we eat this earth. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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