Real Presence, not Pious Remembrance

“Christians, not even you know your happiness, your present happiness.” Péguy describes the experience we share with all men, which is the desire to be free, that is to say, to be fulfilled, truly happy. But, like everybody, we forget it so easily because of contradictions and disappointments, being content with fleeting instants of joy or measuring by complaint what we lack.
And yet, each of us, like Zacchaeus–the publican who climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus passing by–would like to be grabbed from the trees of our various projects and hear these words, “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (Lk 19:5). The Eucharist is this: Christ restores to us a real humanity, a real life, and He does this by coming to our house.
In the pages of John Paul II’s recent encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, the term “wonder” appears again and again, wonder at the Lord’s “gift par excellence,” “the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity” (no 11). The encyclical forcefully reminds us of the physical, fleshly event of Christ’s unique sacrifice, today, a reality so overwhelming for the widespread parameters of an individualistic and often confused religiosity, full of empty words and good feelings. The expressive power with which Péguy approached the Eucharistic mystery spontaneously comes to our heart: “He is here. He is here like on the first day… The same sacrifice sacrifices the same flesh and the same blood…”
Our freedom is offered the real experience of an otherwise inconceivable familiarity with the Mystery of Christ, who gives Himself totally as food and drink for the hunger and thirst of man’s life: “The Church constantly draws her life from the redeeming sacrifice; she approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also through a real contact, since this sacrifice is made present ever anew, sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister” (no 12).
In his Message for the 17th World Youth Day, the Pope stated forcefully that Christianity is “not an opinion and does not consist of empty words. Christianity is Christ! It is a Person.” He is a Real Presence, the Son of God conceived by Mary “in the physical reality of His body and blood” (no 55). Thus the Church, the Body of Christ, is not the product of human analyses and activities: she is a life that is communicated, that is encountered and received as a gift, gratuitously. The Church is the visible mystery of Christ present in the world; she is Christ who continues to live and act for man’s salvation. The unity and peace which appear to be unreachable ideals in the succession of the historical attempts of man, marked by the wound of original sin, come about as a real beginning offered gratuitously to the freedom and responsibility of whoever welcomes Him: “The seeds of disunity, which daily experience shows to be so deeply rooted in humanity as a result of sin, are countered by the unifying power of the body of Christ. The Eucharist, precisely by building up the Church, creates human community” (no 24).
Christ lives and works in the world, present in the historical concreteness visible in the unity of those to whom He imparts the energy of His Spirit and whom He joins to Himself, through Baptism and the Eucharist, as members of His Body. For in the Eucharist, “We can say not only that each of us receives Christ, but also that Christ receives each of us” (no 22). His Presence embraces our humanity, our joyous and sad circumstances, our interests and affections; He offers His real companionship on our journey, “planting a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us” (no 20).
In our daily repetition of Mary’s “fiat” at the angel’s announcement, by which the Son of God began to exist in her as a man in time, our frail freedom asks to live, in the various events of the world, the experience described by St Ambrose: “If Christ is yours today, He rises for you every day.”

Stefano Alberto