The Eucharist: Food for the Journey

I remember hearing (or reading) when I was in the seminary that “a Catholic can make an idol even of the Eucharist.” I was turned off by the sound of it, but it was unsettling because I didn’t know what it meant. If Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, and Jesus is God, how then could the Eucharist ever become a kind of false idol?

We’ve all heard of ancient gods, for example, and how citizens of different regions were expected to worship at their shrines. These were obviously idols, since the people tried to access God through their respective cults. Many Christian martyrs, however, preferred to die rather than offer incense at those altars, and risked their lives to celebrate the Eucharist. Is it not, then, disrespectful to the memory of those saints to suggest that a Catholic today might fall into the misfortune of making an idol of the Eucharist?

But I think I’m beginning to understand what that person might have meant when he or she said (or wrote) those words which so disturbed me. If you would, permit me to help you see it too. I think you will find it will actually deepen your love for the real presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Think of an idol as someone, or something, from whom we try to squeeze God. We make an idol of a person, for example, when we stop at him or her and say, “This is it; there’s nothing more,” or an idol of a place or thing when we say, “Here, I am content to stay forever.” In both cases, the journey ends prematurely (falsely). That is the sure sign of our having made that person, place, or thing, into an idol.

And this, I think, is how even the Eucharist can be reduced to an idol: when we find ourselves no longer seeing it as food for the journey but as an end in itself. It is true that Christ is the Summit of all things, but it is also true that His presence in the Eucharist remains veiled in this life because our hearts long to see His face, the face of God.

To say of the Eucharist, “There is nothing more,” or to say, “I’m content to stay in the church building forever,” may sound nice, even holy, and I would hope we’ve all experienced some similar sentiment, but in this life one must sometimes “leave Christ to go to Christ,” as Saint Philip Neri said. As long as we’re in this world, we’ve still got the poor to serve and hearts to convert.

Maybe God veils His presence in the Eucharist that we might learn to see with the eyes of faith, and by learning to see Christ in that way to recognize Him in one another, like Mother Teresa whose love for Jesus in the Eucharist led her to adore Him in the poorest of the poor. For her, life was a constant journeying from His veiled presence in the Eucharist to His face in the human person.

I spoke with a group of young adults this past week at a neighboring parish. One of them asked me, “How can we know if we really love God?” I replied, “If you can say without your conscience condemning you that you really love your neighbor.” +