At Saint Mary’s University between 2002 and 2004, I was employed by the Campus Ministry Department. I was one of two “Ministerial Assistants” of the six or so people who worked in Campus Ministry. What that meant was that I was responsible to help the priests in Mass, tidy the chapel and ensure the two sacristies were in top shape. I was a crucifer, an Eucharistic minister, censer bearer, candle lighter and supplied a new host in the monstrance. The Father who hired me knew that I was United Methodist (and thus, not Roman Catholic) but it took the rest of the staff about a year to discover this not-withheld-just-never-mentioned fact. There were some questions, but the depth of our relationships were such that they knew where my heart was. Ecclesiastical differences were trivial.
Not a St. Mary’s Chapel, but my job would be the guy holding the cape.
Of course one of the big questions that I was asked with was around communion. As a Ministerial Assistant, I was privileged to handle the bread and the consecrated hosts. I put the consecrated elements in the tabernacle. I genuflected and bowed appropriately, or at least well enough that it took a year for someone to notice I lacked the smoothness of motion that comes with years of practice. I continued to hold to the United Methodist stance on the sacrament, but I respect transubstantiation even to this day. Communion or the Eucharist is a sacred thing and I was honored to serve at St. Mary’s University as the first non-catholic hired as a Ministerial Assistant.
One of the things that I came to appreciate in the countless opportunities to serve in Mass was the beauty of eating the actual body and drinking the actual blood of Christ. Before any theological argument breaks out over transubstantiation, or consubstantiation, or symbol; before our minds consider how cannibalistic the act of eating Christ sounds.; before we think about the difficulties imaging that bread and wine become body and blood, perhaps we can consider one truth:
We consume one another all of the time.
Benedicta Ward translates a saying of Hyperichius, ‘It is better to eat meat and drink wine than eat the flesh of the brothers by disparaging them.’
Through our language and through our actions we devour one another all of the time. Consider the headlines after a debate between two people. Someone always “slaughters” the other one. Sometimes they are “crushed.” If the conversation was good we might even say we were “consumed” in the moment.
With this in mind, transubstantiation, or consubstantiation may not sound as difficult to imagine. One of the differences is that when we consume another, we often do it out of violence. That is to say, we consume one another often against the will of the one being consumed. While in the Eucharist or Communion the one being consumed (Christ) is offering himself for consumption. It is as though Jesus says, “Rather than devour one another in violence, I offer myself.”
Jesus also says, every time you eat and drink do it in remembrance of me. We often limit ourselves to thinking about ever time we sit down to eat a meal. However, what if Jesus meant every time you want to consume someone or something, remember the one who freely gave himself for all to consume.