The Eucharist

So in honor of Fathers Day, I thought it fitting to share my experience with the greatest gift out Heavenly Father has given us.

I was born Catholic, baptized at birth, but my family didn’t start going to church regularly until my brother and I were in a Catholic elementary school, and if I’m being entirely honest, it was my brothers constant nagging of my parents was the catalyst that got us to go.

As Catholics, the high point of the Mass is the Eucharist, in which the priest, acting the role of Christ at the last supper, transforms mere bread and wine into the most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus. We call it transubstantiation, and while it retains the physical properties of the bread and wine, through the power of the Holy Spirit we believe it becomes His Real Presence. Because we believe it to be truly the Body and Blood of our Savior, the Eucharist is treated with the utmost respect and care. In fact, etiquette dictates that the one in Communion must consume the Host in view of the Eucharistic minister to ensure it is not being taken away and then later disgraced. After the transubstantiation, any of the leftover Host not consumed is stored in the tabernacle at the back of the altar. It must continue to be protected and cared for until it is consumed, because it had ceased to be ordinary and is now the true, physical presence of Christ.

I promise there is a point to that, and I wasn’t trying to show off.

In the Church, you aren’t allowed to receive the Eucharist until your First Communion, which for most youth brought up in the church is around the second grade. The same went for me, but it wasn’t until I was 17 that I truly understood, and most importantly appreciated, what the Eucharist is.

When my brother’s turn came for First Communion, we hatched a plot. Since we both knew that it was not proper for anyone not having gone through First Communion to openly receive the Sacrament, we made an agreement when he started preparation that he would save some of the Host for me. We had seen the wafers before, and they were all imprinted with a cross. We figured it would be easy for him to break the Host into four pieces, and save one of the portions for me. I remember watching him and his class process out of the church, and then running outside to meet with him. When I finally found him, I was smiling eagerly, awaiting my prize. But he just shook his head, and told me he couldn’t do it, that it wasn’t okay.

I was mad. He tried to calm me down, but I was so angry with him that he could be so selfish to abandon our plan. He was the selfish one in my childish logic for not sharing the Eucharist, because at that point, I just didn’t understand.

Our parish in Northern California where we lived at the time was relatively small. My family always went to the 7:30am Mass every Sunday, which was usually celebrated by the parish priest, an old Irishman, Fr Healey. He was very devout, looking back on it almost uptight and stuffy, but nonetheless had a burning passion for his faith, despite his outward conservatism. And I remember that passion came through in one homily in particular, that he gave annually during the Feast of Corpus Christi, in which he would lament, amidst shouts and tears, the disrespectful manner he would see some members of the congregation treat the Eucharist. He would weep that after Mass he would sometimes find half chewed, spit out pieces of the Eucharist in the pews, and that some of his flock were the perpetrators of such in dignified treatments of the Sacrament.

I would listen year after year, and though I saw the pain, the horror he felt and recognized his love for the Eucharist, I still didn’t understand.

Even when I grew up and started taking more of my faith and development into my own hands, I never truly understood the Eucharist. I knew it was holy, that it was one of the defining things that makes Catholics separate from other Christians, but even at 16 if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to give a satisfactory answer.

Because I just didn’t understand. Not would I for another year.

When I was 16, I started volunteering at my church in Reno where my family had moved. I was a part of the youth band, and kind of a youth advisor to other kids going through the sacrament of Confirmation. A year later after I turned 17, I was asked to be a youth leader on a retreat to the Steubenville West conference in Tucson, Az. Eager to get away from my parents for the summer, and excited to spend time with my friends, I gladly accepted. The conference was fun, a lot of talks from Catholic Apologists, daily mass and nightly worship. On the last night of the conference, however, the local bishop held a special session of Adoration.

Most Catholics might find this hard to believe, but until that point in my life, I had never heard of Adoration before. I didn’t know what it was, or that it was something the Church did. Adoration is when the consecrated Host is displayed in a monstrance for us to, literally, sit in the presence of, pray, and adore. A monstrance is a vessel for the Eucharist to be stored and transported in, and are beautifully designed, there are really no two that are alike.

Like I said earlier, the Host that is not consumed is protected and stored away in a tabernacle at the altar. A consecrated Host is not something that just sits out in a church. But during Adoration, the true Body if Christ is put on display for all to see and worship.

It was at that first Adoration that it finally clicked. I was talking to my wife before I wrote this, trying to find the exact words as to why it happened then. And as is usually the case with wives because they are the smarter of the two, she said, “It’s because for the first time, you saw the Eucharist how it should be seen; in all His glory.”

Something so simple, that is now something so powerful. I always knew the Eucharist was important to us as Catholics, but I finally understood, I finally appreciated it. Knowing the full glory in the Eucharist, seeing Him beautifully presented like the King He is, makes it all that more precious now when He is presented to me every Sunday in a manner in unbefitting a king, in a simple cup, looking as simple as a plain piece of unleavened bread.

I think now, as a father, one of the most thrilling and awesome moments of the mass is when my wife and I receive the Eucharist together, knowing that when Veronika was growing in her belly, and now that my wife is pregnant again that as our second child grows, and with each of our future babies, that because my wife receives the Host, my children in utero are fed and nourished with the Body of Christ as well.

Happy Fathers Day to all fathers, grandfathers, godfathers, stepfathers, and to all men whom someone calls father. May God keep you safe, and bless you the way He has me.