Making Way for His Body and Blood’s Cleanliness
some insomniac musings by The Overlord Bear/Jem De Ocampo
He offered Himself to us as food! Food! A basic need! No wonder Don Bosco insisted on frequent Communion!
Thinking about the physicality of the Eucharist some more after a homily during the Sunday of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, a homily that also brought up Saint John Henry Newman’s story, I think I further feel the sense in how He calls Himself the Bread of Life. Considering how the Passover was celebrated among the Jews He was a part of here on earth, I can see why He offered Himself as food as a part of His self-sacrifice for us. How He makes bread and wine His Body and Blood is pretty much a mystery, yeah, but I find that food offering of His a pretty strong basis for faith there, especially in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
And boy, does that make me feel the importance of Confession and Communion some more. As it should, it grinds my ego, feeling the need to have Confessed and kept myself clean enough before Sunday Communing. At the same time, it ignites my hunger for actually being virtuous, freaking difficult that may be, especially as I remember my early learning through Salesian education about the importance of receiving those two Sacraments a lot. And the occasional frequency with which I receive those two Sacraments says a lot about my character.
I could blame the world around me for not receiving those Sacraments frequently. I could complain that a church doesn’t offer Confession during Mass. I could use my repeat sins as reasoning to give up on receiving those Sacraments. I could even try to use my fellow sinners’ sins to make myself look better. But I have to remember that I am following a God glorified by His earthly time and place’s most humiliating punishment. I am following, worshipping a God who shows us that not only even the best life is filled with great difficulty, He is also with us in our efforts toward living the best life for as much as we allow Him to be Himself. And so, even though it is freaking difficult to truly be one of these various beings made in His image and likeness, let alone inspire those beyond myself to do the same and pay it forward even more, I continue to learn and do my best, whatever He wishes that to be.
And hey, He offered Himself to us as food! Food! A basic need! No wonder Don Bosco insisted on frequent Communion!
And now, let me tell you a memory of a meal I once had during a Christmas vacation. I once was going to drink a glass of milk I ordered after eating a meal which also had a significant amount of tomatoes and/or sour stuff, but my dad stopped me, warning me that that combination of food and drink will be bad for my stomach. I felt disappointed getting that warning, but looking back at it with the bad stomach experiences I’ve had here and there later on, I further remember that eating well and being well aren’t just about feeling pleasure and comfort and extraordinariness. And I remember that and washing my hands now as I remember the importance of being in the state of grace when receiving Communion. We delay rather than cease the approach of death, and we have to ensure that delay repeatedly until our bodies can’t take it anymore, but at the same time, the delay we make there is not to be spent for nothing, and that repetition isn’t meant to be cheerless, especially considering how good food can also be delicious and how there are people who live for making such good food. Furthermore, I remember how uncleanliness ultimately comes from within us sinners, we sinners born of Adam and Eve not just being tricked by but also putting their faith in a liar. With that in mind, I think we can say that learning and giving our all to clean ourselves and be our true selves, various sinners to be transformed into myriad saints, is how the Lord’s offering of Himself as food shall be digested well. We can be too dirty to accept Him as the clean food that He is, but the food is also supposed to be cleansing. Why welcome His perfectly eager help just to reject Him, then?
In short, being not only sinless but also virtuous is a basic need, no? Even our fellow fools who see virtue as sin and sin as virtue know that deep down. Even though we fools more often consider being virtuous and sinless something to deserve rather than serve, we itch and inch for that state God made us for, though we see it as another piece of selfishness because we, in our pride we often mix up with love, refuse to believe much in things better than sin.
And indeed, that basic instinct towards virtue still being here even with all that damage we did to it ever since Adam and Eve allowed Satan to lead them astray speaks volumes of the power of God the Creator and Redeemer! God’s in the basics so much, He’s even food that even has physical form! And if even a sinner who is stubbornly against Him can be used as an instrument of His to an extent, then what more if said sinner is someone who warmly welcomes His challenges and guidance? If such little things are so great already, then what more if they form big things? May we dig into Him well, then!
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