My One and Only Constant

This summer has proven to be a summer of great trial with need of perseverance from all the travel and transition that I have been going through. I have been living out of my suitcase for over two months now as I have traveled from Madison to Champaign to Minnesota then back to Champaign then back to Madison to Kansas City to Denver and now back in Kansas City. Due to the mobility of that we are privileged to have in our modern world, I have found myself traveling thousands of miles with ease, but this kind of travel starts to take a lot out of one.

But I have found a constant in the midst of the hustle and bustle of travel and the quasi-frustration of being frazzled by not having my own space or a place to put up my books and place my clothes. It is the Blessed Sacrament that I find to be my one and only constant. It is here that I become face to face with Jesus Christ who gives me strength and is my refuge. The Eucharist (another name for the Blessed Sacrament that comes from the Greek word eucharistia, which means thanksgiving)is not simply some symbolic image of bread that speaks to God's nourishment in our lives, but really is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.

I don't plan on doing an entire apologetic (apologetic is a fancy word for argument)in this post, but I will say this that if the Eucharist is not Jesus Christ than we are worshiping a piece of bread. As Flannery O'Connor, the great American writer, once commented when confronted with a conversation about the Eucharist being a symbol, "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it." This is simple but orthodox thinking.

Like O'Connor and many others, I believe that Jesus is bodily present in the Eucharist. Everywhere I go I make sure to visit a chapel and see my Best Friend. I try to go to the Holy Mass every day, where I am lifted to the heavenly banquet and brought face to face with the Resurrected Lord Jesus. It is during the Mass, especially when the priest is lifting the consecrated host and chalice that I am able to poor out all my troubles, joys, hopes, and anxieties to the Lord Jesus. It is as if my heart starts to beat with the Heart of the Lord's during these quiet moments of devotion. I share with the Lord my weaknesses and my total need for Him. Without Him I can do nothing. He looks upon me with Love and I enter the greatest adventure that a human heart is about to embark on, that of the interior life.

I will hope to write more on this later, but I close this post with a simple quote by J.R.R. Tolkien the author of The Lord of the Rings.

I put before the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament...There you will find romance, glory, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: death by divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands surrender to all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seem in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that every man's heart desires."