A priest I know was asked by a doortodoor evangelist, “Do you believe in Jesus?” He answered, “Yes, I do. But if I may ask you,” he continued, “Where do you experience Jesus’ body and blood?” His interlocutor responded somewhat confusedly, “I don’t. I just believe in him. That’s all that is needed.” Later my priest friend would relate to me, “The more I thought about it, that response struck me as totally inadequate. As human beings, we need to encounter Jesus’ body and blood, not just hear about him and mentally believe. Otherwise, Jesus is just a ghost.” This week we see this central point as we arrive at the climactic moment of Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist. Jesus has established the importance of believing in him as the “bread of life come down from heaven.” Belief deeply matters because it leads to a real, bodily encounter with Jesus through eating and drinking. That’s why Jesus emphasizes to an almost outrageous degree the nonmetaphorical necessity to “eat my flesh and drink my blood” (John 6:54). The real presence of Jesus’ body and blood he himself, truly, really, substantially has been the Church’s treasure since Holy Thursday. Internal belief in the heart and the ritual act of eating and drinking the Eucharist, the Church has stubbornly insisted on both, not just one or the other. This is not meant to criticize nonCatholic Christians who deeply trust and love Jesus, nor is it a triumphal elitist claim about the Catholic Mass. Rather it is a humble, trusting acknowledgement that God in Jesus comes to us in a way most proper to human beings: in our hearts and our bodies, faith and the Eucharist. Father John Muir
