On the Importance of the Eucharist

At the end of May, I went to Coventry for the installation of one of my friends as Canon of the Cathedral. It was a beautiful weekend in many ways: meeting lots of lovely tweeps, conversation, laughter, food and last but definitely not least: the eucharist.  I was once again overwhelmed by the presence of God in the Eucharist, so I thought I would like to draw together some of my thoughts in this area.

It all started at my confirmation.  I was baptised and confirmed into the Church of England as an adult and unusually had a gap of six months between baptism and confirmations.  Although it is common for those baptised as an adult to take communion before their confirmation, I did not do so.  I didn't know what to expect at my first communion but having come from a background which was memorialist in outlook and did not place a great deal of emphasis on the eucharist, or the Lord's Supper as they would call it, I certainly did not expect the overwhelming sense of the real presence of God which I experienced on receiving communion at my confirmation.  It was one of the most amazing, enlightening and transforming experiences of my life to date.  It is difficult to describe the sense of the love and presence of God which I felt: there are no words which are adequate to describe it.  ever since that day, the mystery of the eucharist has been a key place of encounter with the presence of God and a place of being fed and strengthened.

This might seem strange, especially from the outside, as God is everywhere at all times and the eucharist 'only' a ritual when looked at from a literal point of view.  Certainly, God's presence is also felt elsewehre in nature, in others, often in surprising places and situations.   However, for me, and for many others in my experience, the eucharist is not just a ritual.  It is a mystery where the presence of God and God's awesome love are made manifest through the humble medium of bread and wine. This awesome sense of God's love  has been conveyed through these humble symbols throughout the centuries since Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples and are a continual expression of Christ's incarnation and passion.

This is the amazing mystery of which St. Francis of Assisi writes so movingly in his Letter to the Entire Order:

O sublime humility! 

O humble sublimity!

The Lord of the universe,

God and the Son of God,

so humbles himself

that for our salvation

he hides himself

under an ordinary piece of bread!

From 'A Letter to the Entire Order' by St Francis, reproduced in A Sense of the Divine: A Franciscan Reader for the Christian Year, European Province of the Society of St Francis 2001.