Body and Blood

From reading the book “Living Zen, Loving God” (by Ruben Habito) I discovered a way for me to understand the words of the Eucharist—“This is my body” and “This is my blood”—in terms of the interconnectedness of all things.

The bread and wine are made of the same materials as we are; they are of the substance of Creation.

Not only that, but we (human beings), in taking the materials of creation and crushing them, mixing them, and transforming them through heat and fermentation and time, to make wine from grapes and yeast; to make bread from wheat and yeast: in this way we act in ‘the image of God’ by making something come into being that did not exist before.

I also considered why we make bread and wine - not just to feed ourselves, but to give us delight.

This understanding gave me a great sense of relief, because for a long time I had been struggling with the imagery of “the body and blood,” and feeling a suppressed horror at the cannibalistic connotations. This perception had been troubling me more and more, even to the point where I closed off that part of my mind during the Eucharist.

When my understanding changed, it was as if a burden had fallen from me, along with all the horrific images of blood and sacrifice that I had instinctively rejected in my heart, but had not been able to erase from my thoughts.

Instead, the phrase from Acts, “In God we live and move and have our being” kept echoing in my mind. I also thought of Thich Nhat Hanh's concept of “interbeing,” and a knot just below my breastbone came undone.

I have doubts about whether I can describe the understanding with which I am now free to receive the Eucharist, but I will try—

Now, when I hear the words, “This is my body,” what I understand is that nothing is ever lost, and even though everything changes, still it remains the same; that the bread of  Truth passes through Creation just as the seed becomes the ear of wheat, and the grain is ground into flour to become the bread that we eat. So we become the bread, and the bread becomes us, and I hear with my inward ear a song like the words of this hymn:

“Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.”

Now, when I hear the words, “This is my blood,” what I understand is that no matter how much is spilled, it never runs dry. As the rain that falls to water the earth and rises to the heavens to spill itself again, the wine of the Word runs through our veins as the lifeblood of Creation, and the song I hear within is like the words of another hymn:

“Grant my spirit ever by thy life may live, to my taste thy sweetness never failing give.”