The Eucharist, cannibals, zombies and fresh food

At adoration this evening, I had some strange reflections on the Eucharist…

Every now and then, Catholics get told that eating Jesus’ Body and drinking His Blood makes us cannibals. But this is to seriously misunderstand. When cannibals eat human flesh and drink human blood, they’re consuming a dead person… It’s something violent. But the Holy Eucharist isn’t Jesus’ dead body; it’s His resurrected Body. Jesus in the Eucharist is far more alive than you and me.

In comparison with Jesus (especially after His resurrection), we’re hardly even half-alive. And so it is the less-alive, consuming the more-alive… like zombies. Except with zombies again, those they eat are killed/made into zombies in the process. Again, it is violent. But with Jesus, eating Him brings us to life, and makes us into Him. In zombies’ eating, death conquers life, but in the Eucharist, the eating of Christ’s resurrected Body, life conquers death.

When we eat normal food, the more fresh it is, the better it is for us. This is because everything we eat is dead, but the more fresh it is, the more its life remains with it, and the more we can take from its life. The act of eating something requires it to die, in order that it might be given away. So with the Eucharist, we are given Jesus’ Body, because He gave His life on the cross, and yet His Body is most truly alive, because He is the Resurrection and the Life, and His death is true life. So Jesus’ Body is the very best food, because despite being food, and therefore having to die, It is most truly alive, and therefore the very freshest and best food you’ll ever eat.

What do you think? Maybe I should just focus better during adoration…

God bless you!

Culture of death; Society of Zombies

We live in a culture, where people are seen as separate autonomous beings, made to do whatever they may want, and to provide pleasure. A culture that encourages me to view you as a lifeless tool to achieve my desires. A culture that has no time for people’s problems, but looks at them and suggests neglect to deal with the symptoms, and death as the cure. As St. John Paul II called it, a ‘culture of death’.

And what is more clear, than that to participate in the culture of death, is practically to be living as dead? Zombie fiction has provided the illustration perfectly.

The great masses, with cold, empty eyes, who wander aimlessly; who thoroughly ignore their undead brethren; whose only perverse desire is to consume the life of survivors, and so satisfy their empty hungers. To them, all is either nothing, or a prey. All paths are called the same, and so all worthless, and they fall under the ‘tyranny of relativism’, where meaning is not permitted, and man is reduced below the animals. Where a man is yet free, he is detested and hungered over, by those who wish to sustain their slavery. They desire life, but only to grasp and crush it. They do not touch, heart to heart and soul to soul, but corpse to corpse.

The useless or inconvenient are ignored until they wither and die. Or, if they should make any demands that all should come to life, and do something for others, they are attacked [do not make an appeal to a zombie’s humanity]. And when they are attacked, they are either slaughtered and consumed, or survive only to become another lifeless corpse roaming the world, seeking to consume.

In the hands of the living dead, the unborn, the elderly, the infirm, the unemployed, the criminal, and all in their grasping hands, are given only the options of death by destruction or (if they are able) death by corruption.

 

Thank God, few are yet so completely dead. The infection works slower than imagined, and can be resisted. But don’t be complacent, it is slower but tougher.

We must fight, and fight bravely. We must oppose death with life; violence with peace; hatred with love; darkness with light; destruction with creation; consumption with communion; those who eat flesh to corruption and destruction, with those who partake of the living body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, ‘the medicine of immortality’. When the dead are infecting the living, we must look to Jesus, who brings true life to the dead. While all seek to grasp all, we must strive to give all. For this, we must be nourished by the greatest gift of all time: the sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross, present before us on the altar. Only his sacrifice gave the resurrection, and only by his sacrifice can we make any worthy, living and life-giving sacrifice/gift.

God bless you.