Question of the day:
Why did Jesus give us the Eucharist?

You�ve got to comprehend any Great Mystery in one focused moment. Great Truth must be put on small stages to be able to process and grasp its momentous significance. This is the sacramental principle. Believe it, struggle with it, comprehend it here, and then move beyond it and recognize what�s true here is true everywhere! The concrete is the doorway to the universal. That is probably why Catholics made a great deal of the Eucharistic presence of Jesus in the bread and wine. It was the distilled and focused truth that was to teach us how to see Christ in everything. The pathway to the universal mysteries is almost always through the concrete and specific moment. Poets tend to understand this very well.

The momentous doctrine of the Body of Christ was taught in two different ways by St. Paul. He used it both for the community itself (building on Jesus who said �wherever two or three gather, I am there�) and also for the bread and wine of the Eucharist. In the first thousand years, the community was called the Corpus Verum�the True Body of Christ�and the Eucharist was called the Mystical Body of Christ (Corpus Mysticum), but no one doubted they were both the Presence! In the second thousand years the usage was almost entirely reversed, and we called the people the �mystical body of Christ� and the bread and wine the �real presence� or �Corpus Verum.� I wonder what that reversal of mentality reveals about our understanding of the Gospel?

From The Cosmic Christ (CD #2)