The Romance of the Body and Blood of Christ

In a letter to his son, Michael, in 1941, the English author J.R.R. Tolkien was giving his fatherly advice about love and marriage. In it, he acknowledges the struggles and downright “drudgery” that married life can be – that it is not all “romance” and “faerie tales.” In short, Tolkien holds out that love is a consistent, daily decision that the lovers make for one another. This from a man whose own married life, by his account, was the stuff of romance. However, he does offer one glimmering ray of hope for true and boundless love for his son to hang onto. He writes:

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.

In other words, if you truly want romance and a “happily-ever-after,” you will find it in Jesus, present in the Eucharist.

Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and he had lived through the horror of the First World War.  The experience shaped much of his writing, and yet he is not a pessimistic man. He is convinced in a final victory; however, this victory does not come from the efforts of human beings but through the grace God. The fact that he – or anyone else, for that matter – could survive hardship and horror is completely due to the fact that God has sustained him. And he sees that sustenance especially in the Eucharist.

As Catholics we have a particular relationship with the Blessed Sacrament. The fact that we even call it the “Blessed” Sacrament is evidence of this. In it, we recognize is a mysterious way that Jesus Himself is truly present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity; as well as seeing in the sacrifice of the Mass the representation of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary.

But for some this magic has been lost. We are not as drawn to Holy Communion and Mass as dutifully as in previous ages. The experience of “communion” for some of us is found in other substitutes like fraternity and charity.  We focus more on the Body of Christ, the Church, as opposed to the Body of Christ at the altar.

This need not be so. Rather than seeing communion as either individual in the Blessed Sacrament and practices like adoration, or as communal in the gathered People of God, we ought to see it as both: communion that feeds Communion. The Gift of the Eucharist is not simply a “transaction” between Jesus and me; rather, it draws me into relationship with others. In that sense, it is the Sacrament of Charity, binding us to one another as it unites us to Jesus.

We need this. Jesus knows that. This is why He tells us “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” Jesus knows that we cannot survive life on our own – much less attain our salvation. Therefore, the Bread of Life is given as a waybread to sustain us and to be “the true way of all your loves on earth.”

There is no substitute for this sort of divine accompaniment. We often try to recreate it, to do it ourselves, or discover some other way. Much of our pursuit of and disillusionment in love come from that futile search. However, if we were to see in the Blessed Sacrament the height of what it is, not only to be Christian or Catholic, but to be human. “There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth.”

Yet, even as we discover the fullness and truth of Life in the Eucharist, we also find Death. This is, after all, the presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. That is scary for us. It is something we usually seek to avoid. But if we can embrace that “divine paradox” that through death – to ourselves and our egos and all our projects – we can discover the true meaning of life. This was so in the Passion of the Lord, and it is offered to us over and over at this altar.

If you want to fall in love, if you want “happily ever after,” then you should seek out Jesus who gives Himself to you in the Holy Eucharist. This is His patrimony of love for us. This is the most sublime gift that we could receive: the very life of God placed in our fragile, even broken hands.

What could be more romantic than that?