Why Bread? Why Wine?

Reflections on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a, 1 Cor 10:16-17, Jn 6:51-58)

On 20th September 1919, the day of his priestly ordination, Fulton J. Sheen made two resolutions: to offer mass every Saturday in honour of Our Lady and to spend a continuous Holy Hour every day in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay (1979), he writes, “The next day I began, and the practice is now well over sixty years old”. The Eucharist has strengthened, inspired, and accompanied innumerable Christians like Sheen across centuries and continents. How can we even begin to understand the secret of this inexplicable influence that the Eucharist continues to captivate us to this day and age? Sheen, in his book Life of Christ (1954) suggests an interesting angle of approach. He starts with what is the most evident: the eucharistic elements of bread and wine. He asks, “Why did Our Blessed Lord use bread and wine as the elements of this Memorial?” (Ch.36, p.293). On the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, we mediate on the three-fold response to this question.

1. Eucharist and Koinonia (communion): The Lord chooses bread and wine to institute the Holy Eucharist because “no two substances in nature better symbolize unity than bread and wine. As bread is made from a multiplicity of grains of wheat, and wine is made from a multiplicity of grapes, so the many who believe are one in Christ”. The Eucharistic table is where heaven and earth are reunited here and now, where the original intimacy and mutual dependence of all creation are restored. Strangely though, debates and controversies surrounding the rituals of the Eucharist (the sacrament of unity) have become caused divisions within the Church in recent years. Pay close attention to arguments for and against the Latin mass or the controversy over the position of the priest (facing the altar or the people). We realise that these narratives are obsessed with the rubrical elements of the Eucharist and tags such as 'right' and 'wrong', 'original' and 'recent' so much so that we forget the very purpose and meaning of the Eucharist to our Christian lives. Jesus' warning is quite relevant here: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" Matthew 23:23).

One of the major risks of our Eucharistic piety is alienating the Eucharistic body from the ecclesial body. Henri de Lubac, in his influential 1944 work Corpus Mysticum highlighting this risk shows that “the Church makes the eucharist and the eucharist makes the Church”. Separation of eucharistic piety from ecclesial unity results, according to him, in the separation between eucharistic practice and the Church’s social identity. Sharing in the one bread (made from multiple grains) and the one cup of wine (made from numerous individual grapes) is Christ’s reminder of the radical truth that we are one eucharistic body. This Oneness of the Holy Eucharist is not the totalitarianism of monotonous uniformity but unity that values plurality. Through the unity of bread and wine, God creates us into one community that can celebrate our healthy differences and overcome our anti-Eucharistic divisions.

2. Eucharist and Diakonia (service): The second significance of the Eucharistic elements, according to Sheen, is the fact that “no two substances in nature have to suffer more to become what they are than bread and wine. Wheat has to pass through the rigours of winter, be ground beneath the Calvary of a mill, and then subjected to purging fire before it can become bread. Grapes in their turn must be subjected to the Gethsemane of a wine press and have their life crushed from them to become wine”. The breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine prefigure the radical call to imitate Christ’s gracious and fruitful service for all humanity. In his encyclical letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II explains, “Jesus did not simply state that what he was giving them to eat and drink was his body and his blood; he also expressed its sacrificial meaning and made sacramentally present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the Cross for the salvation of all".

The unfortunate division between worship and justice into two unrelated realms poses a serious risk to our Christian discipleship. Addressing this concern in an interesting article titled Worship and Justice Reunited, Jesuit theologian Walter Burghardt writes, “In large measure, liturgists and social activists occupy two separate camps, and our Catholic people are tragically unaware that in the Catholic vision liturgy and justice belong together, and that one without the other is not completely Catholic.” Unless we see the intrinsic relationship between worship and justice, our celebrations cannot become truly eucharistic. As Paul asks in the Second Reading, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”. In offering ourselves to be ground like wheat and crushed like grapes through our engagement in the cause of the poor, the marginalised, and the vulnerable, we perpetuate Christ’s eucharistic ministry in our own families and life contexts.

3. Eucharist and Kenosis (self-emptying): The third reason that Sheen cites for the choice of bread and wine is that “there are no two substances in nature which have traditionally nourished man than bread and wine. In bringing these elements to the altar, men are equivalently bringing themselves. When bread and wine are taken or consumed, they are changed into man's body and blood. But when He took bread and wine, He changed them into Himself.” What is remarkable about bread and wine is its simplicity. Jesus chose them because they were the most ordinary and common food in Jewish cuisine. Similarly, he chooses us in the ordinariness and simplicity of our lives to make of us His Eucharistic people. Emptying oneself in the logic of incarnation, the Eucharist and the cross is imperative to this transformation.

In his 2008 book Being Consumed, American theologian William Cavanaugh rightly insists on the risk of taking a consumeristic approach to the Eucharist. In ‘consuming’ Jesus, we need to avoid changing Jesus into a ‘commodity’ and ourselves into ‘consumers’. We consume Jesus’ sacramental Body and Blood in the Eucharist only to be made into and taken up into Christ: “We are consumers in the Eucharist, but in consuming the body of Christ we are transformed into the body of Christ, drawn into the divine life in communion with other people. We consume in the Eucharist, but we are thereby consumed by God” (p.xi & 54). When Jesus calls us to celebrate the Eucharist in his remembrance (Luke 22:19), he does not invite us to celebrate the memorial service of a dead God! In celebrating the Eucharist, we unite ourselves time and again with the Pascal mystery. As the Gospel reminds us, eating Christ’s body and drinking His blood is the most concrete form of “remaining”, “re-membering” and “renewing” our union with Christ and His Church. May the bread and wine we share this feast of Corpus Christi inspire us to true communion in a life of service, that prioritises God and His people.