The Eucharist Made Me Catholic

How the Sacrament of the Eucharist is the bridge from Man to God

There’s no illusion to the majesty of Mass. It’s why I came back to the religion of my mom’s side of the family; a Faith she and my grandma fell away from. Since I started writing this blog (when it was actually on my own personal website that was redundant lol), I have battled with what it really means to be a Christian. I was never really intently anti-Catholic, and deep theological debates never caught my attention. There are layers to belief. Some people need every apologetic under the sun to believe. Some are simply graced with the gift of faith. Both types of people complement the ultimate Truth, however.

I was raised without religion. My father (a Pentecostal turned atheist), though he has done his best without God, there were massive deficiencies in my upbringing. I remember going to sleep feeling as if there was no point to anything. Then life happened in a really harsh way, and something in me woke up. I’m definitely a convert who had their soul lit ablaze by the Word. With different people I met in my journeys whom I truly feel were placed there for the implicit purpose of my conversion, different tests of faith and hope, practices of true love and devotion, trials and tribulations, I was led down the narrow path with a good bit of handholding. That’s what’s called Grace.

But something was always missing. For some reason, the instinct within me was to go to a protestant church of some variety being that everyone I knew whom I spoke about Christianity with was a Southern Baptist or Calvinist of some sort. In retrospect, it was due to my shamefulness and unwillingness to submit to authority. Because of this, my attempts at finding a good church failed. Granted, most protestant churches have no initiation rituals, no obligation to kneel to Christ, no Sacraments, and no sense of genuine shame for their sins. The majority of the actual “worship service” is either rock band music or a pastor giving an hour-long sermon. There’s no worship, nor obligation. Before and after “worship service” it’s a lot of fake smiles and small talk. At their gatherings, they don’t even drink alcohol.

The most important part, though, that I had missed was a practiced genuflection to Christ, not only in literally kneeling to him, but in having an active prayer life, partaking in the Sacraments, crying for my sins. In all my experience with protestantism, even as an atheist, it was so easy to use their bizarre attempt at worshipping God as a reason to not treat them seriously, and that I could just be a Churchless Christian. I was this way because no one ever made me aware that I should be in a state of deep sorrow, reflection, and love when in worship - that I should actively pray as much as possible so as to avoid idle tempting thoughts of anger, self-righteousness, and lust.

Nothing distills this experience of yearning for God’s love, truth, and desire to save us than the completion of the Trinity, and how that completion was the sacrifice for us as a bridge to Heaven (as only through Jesus Christ are we saved). One cannot love God without action. It is what love demands. Love is creation. Hate is destruction. When you live without love, you do not act in a constructive way. You do not build up yourself closer to God, and the only way to do that is in sacrifice of the self for the other. Jesus Christ did this - the man who is fully God, and the God who is fully man. It is only appropriate a loving God who wanted (as in acted in a preference for love) to create us would sacrifice Himself for the sake of our being close to Him. For the first time in history, He reached down to directly guide us. In that, the ultimate sacrifice is had, and Christ is risen.

Though the experience of God would not be true if we could not experience Him in the literal and the spiritual way that those 2000 years ago did when they saw the man who was also God. The miracles He did were a testament to His love, and He never asked for anything in return - just as a just God does. Only that we live by what is True, which is God. The Truth must be experienced materially - as the Man - and spiritually - as the Father. When we defame the Body of Christ by saying that the Sacraments He brought to us are unrepeatable, then why would He have commanded us to practice them? More importantly, that we plead for them. For it is the flesh of the man who was the Word in the flesh that cleanses us of self-pity and the yearning for sin. When God’s flesh is in you, you are in Him. This is the miracle of the Eucharist. The Sacraments and what is sacramental are where God is most present in our material reality, and not just of Him, but most certainly are Him.

When we try to muddy miracles with not just science, but gimmicky philosophy, the miracle of what is Truth is lost. For instance, for those who try to explain away Communion as not really turning into the Body and the Blood are too focused on substance versus essence. With Christ, this is united - the Truth transcends the physical properties of something. Put into practice, if you believed in consubstantiation - that it doesn’t literally turn into the Body and Blood but the essence transforms - then what is the miracle? What is the Sacrament? Did Christ just symbolically give a blind man sight? Did He just symbolically turn water into wine? I know they don’t say they believe this, but this is a cope technicality used by many protestants and Orthos who believe in consubstantiation. When He commanded we partake in Communion, how was He not instituting not only how we can be close to Him, but that just as he does miracles, we can materially be united with and in Him?

This is why, even as a protestant/Churchless Christian, I believed in transubstantiation - that the bread and wine actually become the Body and Blood. I didn’t even realize it until I actually inquired more into Catholicism and realize they were the only ones who did it. Then it finally made sense. No one takes Christ and the institution of His Sacraments and Church as seriously as Catholicism. You ever wonder why when you go to a Mass you see people crying on their knees? It’s because their Faith is indestructible. Their sorrow for their sins, and their prayer life and love is stronger - at least from what I’ve seen - than anybody else. Mass isn’t a social club. It is the partaking in the washing away of sins, the imbibing of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior, the sanctuary for which brings you back to sanity every single week.

When I first went to Catholic Mass, I remember calling up my friend who is a (quasi) religious brother (hopefully soon-to-be priest). He’s one of the main reasons I chose the TLM, and I will never regret it as this form of the Mass was what challenged me and brought me close to the most devout worship of our Lord. I was so choked up. I hadn’t been able to go to Mass before because it brought such an overwhelming mix of emotions when I attempted to go months beforehand. I felt like if I walked in I was going to collapse from a heart attack. It was because a part of me knew that the minute I walked in, I would be convinced. The obligation to kneel and to repeat back my sorrow for my sins in anticipation of those bells ringing, as the priest lifts up the Chalice and the Host; I have found it very hard not to erupt in tears. I’ve never been more of a serious person, more aware of how I go wrong, and yet satisfied knowing Christ Our Savior will be the Lord forever. Because, for several years, through my searching, my trials, my wild tales, the only thing that ever brought me to the seriousness of my faith was seeing the sacrifice of God right in front of me. Almost every time, tears run down my face, and I am brought to deep prayer and gratitude. Part of it is because we have such a lovely choir and Agnus Dei really gets me into this frame of mind that I am about to see the reason I live and am brought contentment, even if I sin or am brought frustrations and challenges. Truly, nothing is more real than the wholeness of God, and every Sunday I get to experience that for the miracle that it is.

I think this is what adoration and devotion are. They grow in someone because once the veil is lifted, there isn’t one bit of this world nor one’s own self that can bring them to a state of contemplation, of peace, as adoring the Sacrifice of our Lord. This is why we are called to works. This is why we are called to prayer. The life of a Christian is in perpetual devotion and renewal, and not in stagnation and self-relation. The Eucharist is what proves this. The Eucharist is the only thing in this world that has brought me to tears and hating my sin. It’s the only thing that made me feel like a lost child finally finding its home.

Our own belief is that the renovation of the world will be brought about only by the Holy Eucharist.

Pope Leo XIII