Jesus, for most of his ministry, used words. Through words, he tried to bring us God’s consolation, challenge, and strength. His words, like all words, had a certain power. Indeed, his words stirred hearts, healed people, and affected conversions. But at a time, powerful though they were, they too became inadequate. Something more was needed. So, on the night before he death, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart. That is the best understanding of the Eucharist. I took long courses on the Eucharist during my undergraduate and graduate theological training. In the end, these didn’t explain the Eucharist to me, not because they weren’t good, but because the Eucharist, like a kiss, needs no explanation and has no explanation. If anyone were to write a four-hundred-page book entitled “The Metaphysics of a Kiss,” it would not deserve a readership. Kisses work. Their inner dynamics need no metaphysical elaboration. The Eucharist is God’s kiss. In a remarkable little essay entitled, In Praise of Skin, Brenda Peterson describes how she once was inflicted by a skin rash that no medicine could effectively soothe. She tried every kind of doctor and medicine to no avail. Finally, she turned to her grandmother, remembering how, as a little girl, her grandmother used to massage her skin whenever she had rashes, bruises, or was otherwise ill. The ancient remedy worked again. Her grandmother massaged her skin, over and over again, and the rash that seemingly couldn’t be eradicated disappeared. Skin needs to be touched. This is what happens in the Eucharist and that is why the Eucharist, and every other Christian sacrament, always has some very tangible physical element to it – a laying on of hands, a consuming of bread and wine, an immersion into water, an anointing with oil. An embrace needs to be physical, not only something imagined. When words aren’t enough. God has to pick us up, like a mother her child. Physical embrace is what’s needed. Skin needs to be touched. God knows that. It’s why Jesus gave us the Eucharist.[1]
[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Eucharist as God’s Physical Embrace”, May 2006.