“And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: ‘Take ye, and eat. This is my body.’ And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: ‘Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins. And I say to you, I will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father.’”
In the sacred sanctuary of the Upper Room, Jesus institutes the august sacrament. Where Melchizedek was a figure of what was to come: “Melchisedech the king of Salem, bringing forth bread and wine, for he was the priest of the most high God” (Genesis 14:18), Jesus takes on His role as high priest in the order of Melchizedek by offering a paschal sacrifice of the bread and wine of His Body and Blood: “Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech” (Psalm 109:4). Because of its utter sublimity, Jesus gave this sacrament as the last thing He would give to His Apostles before His passion, for in it He communicates His very self, a gift of His body, blood, soul, and everything that His divinity entails: beauty, love, truth, joy, that all of these may abide in you when you communicate: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” (Canticle 1:1), for kisses are imparting of the spirit of one into another from a sheer abundance of love, and so does Jesus give you the sweet kiss of His very being in Holy Communion, that you may receive His Spirit and all that comes with it: “The fruit of the Spirit is, love, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity” (Galatians 5:22-23). This imparting is through the simple hosts of bread and wine, which are not difficult to attain, that He may be approached eagerly and frequently by as many as possible. When you receive Him in this most exalted sacrament, with a heart burning with the fires of love to receive more love: “And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them” (Acts 2:3), you receive God and all that He entails due to His radical self-gift, if only your heart is open to Him to receive Him in all this fulness: “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the nights” (Canticle 5:2), that is, with all the graces conceivable, which are beautiful gifts, but the true gift is the love of God: “One thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). He gives His entire Heart to you, Theophila, holding nothing back of Himself because He is so in love with you: “Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck” (Canticle 4:9). Some Apostles received this mystery with incredible wonder, that they should be made one with God through this communal sacrament, while Judas received it with his heart far from God, like a man in intimacy with his wife with his heart set elsewhere, which is a revolting insult: “He that is an adulterer, for the folly of his heart shall destroy his own soul” (Proverbs 6:32), and so while some had life imparted to them, Judas receives unto spiritual death: “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:29). Now, many are those that receive Him either not in communion with the Church, in a state of mortal sin, or carelessly, but you, Theophila, step in to be enraptured by love: “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into joy: thou hast cut my sackcloth, and hast compassed me with gladness: to the end that my glory may sing to thee, and I may not regret: O Lord my God, I will give praise to thee for ever” (Psalm 29:12-13), that your heart may be given to His Heart which is given to your heart, His love in you and you in His, His beauty in your beauty and your beauty in His beauty, an utter intertwining of you with God: “The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as we also are one: I in them, and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in one: and the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast also loved me” (John 17:22-23). Let your mind’s eye take deep pleasure in His sight, His life, and in contemplating His attributes: “My heart hath said to thee: ‘My face hath sought thee:’ thy face, O Lord, will I still seek” (Psalm 26:8). Let your ears hear His words of love and tingle with delight: “How beautiful art thou, my love, how beautiful art thou” (Canticle 4:1). Let your spiritual nose be filled with every fragrance of love: “Smelling sweet of the best ointments” (Canticle 1:2), your sense of touch burning with love and gentleness: “There came in my heart as a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it” (Jeremias 20:9), trusting that, no matter how intense the love, the Holy Spirit will hold you intact. Taste the sweetness of His presence in your heart: “O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet” (Psalm 33:9). Thus, with your senses enlivened by sheer affection: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4), you can take Him everywhere, His beauty shining through your beauty and your souls, more tightly woven than that of earthly lovers, will shine on every face that you see. While the blood of the lamb protected the Israelites from the angel of death: “And the blood shall be unto you for a sign in the houses where you shall be: and I shall see the blood, and shall pass over you: and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I shall strike the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:13), this blood delivers from a loveless life, from sin, from vice, from snare, from all that holds back your gift of yourself from reaching its fulness, for you are a gift, a precious treasure to Him, and He wants to receive you as He gives Himself to you, and therefore you are called to always hope in His grace: “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing; that you may abound in hope, and in the power of the Holy Ghost” (Romans 15:13), “For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction” (Jeremias 29:11). This blood is then given as a covenant, an agreement by which He binds Himself to you, never to part from you, never to withdraw His love from your spiritual marriage: “The Lord is faithful in all his words: and holy in all his works” (Psalm 144:13). He points towards the blood shed in His passion for your sake, Theophila, but this blood is also present in the sacrament of the altar, a living testament to how unfathomably loved you are, that God Himself would become man and suffer the most horrifying of deaths purely because you were not His, and He wanted you to be: “Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob and formed thee, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, and called thee by thy name: thou art mine” (Isaias 43:1). That you may always be close to this perfect, unspeakable gift of love, He takes up the mantle of Moses: “Thou shalt keep this thing as a law for thee and thy children for ever” (Exodus 12:24), and tells His Apostles: “Do this for a commemoration of me” (Luke 22:19). This is the food and drink, Theophila, that bring righteousness: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill” (Matthew 5:6), for in being utterly transformed by love into love, you will become righteous and holy by a natural growth in love and gentle conversion: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin” (Matthew 6:28). It is fitting also that the Body and Blood are separated under two different species, for His Blood was utterly shed on the cross and separated from His Body, and while either contain both the Body and the Blood, it stands as a testament to the entirety of Christ’s self-gift to you, that not a drop of blood He kept for Himself, but poured Himself completely for your sake: “Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree: that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus then tells His closest followers that He would drink again with them: “Even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he arose again from the dead” (Acts 10:41). Or, there can be a spiritual meaning, that the fruit of the vine is the love of His people: “I will give thee a cup of spiced wine and new wine of my pomegranates” (Canticle 8:2), for what He would face in the rest of His earthly life was rejection, torment, mockery, abandonment, and hate: “Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not” (Isaias 53:3), but in His resurrection, He would see them happy and loving Him again: “The disciples therefore were glad, when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20). Therefore, Theophila, welcome with a lover’s heart, for few are His sanctuaries and many are His enemies: “She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7), and rejoice in His presence, for joyful is the one that is truly in love: “The joyfulness of the heart, is the life of a man, and a never failing treasure of holiness: and the joy of a man is length of life” (Ecclesiasticus 30:23).