Eden restored

The history of salvation began the moment our first parents rebelled against God’s commandment in Eden. 

In their naked shame, they hid themselves from the presence of God, and, thus, foreshadowed a future in which humanity withdrew ever further from Eden, from its original intimate companionship with the Creator. All manner of brutality and inhumanity ensued.

Indeed, we still live with the consequences of the rejection of God’s original grace and favor.

Man’s sinfulness was met with repeated offers of reconciliation from God. It is clear from the Old Testament that God patiently courted Israel, inviting her back into a covenant with the Divine. Beginning with Moses, the prophets were sent by God to teach Israel the true path to freedom from their slavery to sin and the fear of death.

One encounter between wayward Israel and God is especially poignant for Catholics during this time of Eucharistic Revival. 

Wandering in the desert, hungry and weary of their sojourn, the Israelites complained against God and Moses, recalling their time of slavery in Egypt with a perverse nostalgia. 

In his longsuffering patience and enduring mercy, however, God provided food for his people in the desert. He gave them manna, a mysterious substance they found on the desert floor and gathered up when the morning dew evaporated. The Israelites proclaimed it bread from Heaven. 

This experience of God’s providence became enshrined in their religious imagination. 

This manna from heaven was a foretaste of the Eucharist, the living bread from Heaven offered in the person of Jesus Christ. He himself proclaimed this to the crowds, instructing all who hunger to partake of his flesh and blood if we truly hoped to inherit eternal life. 

He gave us the sacrament of his body and blood as real spiritual food and drink. The Eucharist is our food for the journey. Just as the Israelites had no strength to complete their journey without God, we cannot persevere in the lifelong journey of discipleship without the intimate companionship Jesus offers us in the gift of the Eucharist. 

Of course, like many in the crowd who first heard Jesus speak of himself as living bread, “my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink,” some today find it difficult to understand how divinity can live within what appears to be ordinary bread and wine. 

Many Christians are tempted to dismiss the Eucharist as a mere symbol or remembrance of Jesus. For Catholics, these explanations do not satisfy.

As the soul dwells in our body, so Christ comes to dwell in bread and wine properly consecrated at the altar. His presence invites a deeper understanding of reality and an awareness that God’s presence transcends what is merely visible. 

As the Catholic poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins exclaims, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

In the fullness of time, God sent his Son to redeem the world. This redemption is completed, sustained and renewed by the ongoing sanctification and transformation we find in the Eucharist. 

In the wisdom of the Church, the Eucharist has been proclaimed as the source and summit of Church life. Meaning, the Father’s sending of the Son in the form of bread and wine through the movement of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from our understanding of the purpose of the Church. Further, of all the sacred tasks entrusted to the Church by the Risen Jesus, the Eucharist is the act that brings us closest to Heaven. 

At the altar, the Church victorious in Heaven and the struggling Church on earth are united by the Eucharist. Rather than a mere reenactment of an event, the Mass is a timeless moment in which we step into eternity, unhindered by the normal restraints of time and space. It is a sacred echo of the original harmony enjoyed between God and humanity when God would come and walk with man in the cool of the evening. 

One of the most urgent tasks for the Church today is to reach out to those Catholics who, for whatever reason, have fallen away from the Eucharist. Evangelization must begin with the Church itself. 

If you have a family member or friend who is no longer practicing their Catholic faith, consider inviting them to Mass with you. There is no need for stern lectures or a heaping on of guilt. Instead, we can humbly and honestly share with them the joy and reconciliation we ourselves have found through the Eucharist. 

The Eucharistic Revival, currently underway throughout the Church in the United States, is an historic and God-sent opportunity to rediscover the power of the Eucharist to change lives. 

This sacrament, in which mere bread and wine become the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, is that everlasting bread from Heaven for which humanity has longed since the loss of Eden. In a very real way, the Eucharist is Eden restored.