Quite simply because every time I receive the Eucharist, the real presence of Christ, I feel an internal peace.
I think the natural response to that is to question if I am looking for this peace or am in some placebo like state wherein I expect to feel different after receiving the Eucharist.
Yet, the first time I noticed this peace, was years ago, on the mend of my rebellious phase with the Church: I was not looking for anything, so much as just going to mass because it was the thing I knew to do.
On the back of a brutal high school break-up, during a Sunday candlelight mass my freshman year of college, I got up and left.
The interior of the church darkened, matching my inner disposition, the only light that shone was on the altar as the sacrifice of the mass proceeded. As I looked at the cross suspended above the altar, I questioned what was the point of this all.
After years of altar serving, reading at mass, giving reflections to my entire high school after school masses, getting confirmed, it was all for naught because I was in deep, deep anguish, and nothing was helping.
Yet, I still believe in the real presence despite deciding to leave at the pinnacle of the mass: the transubstantiation. Some five years after this, as I sat in church in Kansas City, MO, something happened.
By the time I moved to Kansas City, I had garnered some level of faith back: it would be in a field in Amsterdam, tears streaming down my face that this happened, but that is another story for another time.
During this period in Kansas City, I was a volunteer teacher, living and working in a Jesuit School. With a Catholic spirituality center directly under my bedroom, I decided I would undergo the Spiritual Exercises: over the course of 9 months, I would pray an hour a day, seeing where God had been in my life, where he was currently in my life, and where he was calling me to: ultimately this is what brought me to Texas.
Sometime in the early part of this retreat, late fall, I received communion during a Sunday evening mass, and I felt something.
I felt the weight of living in a new city lifting off my shoulders.
I felt the guilt of ending a relationship with a girl I really liked dissipate for a few moments.
I felt the stress of my first year teaching seem to fade to the back.
I felt my body ease, and let go of the tension it had been holding for on to for years.
I felt peace.
In talking with my spiritual director that following week, I still recall my remarks:
How crazy is it that Jesus sacrificed himself for us, letting his physical body die, so that he can give to us, and he keeps doing it at almost every second of the day. Someone somewhere is participating in Christ's sacrifice, and he is giving himself completely to them and meeting them where they need to be met: that peace I felt, Christ is giving to someone else right now and still giving it to me.
It is insane to think that is possible, that Christ knows us each so intimately, that he can encounter us each in the ways we distinctly need all at the same time
Even now, as a teacher, I can barely create a lesson plan that teaches accommodates different learning styles, let alone meet everyone where they are individually.
Mind you, I did not know what the “real presence” was at this point.
Most of my knowledge of the Catholic faith is recent because I decided to date a Franciscan grad and step my game up: God calls us to him in wild ways folks because that relationship deepened my faith in more ways than on.
So why do I believe in the real presence?
Because, when I stop to consider the mass is a sacrifice, when I really listen to what the priest is saying during the Eucharistic Prayer as we all kneel intently, hearing him ask that God come upon the bread and wine and make them holy, so that they may become the body and blood of Christ, when I become truly aware of that, I know in my heart, I know in my soul, that feeling inside me when I encounter the Eucharist is a satiation that no earthly food can provide.
The almost instant, overwhelming, on occasion tear inspiring, feeling that settles into my body is one that, if I could manufacture myself, I would never worry about feeling bad again.
Yet, I cannot create this feeling myself.
I cannot make myself feel the joy I feel when I walk into the church, knowing I am in a state that allows me to encounter Christ.
I cannot, make myself feel the way I feel when I come to the altar.
I cannot make myself feel the way I feel when I bow before I receive the Eucharist.
I cannot make myself feel the way I feel when I return to my pew and can only speak of deep gratitude for Christ's continued sacrifice.
Every day, at every hour, everywhere, Christ is giving himself up to us if we so accept.
Yes, there are loads of Eucharistic miracles: I did not know about these until last year.
Yes, there is doctrine: doctrine I had not stopped to really consider until three years ago.
Yet, despite not knowing either of these, I still found myself fully believing in the real presence.
Yes, I am boiling down the quintessential, foundational, belief of the Church to a feeling, a moment of deep intimacy, yet that is how the Church comes to know Christ — I have enough theological based friends who can check me on this.
Be it what he is or what he wants, Christ desires a relationship with you. With me. With everyone, always.
And to be in relationship means to give of oneself fully, constantly, every second of every day: that is precisely what Christ did when he died on the cross and does at every mass on the altar.
In the Eucharist, Christ is truly present, truly giving, truly loving us all when we come to the table and participate in his ongoing sacrifice.
That is why I believe in the true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist: because Christ
believes in me enough to have sacrificed himself, as Marshawn Lynch would say, over and over and over and over and over and over and over… and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
So in this Year of the Eucharistic Revival, encounter Christ in the Eucharist.
Go To Mass and Receive Him
Spend Time In His Presence at Adoration.
You do not need to do anything complicated: you were enough for Christ to sacrifice his life then and enough for him to continue that sacrifice now.
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