Eucharist: Gift Exchange, Shame, and Miracle

“Eucharist.”   Strange word, no?  We might think of it, candidly, as a fancy word for a second-grader’s word – communion, or the more sophisticated among us, the Mass as a whole, a celebration of thanksgiving.  But I was struck anew, in the wake of Christmas, to notice that the word Eucharist shares the same root as the word charism, the Greek word for gift.

As a Catholic, Mass is too often something that I sleep-walk through, or something that goes on while my mind is elsewhere.  But finding Eucharist and charism growing from the same root of gift had me thinking about Mass not merely as a celebration, but the exchange of gifts. 

Don’t we struggle with how to exchange gifts at Christmas?  Exchange suggests some kind of equity, doesn’t it? 

I found myself stunned with the shameful inequity of my reality.  Part of my Sunday ritual is sitting at my desk, taking my checkbook from its place, and writing in a pretty small amount.  I feel some shame at the paltriness of the weekly gift, but justify it by thinking about the limits of our savings, our need to stretch them over our possible lifespan.

But then I think about the simplest reference for Eucharist – that wafer that we receive, the bread that recalls Jesus saying that we should take it and eat it, that it is his body which, sure enough, was given up for us, much earlier than his possible lifespan would suggest.  And I think of the awfully accurate scene of a celebration and gift exchange, like Christmas, when we have given our common little pair of gloves to someone, and then we open their gift, and it is something huge, or something incredibly precious, something on which the giver had spent a fortune of money, or a lifetime of effort.

I sat in this shame, wondering how we can do this, we Catholics, Mass after Mass.  How can we participate with such gross inadequacy time after time, year after year? 

Maybe, at age 64, I’ve finally begun to understand the Consecration.  Maybe transubstantiation is more than a tough spelling word for a second grader.