Mere Symbol?

Christianity is based upon the premise that Jesus Christ is both God and man.  In his human nature, Jesus walked upon this earth within the confines of space and time.  But in his divine nature, he is the creator of space and time, and all that are contained within them.  Owing to his human nature, anything that Jesus did, said, or touched happened at a particular place and moment in time.  But owing to his divine nature, anything that Christ did, said, or touched is imparted with the eternal and supernatural.

When John the Baptist began his ministry, the baptisms he performed were gestures of repentance and conversion.  And while they had merit, they were but a foreshadowing of what was to come.  John himself proclaimed, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come. …  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  When Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan, he did not do so for his sake (for he had nothing to repent), but for ours.  When the incarnate God entered that natural body of water, a supernatural event took place.  His divine nature joined itself not only to that particular body of water in that moment in time, but to the waters of baptism for all the ages to come.

At our baptism, there was visible water and the audible words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  But we know also that there is an invisible realityat work.  The stain of original sin is washed clean, and we are restored to a state of grace. Though our bodily senses do not perceive this reality, we know it to be true with the eyes and ears of faith.

Following their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites commemorated their freedom from captivity with the Passover meal.  The ritual recalls God’s command, through Moses, to slaughter an unblemished lamb, eat its flesh, and paint its blood upon the door lintel of the household.  When Christ celebrated the Passover meal with the apostles on the night before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, the bread and the wine he blessed were, like the waters of baptism, altered in a metaphysical (not merely metaphorical) way.  The enslaved Israelites of old ate the flesh of an earthly lamb.  Now we eat the flesh of the one true Lamb of heaven. Even before The Last Supper, Christ spoke of this reality:  “Amen, amen, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” (John 6:53)

Just as the waters of baptism would be forever “supernaturalized” by Christ, so too is every validly consecrated host at every Mass throughout space and time.  The elements of bread and wine still appear as such to our earthly senses, but the eyes and ears of faith allow us to know they are something far greater.  As with all the sacraments, there is both a visible and an invisible reality to Holy Communion.  If we insist that consecrated bread and wine are merely symbol, then we must necessarily admit that Jesus Christ was merely mortal.