The Mystery of the Human Body, Part 2: Communication and Union
The Eucharist as food and a source of healing is also part of our two-thousand-year-old tradition. We saw it in John, chapter 6, where Christ said “my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” About a hundred years later, Ignatius of Antioch, in his Letter to the Ephesians, spoke of “breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote we take in order not to die but to live forever in Jesus Christ” (chap. 20, 2). But the Eucharist is also medicinal in that it doesn’t always taste good, and so St. Paul warns, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord…. [He] eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor 11:27, 29). The Eucharist is medicine that purges in a way and also heals.
A communion hymn from the third century speaks of Christ’s Body and Blood as celestial bread come down to earth:
The bread that feeds the heavens
is here on the altar:
the God who cannot die is killed,
is killed for sacrifice
in this mystery.
This food he gives brings life
to those who caught their death
from what was once their food in Eden.The blood that streams from him he pours
into the chalice.
The priest of the new dispensation
makes it a sacred oblation;
the faithful take it
and wash themselves clean.
(Adalbert Hamman, ed., Early Christian Prayers [Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1961], no. 215)
And in the fourth century, in a beautiful, long “Prayer of Oblation,” Syrian Bishop Serapion of Thmuis prayed, “Grant that to all who communicate [that is, eat the Eucharist], the means of life they receive may bring the healing of every sickness and the strength for every kind of progress and virtue” (Hamman, Early Christian Prayers, 124).
Food in the form of fish has also been a part of our tradition since the beginning. Christ helped the apostles with their fishing for food and made them fishers of men (Lk 5:4–7; Mt 4:19). Many thousands were fed when Christ multiplied a few fish to feed the crowds. The fish itself is also a symbol for Christ. “Ichthus” (ιχθυς), which is Greek for “fish,” is an acronym for “Jesus Christ Son of God, Savior” (Hamman, Early Christian Prayers, 85n1). And this brings us back to the Eucharist. Listen to a tomb inscription of the late fourth century:
Take from the Redeemer of the saints
The food as sweet as honey:
Eat with joy and desire, holding the Fish
In thy hands.
I pray, give as food the Fish, Lord and Savior. (Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1 [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc., 1992], 174)
Two thousand years later, the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues this breath-taking teaching about Christ: the Eucharist is food for our spiritual life (CCC, no. 1392) and “strengthens our charity” (CCC, no. 1394).
The Eucharist is also healing. St. Alphonsus Liguori, writing in the eighteenth century and quoting the Council of Trent, calls the Eucharist “a remedy whereby we may be freed from daily faults and preserved from mortal sin” (sess. 13, c2). It “wipes away venial sins … [and] revives our love and enables us to break our disordered attachments to creatures and root ourselves in” Christ (CCC, no. 1394). The Eucharist “renews, strengthens, and deepens [our] incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism” (CCC, no. 1396). The Eucharist is healing and health.