“Touch me not” and the other untouchable thing

I’ve wondered this Easter why Jesus says to Mary not to touch him, when he later tells Thomas to touch him.

I said to myself, obviously this was not an Ark of the Covenant situation, because Thomas is allowed to touch him later. So his resurrected body can’t be holy in this untouchable way.

However, maybe it is, in a way. If we believe that Thomas was also a recipient of Jesus’s breath, either because when Jesus appeared to them again he breathed on Thomas too, or because by virtue of his membership in the Twelve he benefitted from it the first time even in his absence, then Thomas was ordained, like the rest of the Twelve, as a priest.

And who was allowed to touch the Ark? Only the priests.

So perhaps, like the Ark, Jesus’s resurrected body had about it a holiness that only allowed those protected by anointing to touch it.

The unique unity with Christ available in the Eucharist

I was asked by a friend whether I really believe that my feelings about the validity of the Eucharist go beyond academics and affect my daily walk with Christ. Yes, I do. And here’s why.

I believe that the Eucharist brings me closer to Jesus, really and truly unites me with him in a way that nothing else does. I do not believe that this happens because when I take the Eucharist I enter a state of transcendence or contemplation or exhilaration in the Spirit which nothing else can cause (although I do incidentally believe that it will lead me, and has led the saints, into deeper contemplation of Jesus than anything else). Rather, I believe that taking the Eucharist causes the reality of my union with Jesus to happen even apart from my mental awareness of it.

This is of great practical advantage to my soul: even on days when I am “not feeling it” at church, we can be united. Can you relate to how exhausting it is to need to have a powerful emotional or charismatic experience in order to be near to Jesus? I have grown hungry for something more constant than that.

But on what basis do I say that the Eucharist unites me to Jesus in a way that nothing else can, even apart from any way it helps me to pray and contemplate or enter his presence in spirit? It can be nothing but that it unites me to Jesus bodily—our bodies are joined, and we become one flesh.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31-32)

I do not want to be crass, but, in deep mystery, it is true that, as the literal bodily union of a man and woman is the consummation of their unity, so too the bodily joining of us and Jesus is the consummation—the pinnacle, the essence, the climax, the fullness—of our unity with him.

Jesus said this when he said it is necessary to take his body and blood into us to have his life, and that, if we do, then we have his life, and not only do we abide in Christ, in that sense of resting and hoping in him, but he (mystery of mysteries) abides in us!

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (John 6:53-56)

But those who do not eat do not have life in them. So then, I desire to be really and truly united with Jesus in the Eucharist, because I desire eternal life, and because I desire to abide in Jesus, and for him to abide in me, and because I desire that our love be consummated, as a man and woman desire to consummate their marriage bond through the union of their bodies. Thus I do really believe that partaking of the Eucharist will have a profound effect upon my soul.

It is a great mystery to think that by the act of eating a piece of bread, Jesus would be more near to me than I can bring him with the highest aspirations of my thoughts. But that smacks of the Incarnation itself, when Jesus became flesh, because we, in the futility of our minds, could never ascend to him. Perhaps we should have always expected that the greatest mystery would be worked out through such an earthly means, for “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29), and so that the meaning of Paul’s words would not be tainted in any way by human merit or ambition when he says in the next sentence, “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus.”

The bodiliness of Christ’s body

(This is a harmonization on my previous post on the Real Presence.)

When we eat the Communion meal, what does Christ offer to us? Is it his spirit, or his body? It is his body that he offers us.

But how shall we say he is present with us in this offering? On this Christians differ. Some say that he is bodily present, and others that he is only spiritually present.

But it is nonsense to say that his presence is merely spiritual, for a body is not present when it is present only in spirit. The nature of the spirit is incorporeal, and the nature of the body is corporeal. Therefore, The Spirit of Christ is present in us through that which is incorporeal, but the Body of Christ is present in us through that which is corporeal. A spirit can no more be present as body than multiplication can be covered with mud, and a body can no more be present as spirit than I can throw a baseball and hit bilingualism. We do not say, “Here is the Spirit of Christ in my hand,” nor “Here is the Body of Christ in my mind,” for his body cannot exist in our mind, but only the idea of his body. For “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

When Christ offers us his body, then, we must realize what it is we hold: no mere thought of him, but Himself, Immanuel Incarnate, with us in body.

The Real Presence of Christ

Many Protestant denominations, such as the Anglican church, hold that in the Eucharist we experience the “Real Presence of Christ,” desiring for Christ to be really and truly present with us when we do this act of utmost communion with him, yet rejecting the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that Christ is physically present in the elements. They maintain the doctrine that, in the words of the Anglican 39 Articles, “The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is [only] Faith.” However, I believe this to be contradictory to the belief that Christ is really present in the Eucharistic meal. Let me explain:

We all know that the real presence of a human person is necessarily both spiritual and physical.

On one hand, a person cannot be said to be really present when their body is present, but their spirit absent. Thus we say to ourselves when we kiss a loved one who has deceased moments before, “They are not really here”: for their body is present, yet their spirit is not. And when two lovers are together, if one senses that, even though the other be physically present, their heart is with another, or their mind daydreaming or preoccupied, they will say to them, “You are not really here.”

Neither can a person be said to be really present when their spirit is present, but their body absent. Thus, when we excuse someone for not really being with us at a gathering, we say that they are “with us in spirit.” And when a lover off at war writes home to his beloved, or sings “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams,” he feels bittersweet longing because his spirit is with those he loves, yet his body is away, so the reality of his presence is unfulfilled. We Christians especially know this because because of our longing while we are separated from our Lord Jesus while he prepares a place for us, for “we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6), even though his Spirit is with us, whom he has sent as a comforter. Therefore, regarding a human person, where either the spirit or the flesh is lacking, there is not the real presence of the person.

Now, we believe that Christ is a human person, for “he came down from heaven and was incarnate and was made man.” From the moment of his incarnation, the person of Christ has possessed a human nature, inextricably joined to his divine nature in hypostatic union; and having resurrected and ascended into heaven, he reigns there now as both God and man, no less incarnate than he was when he was on earth.

Therefore, how can the Real Presence of the Person of Christ be with us in the Eucharist, if this presence is not physical as well as spiritual in nature? If he does not come down into the bread, as much as we ascend into heaven, then in what sense do we call this presence “real”?

I would go even further, and suggest that this Real Presence of Christ is necessary for true Christian life–a life of longing in the absence of Christ’s Real Presence, albeit comforted by his Spiritual presence as a sign, leaves one alone in the bodily work of life; and what what one does alone, one can only do by one’s own power. The failure to have Christ bodily with us leads us into a subtle self-dependence, as God ceases to invigorate our flesh and blood, remaining merely as our inspiration. Christ came as spirit and body so that the whole man, body and soul, might be united to him in faith.