My last post was an answer to a question from a Protestant reader about why I became Catholic. There was another part I wrote to her, about the difference in the way Catholics think of and experience the Word compared to Protestants, that it occurred to me some of my readers here may also enjoy. Here it is, amended for general readership.
For a Catholic, the Word is not simply the bible, and is not primarily encountered in the bible, though the bible is key and is one of the foundations of our faith.
Probably the core, deepest thing about Catholicism is the reality of the Word become Flesh, not only in Jesus when he walked on the earth, but also, and significantly, on-goingly on earth in the bread and wine, which become His Body and Blood when consecrated by a priest during the mass. For Catholics, the primary encounter with Christ is not in the written Word of the bible, but in the living Word made flesh in the Eucharist.
It is a different, and very interior, experience, where one while still on earth becomes one flesh with Christ our Bridegroom through receiving his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. We are a people of the Word made flesh and dwelling among us in the Eucharist, and through the Eucharist in us. And through the Eucharist, the body of Christ, we are bound together as one Body, in him, as he told us to be, worldwide on earth and eternally in heaven. That is core Catholic identity. The Eucharist unites us to him, and binds us together as one in him, in a very deep, interior way that goes far beyond ordinary human words.
The bible is the expression of the mind of Christ, God speaking to us in human words, through human agency. Everything in it points to, leads toward, and culminates in Christ Himself, who is constantly descending and reaching out to us in the Eucharist, the great bridge from heaven to earth in which we, while still on earth, touch and receive heaven, and our God in heaven, into our very selves.
Liturgy, the summit of which is the mass, is scripture enacted – the great drama of salvation history enacted and carried forth day-by-day, re-telling the story of the Fall and God’s work in history, preparing the way of our Saviour. The entire mass is scripture and is based on scripture. And it is not empty, not merely a structure: as God’s words prepared for His descent in the Old Testament, so they also do now. The Temple lives and has spread all over the earth, and God descends and dwells constantly in the Tabernacle, feeding and sustaining us daily with his own life, his own flesh, in the Eucharist which is his very Life and Self poured out for us.
The bible is powerful – I feel deeply fed, imbued by the mind of Christ, through bible study. But the sacraments, especially Holy Communion, also feed, in a different, very deep, interior, non-intellectual way; a way which is a deep, direct communing with Christ who is the Word, and a deep incorporating into the whole Body, without the agency of human words, an encounter toward which all words, and all experiences, lead, and find fulfillment and completion.
Speaking for myself, now that I have experienced the power of the Eucharist to bring Christ directly into my soul, I could not imagine living without it. It is not like Protestant communion – it really is something different, something profound, something I do not like to think of ever doing without again, now that I have found it.
