The Working Catholic by Bill Droel
It is commonly ranked as the top professional football play of all time. Only 22-seconds remained in the December 1972 AFC Division final. The Steelers were losing. That’s when Terry Bradshaw pitched the immaculate reception to Franco Harris (1950-2022) for the thrilling victory. The play is legendary; it can be viewed on several websites.
The Eucharist is not a legend. It is not a reenactment. It is not available on instant replay. It is a total reality that contains the Pascal Mystery of Jesus Christ. However, to enter into the Eucharist and absorb the real presence of Jesus/God it is necessary to experience the world as enchanting. And that is a problem. All of us these days are prone to misplaced enchantment. We take many things for granted, assuming that what we don’t know can easily be learned through a Google search. We shift our curiosity to superficialities—to rumors about celebrities, to gossip about schoolmates, to endless detail about daily comings-and-goings. We go to a football game, yet spend our time there attending to our mobile device.
We modern people have replaced awe and reverence with a blasé take on reality. Yes, a rare eclipse stimulates our imaginations. For the most part, however, we neglect the daily discipline of contemplation that would allow us to apprehend the surprising movements of grace lurking within or beneath normal routines. Nearly everything nowadays is taken at face value; and even then not taken too seriously. Ours is an age of irony.
There are moments when we do encounter something that defies the trivial. There are some levels of experience that are not readily explained on the internet. What is the meaning of death? What accounts for singular and incomprehensible recoveries? The internet does not know. Our first reaction is to diminish such things. There are clichés we can use to move on.
Another reaction to uncertainty is a MAGA-style conspiracy theory. It is intolerable that scientists can’t immediately know the cause of and simple cure for Covid-19. So it must be a hoax and the remarkable vaccine is really perpetuating a sinister plot. Our disposition toward the gracious and mysterious is scant.
The Eucharist is a complete story. It is more than a story, of course, but its enchanted drama is prior. Without that prior enchantment, an effort to philosophically explain the Eucharist can unintentionally have an opposite effect. Nor is openness to enchantment aided by too much technical stress on prior requirements for Eucharistic worthiness. No one is worthy. The Eucharist is a gift.
The Eucharist is a dynamic event that cannot be dissected. It has to be captivating. Marriage is a mystery. It must be entered into without total certainty and yet without paralyzing doubt. Marriage reveals what it contains over months and years; in its highs and lows. In the same way, the Eucharist is a mystery. The word mystery is not a cop-out, used by those who lack sensible explanations. The word mystery means that which can only be known in relationship.
Droel edits a print newsletter, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).
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