Jesus 20:20

Luke 22:14–20

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• when the hour came, he reclined at table with the apostles
• he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them
• "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me"
• "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood"

Applying the Word to My Life:
About 200 years after Christ's Passion, a boy named Tarcisius was making his way through the streets of Rome.

He was a young acolyte — an altar server — and he was carrying the Eucharist to Christians who were imprisoned and awaiting execution. The Emperor Valerian had made it a crime to be a Christian, and the faithful who were condemned to the arena could no longer come to the table. So the table was coming to them, carried through the city by a boy.

A pagan mob stopped him. They wanted to see what he was protecting. He refused.

They beat him to death in the street. When they examined his body, they found no trace of what he had been carrying.

Tarcisius is the patron saint of altar servers. He was probably not much older than the boys who serve at our altar today. What he was willing to die for looked, to the mob that killed him, like nothing at all — a small amount of bread, perhaps wrapped in cloth. But he knew what it actually was and it was worth dying for.

The night before Jesus died, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, telling them this was his body given for them. He took the cup the same way, telling them it was the new covenant in his blood poured out for them. The meal they shared was not a memorial of something past — it was the sacrifice itself, made present. Jesus was at that table as both the priest who offered the sacrifice and the victim who was offered.

The Church has never stopped doing what he asked. Every mass is that same sacrifice — not a repetition but a continuation, the same offering made present again on every altar, in every generation. Tarcisius understood this. That is why he was in the streets of Rome with what looked like bread.

The pagan mob could not see what he was carrying because they had no framework for it. Their senses told them it was bread. That was the only information available to them. And in one sense they were not wrong — it looked like bread, it felt like bread. But its true nature was beyond the reach of what they could perceive.

We would like to think our senses are reliable, but the reality is a little different. Our senses only reach the physical world and they aren't even great at that. The American Psychological Association estimates that one in three eyewitnesses make an incorrect identification.

Things get even harder when we look at spiritual matters. Spiritual reality is present in and through the physical, but it does not reduce to it. The gap between what we can see and what is actually there is not a flaw in the sacrament — it is, I think, one of its most important features.

If we could see what was really happening on the altar — if the full presence were visible, undeniable, overwhelming — there would be no choice. Faith is the way we bridge that gap. The freedom to choose it requires the veil.

Think about how Jesus moved through the world. He did not arrive in crushing power, forcing acknowledgment. He came as a child, then as a carpenter, then as a teacher. He healed and taught and served and wept. He was recognized by some and missed entirely by others — because he was present in a form that could be accepted or refused. That is how love operates. Love does not compel. It invites.

The Eucharist is the same invitation, given again at every mass. It is hidden under what our senses can reach. That means that our faith — and our freedom — can remain genuinely our own. What looks like bread is the body given for us. What looks like wine is the blood of the new covenant. Tarcisius could see that. The mob could not. The difference was not in what was on the altar. The difference was faith.

That is why the early Church carried the Eucharist to the imprisoned and the dying at great personal risk — not because a symbol was worth protecting, but because what was actually there was worth everything.

A young boy in the streets of Rome knew this well enough to hold it with his last breath. The Church has been doing it ever since — through persecutions and millennia. And the invitation is the same each time: to look at what appears to be bread and choose to see what is actually there.

There are many things in faith that are hard to see. Those are the times we need to look more with our heart instead of our eyes.

My Response for Today:
Today at mass — or in spiritual communion if I cannot receive — I will come to the altar aware that what I am receiving is more than my senses can reach.