Christianity is the most “materialistic” religion. It is not materialistic in the sense of denying the spiritual realm or putting the importance of matter over the matters of the spirit. However, christianity certainly believes that matter is important. Mainly because we are material beings and God knows that and takes that very seriously.
Because God knows we take matter seriously, He becomes involved in human history. The history of the people of Israel is not a mere succession of events. Everything that happened to them was understood as an intervention of God. God could be “seen”, so to speak, in the historical facts. This capacity to “see” God is what we call the sacramental presence: A material presence of the spiritual God; a tangible eruption of God in the human realm.
However, these historical interventions are not enough. They often caused confusion as to what events came directly from men’s wills and which ones were directly willed by God. Human freedom irremedibly contaminates history with sin, blood and betrayal. By the same token, human freedom plagues human history with God’s divine sin of love, beauty and life. However, God is still the God up above, and men remain the creatures down below.
A bold step came from God when He himself became flesh. Not only matter, but human flesh, so that He could speak to us in a human way, in a way that we can understand. After the Ascension, this fleshy presence is substituted by a real presence in the hearts of the believers. It is the abiding of the Holy Spirit that is received by all who are baptized. But this presence, although marked in a material way through the waters of baptism, remains again a spiritual presence. Something we can neither see nor touch.
But what else can God do? Is there a way to become closer to us besides becoming one of us? Could God invent a more tangible way of being with us? Yes, Christ can still be with us if He becomes food for us.
If Christ is the ultimate sacrament because He alone is God’s human presence, the Eucharist is our ultimate sacrament because it continues this bodily presence among us. When the priest invites us to receive Christ with the words, “the body of Chirst”. His body did not vapourize when He was taken into heaven. His body continues in the Eucharist making the church as the church continues to celebrate the Eucharist.
Christ becomes edible for us making true the statement, “we are what we eat.” Because we become Christ-like, Christ’s body expands into the world through the church, which is the “other body of Christ.” As we make ours the bread of life, Christ makes us His, hence, He and we make the church.
The sacramental material presence of God today is the eucharist and the church. God still allows us, not only to see or touch Him, as He did in the past, but also to eat the body of His Son. God couldn’t possibly become closer or more human than that.
But why all this divine effort? Aquinas wrote on occasion of the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ: “the Son became man so that he could make men gods” [my translation]. That we became divine is the inner secret desire of our hearts. This is why the Serpent tempted Eve with eating from the forbidden fruit.
The inner secret desire to become divine is not an impossible dream but a reality that God makes possible everytime He invites us to his table.
