St. Thomas has an interesting statement about the Eucharist that I’ve been thinking about for sometime, and feel as though has been validated by my reading of his commentary on the Gospel of John. For awhile I’ve been thinking about the consumption of the Eucharist as the consumption of Divine-Obedience. The substance of what we consume is obedience itself. Jesus in John 4 says, “My bread is doing the will of Him who sent me.” Uniting this notion of hunger for God’s will with the image of bread. He is clearly speaking not of a temporal food, but rather that of a spiritual food, nonetheless using the sign of bread itself.
In his commentary Aquinas writes: “This food is the obedience to the divine commands: my food is to do the will of him who sent me. Also, it is Christ himself: I am the bread of life; for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”
In the first part of this quote, Jesus does not simply mean that by the act itself (ipsofacto) we are being obedient in receiving the Eucharist, although I’m sure there is truth in the external practice of reception. But he is saying something deeper here, which is the “internal disposition” of obedience to the will of the Father is the attitude we must ensure as we receive the Eucharist.
Think of it this way: when you hug a person, the external act is meant to be accompanied by an internal disposition to make it meaningful. People can usually tell when a hug is cold or an empty gesture. Likewise, by “drinking the cup” that He gives to us (obedience), we are actively giving our entire will in an act of entrustment to the Father in the very Spirit that Christ obeyed Him at the moment of his death and throughout His whole life.
If, therefore, we have a spirit of rebellion subsisting within us that is conscious, known, and obstinate, it means that the spiritual stomach is of itself closed or allergic to the very substance of this “Bread from Heaven.” So while the body consumes the True Presence, the Soul itself does not receive it in a Spirit of Hospitality.
We spend a great deal of time reflecting on the validity or licit nature of the Eucharist, but we fail to remember the third category of “fruitful” reception. Here the Church offers us wisdom, especially through Aquinas, that at the heart of reception of the Eucharist is to give our will the opportunity to fling our will passionately, and in trust to the providence and will of God with joy. We are surrendering our entire lives to His good judgment, and in docility, letting go of any type of inordinate control that exists in our own will.
When you receive the Eucharist this Sunday, imagine yourself in this movement of the heart towards obedience, not as a mere moral-precept, but as a relational entrustment of the mind, the heart, the body and the whole self to the care, instruction, will, of God. He is your captain.
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2 thoughts on “The Eucharist as the Consumption of Divine-Obedience”
Excellent article, forthright and proclaiming the inestimable Catholic truth.
I was just contemplating on how to explain that we get our strength to obey from receiving Jesus Himself in the Sacrament of the Eucharist when I came across your article. This is Divine Intervention!