The Eucharist and Childlike Faith

Growing up Protestant, I never believed that the Eucharist was the actual Body and Blood of Jesus.

It didn’t make sense to me. Transubstantiation sounded like a hoax. At a minimum, it seemed unnecessary. 

Why did it matter that the wafer and wine we consume at church each week are the literal flesh and blood of Christ? He already died for us and rose again, so if we believed that and accepted Him, that was enough.

As I got interested in Catholicism and studied the history and teachings of the Church, I became convinced of its truth. So many things persuaded me: apostolic succession, the authority of the Magisterium, sacred tradition… Cardinal John Henry Newman said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” 

The more I studied Catholicism, the more I realized I was no longer Protestant in my beliefs.

And yet I still wasn’t Catholic either. The Eucharist was the one doctrine that stood in my way.

I had always seen communion as symbolic. It represented the sacrifice Jesus made for us, but it was just a weekly ritual remembrance, no more than that. Even today, nearly 70 percent of Catholics claim they don’t believe the Eucharist is the literal flesh and blood of Christ. 

But upon closer study of the Scriptures, it became apparent that Jesus meant what he said about the Eucharist as more than a symbol. 

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you,” Jesus told his followers. “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:53-55). 

True, as in literal? This was too much for many of his listeners. “As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” (John 6:66).

But Jesus didn’t chase after them or try to explain what he “really” meant.

By all accounts, he had said what he really meant. He called us to receive his literal, physical flesh and blood. 

Apparently, even Peter was perplexed, but chose to accept what Jesus said, however baffling it seemed. “Master, to whom shall we go?” Peter conceded. “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

I can relate to Peter in that moment. I didn’t understand the Eucharist either, but I had seen and learned too much to turn back from becoming Catholic. Despite my skepticism and lack of understanding about the doctrine, I chose to accept it as a mystery and I finally joined the Roman Catholic Church. 

Over time, it has occurred to me that the only way to ultimately accept the Eucharist is as a divine mystery.

We don’t have to intellectually understand it. We must receive it in childlike faith. 

“When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child,” wrote Saint Paul. “When I became a man, I put aside childish things” (1 Corinthian 13:11). But there is a difference between childish and childlike. Jesus said we must have the faith of a child (Matthew 18:3). Accepting the Eucharist this way started making sense to me.

When I was a child, I intuitively understood that my parents loved me. We didn’t have detailed theological discussions about it or try to define precisely what it meant.

Instead, my mom made buttered cinnamon toast in the mornings because it was my favorite. She wrapped me in a blanket and stared at the stars with me and told me stories. My dad took me to the movies. He taught me how to fish and to swing on a jungle gym. As a child, I accepted all this love without needing to have it defined or intellectually understood.

To me, this is how God’s love in the Eucharist is.

Ultimately, it doesn’t have to be defined or explained. It just has to be experienced. 

It has to be accepted as a child accepts their parents’ love. 

Every time we receive the body and blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine, we are accepting God’s sacrificial love for us. We are renewing the covenant he made with us to be our Father and we his children. 

So I have stopped trying to 100 percent understand. Instead, I have chosen to surrender to the mystery and receive his love whenever I consume the Eucharist. 

There will be plenty of time to grasp the full meaning of the great mystery when I get to Heaven by God’s grace. But I suspect that, by then, it won’t matter to me anymore. I won’t feel a need to understand. I will just want to rest in his all-consuming love for me. And I can start now, every time I receive his real presence.