Abbot Michael Brunner offers this reflection for our ongoing series on the Eucharist in our monthly Liturgy column.

Eucharistic Adoration in the church of St. Gregory the Great

I am not a scientist. But as I understand it, and I take this on faith from scientists, from what we can observe with our highly sophisticated technology and from what we can intuit with our highly developed consciousness the universe in which we exist is about 90 billion light years in diameter. Looking into the night sky we can see clusters or superstructures containing hundreds of galaxies like our own milky way. From what is so inelegantly called the Big Bang theory, we can determine that this entire universe, truly mind boggling in size, all began from the explosion of an infinitesimally small particular point, perhaps the size of a subatomic particle, called a singularity. And here we are on a small planet orbiting a very ordinary star in a very ordinary galaxy in a very ordinary cluster of galaxies. And yet we human beings are truly extraordinary. From all we can determine so far, we are on the only planet with life and we are the only intelligent beings in this physical universe, at least in this neighborhood. Our faith tells us that God so loved this little world of ours and God so loved us that he actually entered time and space and came to live with us as a particular human being, - Jesus of Nazareth. God was not content merely to have us live as his image, but by becoming one of us, one with us, gave and continues to give us the ability share in his life and not just imitate it, to have life more fully as St. John says.

But from all appearances, Jesus of Nazareth was no different from other human beings of his time. He was not taller, better looking, more educated. He did not look more God-like. His handiwork as carpenter has not survived the millennia as masterpieces of woodworking. He did not mesmerize those who met him with a superhuman gaze, nor did he overwhelm them with sophisticated rhetoric and arguments. He taught with homely stories we call parables. As a human he was from all appearances rather ordinary, truly the common man. Most of his contemporaries did not recognize him for what he was. And those who did came to this recognition over time and with experience of Him. Because he lived in time and space as a human being like us, the life of Jesus of Nazareth had to end. But because He is Jesus the Christ and God he continues to live. The apostles and 500 disciples saw and experienced the Risen Jesus Christ. And because God so loves the world, he wants humanity to continue to experience Him and have life more fully. And so, in our particular church of Jesus Christ, this physical institution in time and space, we can experience Him, if we choose to recognize Him.

Jesus so loves us that He wanted us always to have his physical presence. To accomplish this, he left us this sacrament, which we call the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament. To all appearances, this is bread, ordinary, unremarkable bread, just as Jesus of Nazareth was an ordinary human being. And yet we recognize in faith that this is truly Jesus Christ – God – particularly and physically present. The church as a whole and saints and mystics over the last 2,000 years have experienced the real presence of God in this sacrament. This is no more unbelievable than the whole universe billions of lights years across exploding from a single point smaller than the size of sharp pencil point. God chooses to be among us in physical form every day.

The word Eucharist means thanksgiving in Greek. Thank God who has given us salvation and victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be grateful to God for this awesome gift of Himself, a gift which can become a part of each of us. Imagine such awesome love and mercy…that God himself chooses to become a part of us. Imagine the world, if we all acted like God was part of us, instead acting as we so often do, like we were God.

Abbot Michael Brunner. O.S.B., pictured here addressing those gathered at the New York Yacht Club for the annual Abbot’s Reception.