Out of the Mouths of Babes

Eucharist in Perspective

I have not been blessed (yet) with nursing a child. But I have witnessed it and I am told it
is both a bit painful and exhilarating. The child you gave birth to feeds off literally you. Your body creates the sustenance it requires to live. Your entire cellular DNA structure exists in your breast milk. For a while that is all that they need to live. All the nutrients an infant requires to survive and grow is contained in breast milk.
This is like the eucharist- God made us and he sends food in the form of his son for us. We literally feed off it. We literally eat the body and drink the blood. We require it to exist.
It contains within it the full complement of the DNA structure of Christ's body and blood.

But a Mother's love is something far greater and far above and beyond her breast milk. If a child only loved her mother's milk as the full expression of her, she would be greatly saddened. A mother's love comes to a child multifold manifest ways. The mother would feel rejected if the child didn't respond to her touch, her hug, her lullabyes. If a child sucked on her but didn't recognize her voice, the mother would be upset. If a child just sucked on her breast and refused her embrace the mother would be hurt. If all a child wanted to do was suck on her that child would be considered a bit developmentally delayed and "off" more ways than one.

God feels that way when we obsess on the eucharist in the misplaced supremacy of "source and summit" of all that God is. God is way more than breast milk or eucharist. God's love is expressed and manifest in much more powerful wonderful ways than feeding us. Yes we need food to live-Jesus knows that, that is why he fed 5,000 people on a hill. But we need it to live.
Food is fuel for the journey.

If you never left the kitchen table and only knew family love through eating, you would lead a sad narrow existence that cheated yourself out of worlds of blessings and goodness, rivers of rainbows and daffodils. It doesn't really matter if you dress up fancy and formal for every meal, it's still just food. It's still just eating. Yes, you have to do it to survive- but that is not all there is to life. Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God- God is the logos- he is in the Word, his Word is alive, active, sharper than a two edged sword, good for reproof and instruction. If you just ate off God and never listened to or responded to his Word or Voice he might be upset with you.