Each of us could point to our bodies and say truly but trivially, “This is my body,” but Jesus remarkably does not point to his body but instead to this bread and says, “This is my Body.” What is going on?
This is not as unusual as it may seem. When children play, they point to a toy and say, “This is a duck,” or “This doll is Camp Counselor Dolores.” They don’t point to something that already is what they are identifying; instead they are baptizing the object, setting it aside for a role it will play in their game.
Sovereigns do something similar when they point to pieces of paper and say, “This shall count as money.”
We play along when we take the doll as a person named Dolores or the paper as a means for exchange.
Now there are limits to the reach of the child’s play or the sovereign’s decree. The doll remains a piece of plastic and the money remains a piece of paper. So it counts as something different, even gaining new causal powers (you can use it to buy things), but it also remains what it was (a piece of paper). Within the play, Dolores really is Dolores and money really is money. But the play is limited; outside of the play, Dolores is really a plastic doll and the money is really a piece of paper.
Jesus takes a piece of bread and says, “This is my Body.” We follow along when we take the bread as his Body. The question is how far does this identification go? And here we have to intersperse this reflection: What is the reach of Jesus’ authority?
In the case of God and God alone, there is no difference between pretense and reality.
The child’s authority does not reach to the natural being of the plastic doll but only extends to the identity of the doll within the game the child creates and regulates. The sovereign’s authority does not reach to the natural being of the paper but only extends to the identity of the paper within the game the sovereign creates and regulates. There is something outside the play: a plastic doll and a piece of paper.
What of Jesus’ authority? If it is the case, as the Church believes, that Jesus speaks with the self-same authority that merely had to speak and all was made, then there is no recalcitrant natural materiality to stand outside the range of his operation. If he says, “This is my Body,” and he has the authority of the Creator of all, then it is his Body. There is nothing outside the sphere of his authority. There is nothing outside the sphere of his play. In the case of God and God alone, there is no difference between pretense and reality.
If we say that it is not really his body but only a case of pretense, like the child calling a doll “Camp Counselor Dolores,” then we are really saying that Jesus’ authority does not extend to nature—that there is something outside his play. We are saying that he is not the Creator. We are attributing to Jesus merely the sort of authority a child has in playing a game or a sovereign has in minting money.
Given that as Creator, he can do it, the question becomes whether it is fitting that he do so. What, exactly, is the game he is playing with us?
The liturgy provides a singular clue by repurposing the words of the centurion whose servant is ill: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”
This passage, with this one change of “servant” to “soul,” has a totally transformed meaning. For whereas the centurion prays for God to act from afar, making his bodily presence unnecessary, here we pray that God act from afar to make his bodily presence possible. The first says, “Heal him so that I need not receive you”; the second says, “Heal me so that I may receive you.”
What’s more, in this transformed context, one’s own body becomes the home into which Christ is to be welcomed. As happened repeatedly in the Gospels, Christ’s words, “I am dining at your house tonight,” is a great gift, which now becomes a real possibility for each one of us. Jesus says, “This is my Body,” and we say, in effect, “This is my home; welcome.”
For it is trivially true that you cannot welcome someone who is absent but only someone who is present. You cannot, for example, welcome a picture of someone or a token of someone into your house. You can only welcome someone who is bodily present. If Christ were not really there, this act of welcoming him under our roofs—first for the priest and then for the congregation—would be a charade, an empty spectacle.
However, if Jesus tells us he wishes to perform this divine play, and if, as Creator, he alone can do it, there is no reason to doubt the reality of this opportunity to meet him.
“This is my Body,” says Jesus with the self-same voice that says, “Let there be light.” The doctrine of the Real Presence or transubstantiation follows given the fact that Jesus is God, and God as Creator has authority over all that is. Any other maker, such as the child or the state, meets resistance in what is made. The creator who creates ex nihilo, however, confronts no recalcitrance of matter: The Creator creates effectively, or nothing is created.
“I will come under your roof today,” our Lord and Creator says in the Mass to each one of us. It is right and just to reply, “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”
