Plato said that “knowledge is food for the soul” (Plato's Protagoras, 313c:). Jesus appropriated the concept when he deposited body, blood, bread and wine into the most Holy Eucharist.
The four elements of the most Holy Eucharist propagate our God with the bloody wounds and his importance across time and space to us here and now. The most Holy Eucharist is the vehicle of propagation. They are a delivery system - logistics. The warehouse is the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. From the warehouse, the four elements of the most Holy Eucharist carry both the God with the bloody wounds and his importance to us.
The connection between his body and his blood in the most Holy Eucharist is his wounds. A body and blood indicate wounds. Sherlock Holmes is not necessary to make the deduction. The deduction is obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence who has watched a murder mystery.
The bread and wine of the most Holy Eucharist testify to the importance of the God with the bloody wounds. Without food and drink, we die of hunger and thirst. Without the God with the bloody wounds, death is just as certain.
Fear not! The script is already written. Our immutable God will not rewrite the script. God parted the Red Sea for the Jews. God will part the Red Sea of Death for us. Rejoice and be glad.
The God with the bloody wounds is as important to us as food and drink. Without food and drink, we die of hunger and thirst. Without the God with the bloody wounds, death is just as certain.
A beautiful, symbiotic dance of question and answer weaved its way through his bloody wounds to bind the Crucifixion and the Resurrection together into the conversation. Are you privy to the conversation?
His bloody wounds are the punctuation marks that our evil opened in his body. Before we knew what his answer would be to the evil that we did to him, his bloody wounds were question marks. After, they became exclamation points. There was a change in punctuation. The change in punctuation is the good knews of great joy - very good news for us.
The doctrine of the Real, but faceless, Presence of God is true - absolutely, entirely and positively. However, it is not true enough. It barely skims the surface of God. It hits the atmosphere of our understanding of God and bounces off. It is a tangent. It contributes little to our understanding of God.
The bloody wounds we opened in the body of Christ are windows that reveal the nature of God.
The current of salvation flows from godlessness to paradise through the bloody wounds we opened in the body of Christ. We can surf it to our salvation.
Religious practices keep important truths about God alive. When we encounter a religious practice, it is always insightful to try to figure out what truth it is keeping alive. A religious practice not assigned to a truth about God is a fetish - a superstition.
The Mass is one of the landmarks that direct our attention to 1) the ultimate revelation, 2) its location and 3) its importance.
The God with the bloody wounds is as important to us as food and drink. Without food and drink, we die of hunger and thirst. Without the God with the bloody wounds, death is just as certain.
The intransigence of God’s love for us despite the brutality of the Crucifixion is the good news of great joy. However, it does not propagate itself. God gave us the Mass to serve as the vehicle that propagates the good news of great joy from then and there across space and time to us here and now. Propagation of the good news of great joy is the purpose of the Mass. God did not invent the Mass to propagate his real presence. The real presence is not the good news of great joy. His real presence is incidental to the good news of great joy - necessary but not sufficient. God established the institution of the Mass to remind us through his bloody wounds that our God is the God who forgave us for the evil that we did to him. Wow! What a God is our God!
The doctrine of the Real, but faceless, Presence of God is true - absolutely, entirely and positively. However, it is not true enough. It barely skims the surface of God. It hits the atmosphere of our understanding of God and bounces off. It is a tangent. It contributes little to our understanding of God.
The payload of the thirty-three year Visit that the Son of God paid us at and about the city of Jerusalem in a region of our planet that we call the Middle East more than two thousand years ago was apocalypse. The Visit revealed to us the nature of God.