Daily Meditation: Thursday, April 5, 2012

Communion - must take place with the two principles

04/05/2012

During the last meal he shared with his disciples, Jesus took some bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup of wine, blessed it and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it…This is my blood… Do this in remembrance of me.’ These actions and words are repeated by the priest at mass during the communion. The mass can only really be understood if it is interpreted as a ceremony of magic. And communion is the most significant moment of this ceremony, for bread and wine represent the masculine and the feminine, the two great principles at the origin of creation. But why, then, have the faithful in the Catholic church communicated for centuries solely with the bread – the host, the flesh of Christ – representing the masculine principle? The wine – the blood of Christ, the feminine principle – is reserved for the priests. The faithful are therefore fed with one principle only, the masculine; the feminine principle is missing. Yet from a symbolic point of view, true communion requires the presence of both principles.