Sacred Signs
by Romano Guardini

BREAD AND WINE

BUT there is another path that leads to God. Had not Christ's own

words made it known to us so plainly, and the liturgy repeated

them with so assured a confidence, we should not be bold enough

to speak of it. Seeing God, loving God, by consciously turning

toward him with our minds and wills, though a real union, is yet

not a union of being with being. It is not only our minds and our

wills that strive to possess God. As the psalm says, "My heart

and my flesh are athirst for the living God." Only then shall we

be at rest when our whole being is joined to his. Not by any

mingling or confusion of natures, for creature and creator are

forever distinct, and to suppose otherwise would be as

nonsensical as it is presumptuous. Nevertheless, besides the

union of simple love and knowledge, there is another union, that

of life and being.

We desire, are compelled to desire, this union, and the Scripture

and the Liturgy place upon our lips words that give profound

expression to our longing. As the body desires food and drink,

just so closely does our individual life desire to be united with

God. We hunger and thirst after God. It is not enough for us to

know him and to love him. We would clasp him, draw him to

ourselves, hold him fast, and, bold as it sounds, we would take

him into ourselves as we do our necessary food and drink, and

thereby still and satisfy our hunger to the full.

The liturgy of Corpus Christi repeats to use these words of

Christ: "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the

Father, so he that eateth me, the same shall also live by me."

Those are the words. For us to prefer such a claim as a thing due

to us of right would border on blasphemy. But since it is God

that speaks, we inwardly assent and believe.

But let us not presume on them as if in any way they effaced the

boundary between creature and Creator. In deepest reverence, and

yet without fear, let us acknowledge the longing which God

himself has planted in us, and rejoice in this gift of his

exceeding goodness. "My flesh," Christ says to us, "is food

indeed, and my blood is drink indeed...He that eateth my flesh

and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him...As the Father

hath given me to have life in myself, so he that eateth me, the

same also shall live by me." To eat his flesh, to drink his

blood, to eat him, to absorb into ourselves the living God--it is

beyond any wish me might be capable of forming for ourselves, yet

it satisfies to the full what we long for,--of necessity long

for,--from the bottom of our souls.

Bread is food. It is wholesome, nourishing food for which we

never lose our appetite. Under the form of bread God becomes for

us even the food of life. "We break: a bread," writes Saint

Ignatius of Antioch to the faithful at Ephesus, "we break a bread

that is the food of immortality." By this food our being is so

nourished with God himself that we exist in him and he in us.

Wine is drink. To be exact, it is more than drink, more than a

liquid like water that merely quenches thirst. "Wine that maketh

glad the heart of man" is the biblical expression. The purpose of

wine is not only to quench thirst, but also to give pleasure and

satisfaction and exhilaration. "My cup, how goodly it is, how

plenteous!" Literally, how intoxicating, though not in the sense

of drinking to excess. Wine possesses a sparkle, a perfume, a

vigour, that expands and clears the imagination. Under the form

of wine Christ gives us his divine blood. It is no plain and

sober draught. It was bought at a great price, at a divinely

excessive price. Sanguis Christi, inebria me, prays Saint

Ignatius, that Knight of the Burning Heart. In one of the

antiphons for the feast of Saint Agnes, the blood of Christ is

called a mystery of ineffable beauty. "I have drawn milk and

honey from his lips, and his blood hath given fair color to my

cheeks."

For our sakes Christ became bread and wine, food and drink. We

make bold to eat him and to drink him. This bread gives us solid

and substantial strength. This wine bestows courage, joy out of

all earthly measure, sweetness, beauty, limitless enlargement and

perception. It brings life in intoxicating excess, both to

possess and to impart.