Eucharistic Distraction

The first thing anybody must come to terms with, regarding any sort of understanding of the Eucharist that is not strictly memorialist, is that it doesn't make any sense. Whether you're for transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or the sacramental union, there remains that moment — that crucial moment — when the Body and Blood of Christ becomes present where once was only bread and wine. Ultimately the only justification for such a belief is Scriptural: if the Eucharistic narratives in three of the Gospels and Paul's first letter to the Corinthians are to be taken as true — and indeed, what is Christianity if they are not? — then we have some license to believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. (The question, then, is whether Jesus was speaking literally. This is another topic of debate that is better discussed elsewhere.)

This is all to say that there is justification for a belief in the Real Presence, if one is willing to accept a number of things as a matter of faith. What I'm actually wondering about, today, is whether the Eucharist should ever feel different. What faith I have in the Real Presence is, apparently, quite fragile, for I find that the feeling of receiving Communion varies drastically, depending on the situation. We know, if Augustine is to be trusted, that the worthiness (or, as the case usually is, unworthiness) of the priest does not effect the efficacy of the Sacrament: ex opere operato, and all that. This I can believe, readily enough. The problem is that I find it difficult to take the Eucharist as seriously as I should when I am the only one attempting to do so. My experience of the Real Presence depends very much upon external factors: is the Host treated in a manner befitting the very Body of Christ? Do my fellow congregants approach it as the Body of Christ? Do the non-essentials — the aesthetic considerations, from the music to the architecture to the altar-cloth — serve to enhance or distract from the experience of partaking in the Body of Christ? None of these things, so far as I can tell, should change the efficacy of the Sacrament, and yet they all affect me an awful lot. I find this troubling. I must ask myself the question all those of a high-church persuasion must ask themselves: am I merely a shallow aesthete? Why am I so distracted by those things that are, after all, of little importance when compared to the awesome (and I use the word in its older, better sense) mystery of the Sacrament?

I don't know. If, dear reader, such questions do not interest you, I apologize for all this, which must seem like so much theological wankery. Here is something that everyone ought to appreciate, whatever their view of the Sacrament:

Thomas Tallis: Verily, Verily I Say Unto You (John 6:53-56)