Understanding The Eucharist
April 5, 2021
Henry Karlson
Lawrence OP: Christ Institutes the Eucharist /flickr
Many of us in modern society have lost our ability to appreciate or think in poetic diction. We are too literal minded. We have difficulty understanding similes and metaphors, thinking they confuse things and make interpretations based upon them as being convoluted.
Symbols have the power to use external realities and forms to represent and point to hidden realities and truths beyond appearances. Likewise, not only do they point to such realities, but they can also contain such realities in themselves. They become vessels of such realities so that they actually are what they symbolize. This is what we find with the sacraments. But because we generally do not often think and ponder the meaning of symbols, we often lose sight of the symbolism being used by the sacraments; we are more concerned with what the sacraments do for us and who and what gives the sacraments those gr