Christ remains hidden in the Most Blessed Eucharist, because if He did not remain hidden from us, we would hide ourselves from Him.
I have been reflecting on the Hidden Christ – Hidden in the Eucharist – over the last few days. In particular, I have been wondering how it is that God Himself – in ALL HIS MAJESTY – has HIDDEN Himself inside a morsel of bread and a sip of wine?
Surely – one would think – God would want to reveal Himself to us in a manner that is obvious and clear and evident so that there is no confusing the matter. After all, Christ told us in the Gospel that all who wanted to come to Him must eat of His Flesh and drink of His Blood – so there is quite a lot at stake…
“For My flesh is real food, and My blood is real drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me.…” (John 6:55-57).
And I have been reflecting on that over the last few days – reflecting on the Hidden Nature of Christ.
You see – God, who is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity – is present in the Blessed Eucharist in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity… And that is certainly something to reflect upon! Because, where One Person of the Trinity is, so too are the others – for the Mystery of the Trinity tells us that all the Persons are in ONE God… And this means that we CONSUME all of God when we consume the Eucharist.
Saint Faustina often reflected on the Hidden Christ. In her Dairy 278, she wrote, “At the feet of the Lord. Hidden Jesus, Eternal Love, our Source of Life, divine Madman, in that You forget yourself and see only us. Before creating heaven and earth, You carried us in the depths of Your Heart. O Love, O depth of Your Abasement, O mystery of happiness, why do so few people know You?”
She called Christ – God Himself – a “divine Madman” because He was madly in love with us to the point of CARRYING US in the depths of His heart to protect and save us, even while we blithely reject Him…
And I have been wondering – once again – why Christ is HIDDEN in the Blessed Sacrament. And as I pondered, I came across the words of a certain priest (who I do not know) who explained that Christ remains hidden in the Most Blessed Eucharist, because if He did not remain hidden from us, we would hide ourselves from Him.
In other words – if we actually saw the love of God emanating from the Tabernacle or inside the Blessed Eucharist in its UNHIDDEN form – we would become so overwhelmed by that love that we would hide ourselves from God…
We would be like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after the fall of humankind, when they HID themselves from God because they understood their nakedness…
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’ The man said, ‘The woman You put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’” (Genesis 3:8-12).
You see, God did not actually intend for us to understand how miniscule we are compared with Him. In the beginning He walked amongst us in the Garden of Eden, and we did not know that we were unworthy of Him.
And – now that we are fallen – and now that we know how unworthy we are, He has HIDDEN Himself from us. Because (through His great love for us) God understands that we are all now afflicted with the shame of Adam, and if we were to see Him in His unhidden form, we would have no alternative but to hide our unworthy selves from Him…
And when I think about His condescension in remaining hidden so that I do not remain hidden, my heart fills with joy and my eyes fill with tears. For who could ever conceive such a God as this? How awesome is the Lord my God, King of the Universe, worthy of endless glory…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.