Becoming a Sacrament

Today in Give Us This Day, I came across the following quote from Fr. Walter Burghardt, which every church and chapel would do well to post above the doors where people exit after mass:

As you exit this sacred spot hosting the Bread of Life, pledge yourselves to be a kind of sacrament—vibrant symbols that speak to the fears and tears of a broken world.

We need to be reminded that when we consume the body and blood of Christ, we become hosts to God who chooses to “come to our house”—to dwell within us. Good hosts make room for their guests, spend time with them, and serve them. The service God asks of us is to tend to the needs of the hungry, thirsty, homeless, imprisoned, grieving, and ill, for God dwells in them as well.

Webster’s dictionary says that a sacrament is “a Christian rite that is believed to have been ordained by Christ and that is held to be a means of divine grace or to be a sign or symbol of a spiritual reality.” When Jesus gave bread to his disciples (and, by extension, us) and said, “Take and eat; this is my body, which is given up for you,” he was in effect making us a living sacrament. When we receive the Eucharist, we ourselves become a means of divine grace and a sign of a spiritual reality: that we are all one in the body of Christ. If we remembered that every time we leave mass and lived as if we truly believed it, our broken world would be well on its way to becoming mended.