Eucharist as Food for the Road

To understand who you are is the most important question in life, and I think it is an understanding that you receive, and then only as a result of a quest. That we receive it in the Eucharist is, of course, part of our Catholic belief, though how it occurs seems a mystery.

Here is an article that seems to build on Bob's quote from Augustine, because it pictures how the Eucharist can show us who we are:

"When the potential producer of a movie version of The Lord of the Rings showed Tolkien the script, Tolkien was aghast. In addition to too many oversimplifications and wrong-headed ideas, which ran contrary to the spirit of the tale, Tolkien discovered that the script writer had changed the “Lembas,” the food given by Galadriel to the Fellowship to sustain themselves for their journey, to a “food concentrate.” No chemical analysis, Tolkien wrote back, could uncover its properties. Instead, it “has a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a ‘religious’ kind.”[1] Properly translated, lembas means “way-bread” or “life-bread.”[2] In his “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien notes that fairy allows us to see everyday things as something more than everyday things. One of his examples is of “wine and bread.”[3] As Frodo struggles up Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, the lembas sustains him.

The lembas has a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die. It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this way bread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.[4]

"The lembas plays a vital role throughout the entirety of The Lord of the Rings. Not only does it sustain Frodo and Sam as they complete their mission, but it also protects and feeds the wills of Merry and Pippen as captives of the orcs, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli as they search for the demonic enemies who have captured the two Hobbits.[5] Conversely, evil refuses to partake of it, and when some orcs find the lembas on Frodo’s person, they attempt to destroy it."

(The rest of the article is well worth reading as well.)

So, one way to think of the Eucharist is as spiritual food that gives us hope and strengthens our will, so that we can persevere in our quest, our struggle, to fulfill our role in the "Fellowship" of Christ -- and thereby to become who Christ destined us to be in His providence. This is who we are (already in a way) in the Body of Christ!