I discovered the Eucharist in my college chapel during my senior year. The chapel is small and relatively simple, a huge difference from the stone Gothic parish church in town, with its deep organ and bell tower. The post-Vatican II chapel is in a semicircle around the altar, with a metal tabernacle in a small alcove on the side. Red carpet lines the chapel, and stained-glass windows with semi-accurate paintings of saints (St. Therese of Lisieux looks about sixty years old) fill the church. On the last day of every term, right before finals, the Catholic student center hosts an all-night adoration, where the monstrance is illuminated at the center of the darkened chapel, and students filter in and out for prayer and worship. It was there I realized the goodness of the Eucharist.
In my Protestant upbringing, I experienced some of this goodness. I can remember, as a kid, watching my dad take the small wafer and grape juice and sit in a time of prayer before taking it during our Baptist church services. I would try to copy him, saying a quick prayer of thanks as I took Communion. But Communion, for me, was never a reprieve in suffering. It was never a particular source of strength, just an encouragement for prayer.
By my senior year, I dabbled in Catholicism for a while, attending some Masses and spending late-night study hours in the Catholic student center’s library. But even while active in the center, I wasn’t sure that I would ever become Catholic. Anglicanism appealed to me, and growing up in Baptist churches, I had a lot of misconceptions about Catholicism, from the saints to the papacy to Mary. But something pulled me towards the Eucharist. Miracles like those recorded by Blessed Carlo Acutis made me realize that the sacrament wasn’t just a memorial or an encouragement to pray. Instead, the wafer and cup of diluted wine consecrated at Mass was the body, soul and divinity of Christ.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Tulio Huggins, where this article originally appeared.
