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Reflections from our Pastors
April 7, 2026
Reverence for the Real Presence
The Eucharist, remembered this past Thursday, the Last Supper, remains a mystery, an enigma, along with the question, "What do we truly believe?” There is the quick answer, “I do” and then there is the answer that follows the pause — whatever that question is for you.
Jesus, when he was alive, frightened a lot of powerful people, so much so that he was executed. They thought they were getting rid of him but they were wrong, at least according to this story. Check it out.
“Tabernacles” by Graziano Marchesi
It happened fast.
A feeble-brained innocent,
refugee from half-way spaces, moving at the wrong time:
the Bread raised high,
the Cup engaged in mystery,
and he chooses this time to change his seat
from one church side to the other.
For a moment his head blocks the view
of bread yielding to miracle.
For a moment his face and the bread are one.
The words spoken over both.
Then hands shake, extending proper peace;
cheeks meet,
words wish a peace the world has never tasted.
He stares, like a dog offered too many bones at once,
and accepts only one hand’s greeting.
Next comes procession to his first meal of the day
as faces clearly wonder if he understands what this is all about.
He takes the proffered piece of pita
in this most post-Vatican assembly
and stops.
Momentarily thrown by this bread with pockets,
he’s oh-so-gently reassured that it’s quite all right to eat.
He takes
and green teeth masticate the Body of Christ.
Then he reaches for the syrupped goodness of the cup
(Just three sips after him I debate the wisdom of changing lines.)
His puffed-cheek mouthful nearly drains the cup.
(I almost wish he had so I wouldn’t need to tell myself I won’t catch
some disease.)
And then
(I knew it!)
he coughs
and sends forth a rosy mist
that sprays Divinity onto the floor.
A rainbow comes and goes in that unexpected spray
as gasps are quelled in forty throats.
He clamps his mouth with leaky hands
looking like a child
trying to keep a pricked balloon from bursting.
Unslackened, the line moves on
and Divinity is trampled by shod feet
till pure white linen,
–bleached and starched–
in fervent hands that won’t permit impiety,
drinks the pink God from the floor.
In a corner he sits alone
in rapt humiliation.
When someone asks, “Are you O.K.?”
he quickly shows his palms and says,
“I didn’t wipe them on my dirty pants, I didn’t.
I rubbed them hard together, see?”
and he demonstrates, with insect frenzy, how he used friction
to evaporate the spilled God from his hands.
Oh, what a cunning God who tests our faith
by hiding in green-teethed
tabernacles
to see how truly we believe
in the miracle of real presence.
Graziano Marchesi, “Tabernacles,” in Dawn Nothwehr, The Franciscan View of the Human Person, vol 3, The Franciscan Heritage Series, ed. Elise Saggau (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Inst. Publ, 2005), 67-8.
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