Sunday, May 25, 2008

Aztecs and the Eucharist

How's that for a catchy title?

As I mentioned a little while ago, I took one of the suggestions from The How To Book of the Mass to heart and started asking the Lord to give me just one word, or phrase, that I'm supposed to hear at Mass and ponder during the day.

So far, He's answered this prayer every time.

Since today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, all the readings today were geared toward the Eucharist, and in particular the Gospel reading:

Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true 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 have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.

Now here's where the Aztecs come in.

Did any of you watch PBS's Secrets of the Dead this week? It was all about the human sacrfices the Aztecs performed. Incredibly, deeply disturbing. What was even worse was that towards the end of the show, the "experts" talked about how the Aztecs often ate their sacrificial victims in order to incorporate their victims' courage, war prowess, etc. into their own lives. In other words, they ate their victims so that the victims' strength could be theirs.

This is the thought that hit me this morning: Right idea, wrong victim.

I have often heard it said that the devil can't "create" anything. He can only take what God has created or set in motion and pervert or twist it.

The truth of the Eucharist, which Jesus plainly talks about in the Gospel reading today, was twisted into something horribly perverse.

Why?

Because it's true.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Wow. That's all I really have to say . . . wow. Great revelation. Thank you.

Best,
Sarah