Often when I preach it feels like I’ve lowered myself into the river of my own anger and insecurity.
One Sunday, at the ambo, looking out at the congregation, I wondered, is this part of what the Lord shares in when He shares in my particular humanity?
This ego and this awareness of ego? This desire for approval? This insecurity? This constant interior struggle with idolatry and pride?
Then, as I was kneeling at the altar, at the moment of consecration: maybe the Host really is Christ, really is His Body, but in a perfectly obvious and ordinary way, as in the sky is blue or it’s cold outside, this is life, and so the response doesn’t have to be ecstasy or awe, though in another sense it should be, but ordinary acceptance.
To say This is His Body is to say this just is, this is happening and this is ordinary and this exists, and to say it without judgment or (even) adherence.
The Host embodies indifference.
It takes up and contains all the ordinariness of my life and of every life.