The Wave
When the Body and the Blood come together...
JANUARY 1, 2023. I’m the lector at the 9:00 AM Mass at Holy Family and have brought A. with me. Mother hen that I am, I always try to get my fledgling believer-son the utmost exposure to all things Catholic.
When it comes time for Holy Communion, I notice that the priests and eucharistic ministers are gearing up to dispense both the Body and the Blood. My heart leaps in anticipation. A. looks slightly perplexed; I think this is the first time he’ll consciously receive both. He can’t even remember the pre-COVID times when this was the norm… probably because he fell off the bandwagon sometime in middle school and forgot what that experience was like.
We’re lining up with the other parishioners. The host is still melting in my mouth when I sip from the chalice. As I’m returning to my seat, something happens.
It’s like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle come together inside my body, interlock, and click into place. The physical sensation this creates is one of completion, a feeling of “rightness.” As I kneel down, it washes over me like a soft, warm ocean wave… peaceful, soothing, holy… ready to carry me away. It stuns me and at the same time feels like the most natural thing in the world.
As we walk out to the car after Mass, A. says, “Did you feel that?”
He describes the exact same feeling of a “warm wave” that I had when the Body and the Blood combined in my own body. We both agree that it’s nothing like what we feel when we only receive one of the two components.
In the last few years, due to COVID restrictions, we were lucky to receive the Body. Our priests and bishops consoled us with the notion that the “Body” automatically contains the Blood, that it wasn’t a great loss not to receive both, that it didn’t make a difference.
They’re wrong.
It makes a huge difference. It makes all the difference. The Body and the Blood must be combined to get the full experience.
Jesus said, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.”
He didn’t say just one of them would be sufficient.
I mean, technically, yes, the Body itself is enough. But I’m not talking about technicalities here.
I’ve never felt the “wave” with just the Body, but I did feel the same way when I received both—after years of enforced thirsting—at Christ the King when I visited Steubenville for the first time. I remember I cried then… before and after.
Reciting a little prayer at the beginning of Mass isn’t going to cause a eucharistic revival. If we want true eucharistic revival, we need to treat the Eucharist itself with greater reverence… and we need to bring the Blood back.
Here’s a special treat for my readers: WATCH this incredible YouTube Short of praying hands in the clouds!
It’s so staggering that I thought it was a fake video—until I saw that there are people in the video shouting and pointing at the sky and taking videos with their cell phones.
Wow, Vati. Just wow. How great is our God.
EDIT: I know that the woman who posted the video on YouTube says this is just a deception, but I call BS. I myself have seen incredible things in the sky—rainbows with no rain, shapes of hearts and faces in the clouds, the most sensational sunsets as little “I love you” notes from VatiGod. What a dreary life you must have if you believe that every beautiful sunset is because of smog and chemtrails and every little miracle you witness is part of the “Great Deception.” Where does that leave God and His glory?