As the mystery of the sacrifice at the heart of the Mass was developed, it became natural that such a sacred moment where time and eternity touch should begin to be ritualised and ordered so that all present should be be inspired to reverence and awe.

 

That bread should become the Body of Christ and wine become his Blood is beyond human comprehension - but not beyond human sense of faith. Generations of people have gazed at an elevated Host and seen in it the Living Presence of Jesus.

 

As G.K. Chesterton says in his book, “Orthodoxy”:

With one eye, our “stereoscopic spiritual sight” takes in the church building, the people, the paintings, the processions, the priest, the altar. With the other eye it sees a long ago banquet table surrounded by 13 men, a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, a broken body hanging on a cross, blood streaming from a pierced heart, a cowed group[ of people locked in a  room and a mysterious figure suddenly standing in their midst.

 

With one ear our stereoscopic spiritual hearing listens to the singing, the words of the priest, the prayers of the congregation. the other hears words spoken long ago: “love on another,,, Be one... This is my body. This is my blood, Do this in memory of me... Father into your hands I commend my spirit... Peace be with you.... It is I, be not afraid... It is expedient that I leave you...”

 

The rigid logician in us wants order and demands plausible explanations for everything the eye sees and the ear hears. the mystic in us says, “Be quiet. Enjoy what you do not understand as well as what you do understand. If the visible, the audible, the tangible bring you no joy, if they make no sense, if they bore you, remember that they are only the shell. The reality lies in what you do not see, hear or touch, in the mysterious something Jesus does today as he did 2000 years ago”.