We go directly to the heart of the issue. Communion is about the “real presence” of Christ--not merely a symbol, or a nice ritual of remembrance. We confess that in some mysterious way, faith rejoices to find Christ present, and comes to believe that the Risen One is the very Life of his body, the Church.

For us, the bread and wine thus convey the wondrous love that is the Incarnation: God fleshed out in ordinary things. Jesus was a true human being, not merely a spirit pretending to be human. The bread and wine of communion are real bread and wine, and remain bread and wine all through our Eucharistic celebrations, but “in, with, and under” the bread and wine is Christ, just as Christ is “in, with, and under” the often disgustingly ordinary, not to say often trivialized, nature of what we make of the church.

It is terribly important to believe that Christ really and truly lives in us! That’s why St. Paul wanted us to think about this every communion. “Discerning the body” (see 1 Cor. 11) is more than believing something about the bread and the wine. It is about seeing that when Christ is present, we—all of us, even those with whom we have a problem—are the body of Christ. Now that is Holy Communion—“common-union.”

Can we accept this radical teaching? If so, we are again liberated from phony pieties. If God is happy to dwell in fractured flesh, why are we so unwilling to accept others just as they are?