One-Post Wednesday: Ratatouille, Time & The Presence of Christ In The Eucharist

Begin with this scene from the film RATATOUILLE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YG4h5GbTqU

This scene gave me an idea as to how we can make sense of Eucharist as BOTH memorial feast and the
'real presence of Christ'.

What if we see the Eucharist as a mystical temporal doorway, as a remembrance that is more than just 'remembering'. The food, in the film, does more than helps Ego remember a time when he was a child, and food represented home and comfort in a difficult world. No, it literally 'brings back' that moment for him, and transforms him on a spiritual level, something he attests to when he talks about the cuisine 'rocking him to the core' later on in the film.

The key to Eucharist is in the preparation, and in the presentation. The whole of the service centers around this single moment. Jesus, at the Last Supper, looked forward to the next day, and used that moment to bring the disciples into the crucifixion event. Remember, only one of the disciples would actually be there when Jesus was crucified. How, then, could the other ten bare witness to an event that they didn't, in fact, witness. How could they tell the world the truth of the cross they never shared in?

The Last Supper, brought them into that moment. When they took that bread and that wine, they were somehow standing before the cross,with Jesus suffering on it. I think that the Eucharist somehow brings that moment to us. It is a kind of time machine, making us present at the Last Supper and the very crucifixion of Christ. It is a memory that is more than a memory, it is a memory that brings that past moment near to us.

Christ is really present "in, through, and under" the elements of the Eucharist, because that moment, that time, is really present in the Eucharist. As Jesus was there, and so we are there too in the eating of the bread and the taking of the wine, so then is Jesus with us when we eat and drink. Jesus presence is real, because that moment in time is brought near to us. But there is a real sense in which the eating is a memorial, a remembrance, though a remembrance on a level like no other, a memory that changes our place in time.

I know that I get a timeless feeling when I take the Eucharist, and this model of the eating of the bread and wine really speaks to that feeling. In the eating and the memory, Christ is brought near.