It was a perfect spring evening as I knelt in the candlelit semi-darkness of St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill. The great Easter Vigil Mass was underway, and my first Communion was fast approaching.
The journey to this point was long and filled with hours of prayer, stubborn doubts, and beautiful moments of clarity. I had spent years learning about the Catholic faith, engaging in deep conversations with friends and mentors, and wrestling with my own theological objections. Despite the challenges, the pull towards the Catholic Church and receiving the Eucharist grew stronger each day.
As I knelt in the front pew, my heart pounded with excitement. I had just received the Sacrament of Confirmation and could feel the Holy Spirit moving within me.
My anticipation grew as we approached the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The awe-inspiring words of consecration, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” resonated deep within my soul. I had heard these words many times before, but they held a new significance tonight. My heart skipped a beat as the priest held up the consecrated host. I was about to receive Jesus in the Eucharist for the very first time.
Spiritual, but not sacramental
I was raised in a strong evangelical family and community. It was a joyful and faithful environment, but I had an unshakable desire for something more. I remember thinking something was missing, a depth I couldn’t reach. I didn’t have the words for it back then, but I was missing a sacramental faith.
At the church I grew up in, we would “take communion” occasionally, but it was rarely preached about. It was obvious that we were symbolically participating in the memory of the Last Supper. It was a spiritual practice, but far from sacramental.
All through college, that sense of spiritual lack endured. I continued to think it was my fault, that I didn’t love Jesus enough. That started to change when I encountered daily-Mass-going Catholics for the very first time.
Were Catholics crazy?
Shortly after graduation, I moved to Philadelphia to participate in an ecumenical political leadership fellowship. I lived with 15 other young Christians, reading some of the most influential books of Western Civilization, praying with the Book of Common Prayer, and attending daily seminars.
I quickly noticed that many of my new Catholic friends would wake up before everyone else to attend daily Mass. Since we would all gather to pray morning prayer at 8:30 each morning, this seemed like overkill. Didn’t morning prayer “count” for Catholics too?
During our late-night theological discussions, I received my first crash course on what happens at Mass and what Catholics actually believe about the Eucharist. My first reaction was something along the lines of, “Is this even the same religion as mine?!” I was taught to believe we symbolically remembered the night of the Last Supper when we took communion, not unlike how we symbolically remember the Nativity during the annual Christmas pageant. What Catholics believed shocked and fascinated me. How could they think they were consuming the actual body of Jesus? What did they mean by saying that the Eucharist gave them daily sustenance?
Eventually, one of my new Catholic friends invited me to attend Mass for the first time. The beginning of the service seemed familiar enough: a well-known opening hymn, readings from the Bible and a sermon. What followed, however, was utterly foreign to me. Even after all of our long conversations about the Catholic belief in the “real presence” of Jesus, it wasn’t until I heard the priest speak Christ’s words “This is my body” over the bread and “This is my blood” over the wine that it hit me how audacious the Catholic claim is. As the bells rang and the priest held up what still looked like just bread and wine, I began to understand that Catholics actually believed it had become Jesus’ real body and blood.
To be clear, I didn’t have a miraculous moment of belief then and there. Far from it. But I slowly began to realize what my Catholic friends were claiming, even if I still thought they might be crazy. At the same time, I couldn’t deny that something mysteriously beautiful, even otherworldly, took place during the Mass. It was something I had never experienced before.
‘My flesh is food indeed’
A few months later, while at dinner with a Catholic friend’s family, the conversation naturally turned to theology and my Protestant upbringing. My friend’s dad eventually asked point-blank what I believed about Communion and the Eucharist. Caught off guard, I mumbled something about it being a beautiful way to remember the Last Supper.
He quickly pulled out a Bible, opened John 6, and read it aloud. The day after Jesus miraculously feeds the five thousand and walks on water, that same crowd follows him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, looking for more food. Jesus calls them out on their desire for earthly food and instead offers them bread “which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (Jn 6:33). Jesus then embarks on his great bread of life discourse, where he makes some of the most striking, and frankly disturbing, claims of his ministry.
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. … Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:51, 53-56).
I was repeatedly asked, “What do you believe?” and was stumped. Surely, I had heard this passage before and was taught something about it being a metaphor for belief in Christ and his body and blood as the price of his sacrifice. At that moment, however, I had no answer to the shocking warning, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
The slow burn
The Eucharist became my central focus as I wrestled with the movement in my heart towards the Catholic Church. I faced a seemingly simple question: either the Catholic Church was right about its interpretation of Christ’s words in John 6, or it was wrong. If Catholics were right and this was Christ’s body and blood, soul and divinity, then nothing else mattered besides receiving that incredible gift. However, if they were wrong, this idea was the worst idolatry imaginable, and I should run away as fast as possible.
My heart was telling me the Catholics were right, but my evangelically-formed mind wanted to flee. It took a lot of time and prayer for me to humble myself to the point where I could honestly ask the question, “What if I’m wrong and the Catholic Church is right?”
There was no single moment when the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw the light and truth of the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. Instead, it was a slow burn of my heart softening in hours of prayer and adoration to the reality of the Real Presence.
As my understanding of the Eucharist deepened, it became the lens through which I reevaluated and ultimately reconciled many of my classic Protestant objections to Catholicism. Initially, the idea of confessing my sins to a priest seemed unnecessary and even unbiblical. However, seen through a Eucharistic lens, I began to grasp the profound connection between the Sacrament of Reconciliation and receiving Christ in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, as Christ’s true body and blood, calls for a purity of heart that confession restores. It’s not just about admitting sins; it’s also about being spiritually prepared to fully receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Similarly, the doctrines of the papacy and the ministerial priesthood, which once felt like unnecessary hierarchical obstacles leftover from the Middle Ages, started to reveal their true purpose when viewed through the Eucharist. The authority of the pope and the role of priests aren’t about power but about preserving the integrity and sanctity of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. The papacy ensures apostolic succession and doctrinal unity, while the priesthood serves as the hands and voice of Christ, consecrating the bread and wine into his body and blood on the altar.
Even the veneration of the Virgin Mary, which seemed almost blasphemous from an evangelical perspective, began to make sense. Mary’s fiat, her yes to God, brought Christ into the world physically. Through the Eucharist, Christ comes to us again, and venerating Mary as the first tabernacle of Jesus, the “Ark of the Covenant,” is intimately connected to the reverence we show the Eucharist. Seen through this Eucharistic lens, I began to understand how the various Catholic doctrines were deeply interconnected facets of a coherent theology, with the Eucharist as its “source and summit” (Lumen Gentium, No. 11) As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life.”
‘The single most important moment of my life’
As I knelt before the priest at St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill, anticipation and awe filled my heart. When I received the Eucharist for the first time, it was the single most important moment of my life. The joy of Christ truly present in the Eucharist was overwhelmingly beautiful. It was infinitely more nourishing than a symbolic act of “taking communion” at my evangelical church. It was a real, physical encounter with Jesus, fulfilling the longing and prayers that had guided me to this point.
This joy isn’t confined to that one night. Every single day, at every Mass, I have the incredible privilege of receiving Christ in the Eucharist. This daily encounter sustains and motivates my ongoing conversion, drawing me closer to him. The initial conversion that led me to Catholicism was deeply centered around the Eucharist, and it continues to be the driving force in my spiritual life.
Now, more than eight years after I was received into the Catholic Church, it’s difficult to imagine my life and relationship with Christ without the Eucharist. I pray that nothing ever separates me from Jesus in the sacrament again. Truly, the Eucharist is the “source and summit” of my entire life, nourishing my soul and guiding my life. The presence of Christ in the Eucharist has transformed my faith, and I can’t imagine living without this daily encounter with him.
