The Mass
The Mass is the victory party that God the Father throws for God the Son. At the victory party, the guest of honor is Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the master of ceremonies. We are invited to the victory party 1) to celebrate the completion and the success of the test to which we put Jesus, 2) to offer our congratulations to Jesus face-to-face, 3) to thank him for paying the exorbitant cost out of his own pocket to show us the nature of God and 4) to admire, in reverential awe, the nature of God - the nature of God is that God still loves us despite the evil we did to him (Romans 5:8).
The 'Real Presence' is theological gobbledygook that is a stumbling block to a proper understanding of God
The story of forgiveness that became part of our reality on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection is retold to us whenever a priest celebrates a Mass. The Mass is the vehicle - the ever reverberating echo - that propagates the story of forgiveness from then and there in the past to us here and now in the present. The Mass is the device that God created to transport the story of forgiveness to the children of Adam and Eve across time and space.
Theologians, however, have invented the doctrine of the ‘real presence’ that - although true - blurs the details of the most Holy Eucharist. Jesus did not deposit the ‘real presence’ into the most Holy Eucharist. He deposited his body and his blood into the bread and wine of the most Holy Eucharist. The details are important. It is important to get the details right. Jesus was more specific than the enigmatic generality known as the ‘real presence’. We do a disservice to our understanding of God when we gloss over the details - when we bury the actual details in a pile of theological gobbledygook - when we sweep the details under the rug.
Jesus's decision to use body, blood, bread and wine was not random, accidental, arbitrary or capricious. Jesus deliberately picked the four elements of the most Holy Eucharist to pinpoint the LOCATION at which Jesus deposited his most apocalyptic revelation about God and to emphasize its IMPORTANCE.
The BODY AND BLOOD of the most Holy Eucharist point us to the LOCATION at which Jesus deposited his most apocalyptic revelation about God. The connection between his body and his blood is his bloody wounds. Jesus received his bloody wounds on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. On the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, the most apocalyptic revelation about God is located.
The BREAD AND WINE of the most Holy Eucharist point us to the IMPORTANCE of the most apocalyptic revelation about God. Without consuming food and drink, we die of hunger and thirst. Without consuming the understanding of God revealed to us by the story of forgiveness that unfolded on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrectionmeaning, death is just as certain.