Thank you for this lovely essay. Your argument that, for Hopkins, the Eucharist is the secret heart of the sacramentality of all creation is well taken. It reminds me of the passage in Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain — it’s the last couple of pages of section ii in chapter 2 (“Our Lady of the Museums”) — in which he describes the village of St-Antonin where he lived for a time as a child. The whole section is worth reading, but here are a couple of key paragraphs:

The whole landscape, unified by the church and its heavenward spire, seemed to say: this is the meaning of all created things: we have been made for no other purpose than that men may use us in raising themselves to God, and in proclaiming the glory of God. [...]

Oh, what a thing it is, to live in a place that is so constructed that you are forced, in spite of yourself, to be at least a virtual contemplative! Where all day long your eyes must turn, again and again, to the House that hides the Sacramental Christ!

So Eucharist exerts both centrifugal (“source”) and centripetal (“summit”) doxological force. It radiates praise through the rest of creation so powerfully that even a young Merton, who didn’t even know the Eucharist existed, couldn’t help but notice it, and it draws us — often along mysterious and winding paths — towards the one Sacrifice of Praise that gathers up and perfects all these refracted strains of divine worship. It strikes me that that may be a clue to the position of our separated brethren. The Eucharist is the highest and most central Presence of Christ among us, and the very fact of it on altars, in tabernacles, and in the bodies of believers is precisely what underwrites and does not negate His presence to the separated baptized through scripture, in mutual love, in the poor, in the beauty of the earth, sea, and sky. At the same time, the outward radiance of the Eucharist that enables genuine encounter with Christ never excuses separation, but rather impels towards catholic unity (cf. Lumen Gentium 8).

And thanks again for your remarkably insightful comments on Hopkins.

best,
John

As Andrew said, this is wonder-ful. Hopkins inspired me to pay more careful and close attention to Scotus. Before I came into the Church, he blew away whatever was left of my prejudices and misconceptions of medieval man. There is truly something beautiful to be found in the medieval mind enraptured in the contemplation of the Divine. We can hardly appreciate it in the modern world. We have too many other thoughts.

JMJ,

Brent

“He is slowly starving for want of proper food. Life is either meaningless agony or it is the redemption of the Cross. Having examined his old faith, Hopkins finds that it lacks the one thing he needs. It has beautiful worship but it lacks Beauty. Beauty is only found in the Real Presence of Christ immolated on the altar; true food for the hungry.”

No wonder I am languishing.

Alicia

This is wonderful, thank you.

Andrew

“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”

Since I am convinced of the truth of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, I have ceased taking communion at my current church. I am reading and praying, asking for God’s guidance. Please pray for me, as this imminent transition will be difficult for many of my friends and family to understand.