C heck out A ndrew M. G reeley's Columns for the Chicago SunTimes' Daily Southtown . A young college student went to the Newman chaplain and said, I believe in God and in life after death and in resurrection and in the church, but I cannot accept that Jesus is really present, body and blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist. I'm sorry, but I just cant. The priest thought this was like swallowing the grizzly bear and straining at the gnat. Resurrection, he said, is a humungous miracle.
Real Presence is kind of ordinary in comparison.
I don't believe I really eat Jesus, the young man said. It's just bread that's all. You don't eat Jesus, the priest replied, knowing that he had one of those kids who somehow or the other had run into an old fashioned teacher, one that still thought it was a sacrilege for anyone but a priest to touch the sacred host. The poor kid was really worried about how the doctrine of the real presence exposed Jesus to desecration if even a tiny piece was somehow lost. If Jesus was concerned about that said the priest, he would have come to us as a jelly bean.