“I cannot compass all I have/ for all thou hast and art are mine.”
As Lumen Gentium reminds us, The Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (11). It is a mystery that constantly challenges and encourages us. The Eucharist perpetually reveals to us new truths of what love is.
I was walking up to communion recently, and it hit me how wildly generous Christ was: to not only die for me, but to make Himself available to me over and over and over again. The stark contrast between His love and my own selfish heart was almost too much to bear.
I have very recently been extremely preoccupied with things. My roommate has moved out, so I have been re-organizing my room, re-arranging things, unpacking things. Engaged in a massive re-organizing initiative, I have spent my time discerning what things to throw out, recycle, donate, file away, scrapbook, store in a box, or re-pack. This organizing means that I have had to wade through what seemed like massive amounts of things. Sorting through all your worldly possessions makes a vow of poverty sound highly attractive. Material things are exhausting.
But here’s the catch when it comes to things. No matter how many things you have, it is still impossible to have all of the things in the world. Thus, when you see the things that other people have, chances are you don’t have exactly the same things they do. You will always be lacking some thing that they have. So you think to yourself: why do I not have those things? He has that thing; shouldn’t I have that thing? All my things are wrong. She has that thing. I should get that thing.
All of a sudden, your own things look paltry in comparison to their things.
So you swing back and forth between wanting to throw out everything you own, and wanting all the things everything else has.
The trap of trying not to want things and comparing your things to your neighbor’s things is very easy to fall into. I suppose they used to call this “coveting your neighbor’s goods,” which sounds so quaint and biblical, but is actually a very potent sap on your happiness. It is too easy to get sucked into that bog of covetousness, and it’s much more difficult to get out of it.
I was completely bogged down by my preoccupation with things, when the words of a peculiar, antiquated communion hymn lifted me out of the mire like Archimedes’ lever.
“I cannot compass all I have”, sang the music, “for all thou hast and art are mine.”
Very old church hymns usually have melodies that are usually—to be honest—boring. There’s something about the simple, steady steps they take up and down the scale that makes us lose our interest in the song completely. But, if you are able to actually listen to their lyrics, your heart is pierced by the sweetest notes of divine inspiration.
“I cannot compass all I have/ for all thou hast and art are mine.”
As I listened, I was taken aback. These words made such a bold statement, it seemed like they must be wrong, because they were so unabashed in their statement of the truth.
When the first shivers of wonder had finished coursing their way through my spine, I sputtered with disbelief. What is this hymn saying? All the virtues and goodness that the Lord of Creation possesses now belongs to me? As in, his omniscience, his omnipotence, and his ability to listen to prayers in Asia while also keeping me out of harm’s way on America’s Eastern Seaboard? This did not seem to be obviously true to me at first, because I am certainly not omnipotent. God certainly “hast” omnipotence and “art” omniscient, and those qualities are not mine.
But, in answer to my disbelief and askance stood the small little host that had just been placed on my tongue. Inside of me, if I dared to believe it, was indeed the Lord of the Universe.
He was utterly at my disposal, He had given Himself entirely to me. I could feel His tiny and yet immeasurable presence beating inside of me.
All that He “hast and art” were in that moment, mine. Inside of me, cradled inside my esophagus, which is an utterly unromantic and inconvenient place for the Lord of the Universe to take up residence. The radical humility that would allow a being so great to enter into a space so ridiculous and unworthy as a human body is earth-shattering. I felt my dizzying maze of wants and haves and have-nots and necessities collapse under the sweetness of that presence. I kept tallying what I didn’t possess, and things that everyone else had that I wanted; when the Lord of the Universe was humbly offering me everything that He is.
How can I accept this gift? I thought. The words that we confess at each Mass: “Lord, I am not worthy” took on a new meaning. How could I ever dare to shelter Him who the cosmos cannot contain inside of me? How could I ever be so bold to claim that all that He is and has is now mine?
But there the gift was, already inside of me. All the worries that had coiled up inside of me melted away in presence of this gift of Christ’s self. As this renewed understanding of what was being given to me arrived, a dizzying sense of wealth and richness passed over me.
But not the disorienting dizziness of material possessions, but the blinding clarity that accompanies wonder. The Eucharist is our hope: that our selfish, worrying, unworthy hearts can be transformed into Him, into that generous, constant, perfectly un-selfish love. At each Mass, He offers Himself to us anew, transforming our weak selves into Himself, into all that he has and is.