Back in the 1970s, when there was a lot of liturgical innovation going on, Dorothy Day invited a young priest to celebrate mass at the Catholic Worker. He decided to do something that he thought was relevant and hip. He asked Dorothy if she had a coffee cup he could borrow. She found one in the kitchen and brought it to him. And, he took that cup and used it as the chalice to celebrate mass.

When it was over, Dorothy picked up the cup, found a small gardening tool, and went to the backyard. She knelt down, dug a hole, kissed the coffee cup, and buried it in the earth.

With that simple gesture, Dorothy Day showed that she understood something that so many of us today don’t: she knew that Christ was truly present in something as ordinary as a ceramic cup. And that it could never be just a coffee cup again.

She understood the power and reality of His presence in the blessed sacrament.

Which is really the sum and substance of what we celebrate on this feast, Corpus Christi. The reason for what we will do today – celebrating with the monstrance, the music, the procession – isn’t to glorify an inanimate object, a bit of bread contained in glass.

It is to remind the world that in that bread we have been given Christ.

Not an idea. Not a symbol. Not an abstract bit of arcane theology. No.

It is wider and deeper and more mysterious than that.

Look at that host — and you look at Christ.

Yes, read the whole thing.

Now, here’s the deal: Go to the store, and buy two bottles of wine, and two boxes of crackers.

Have your priest bless one bottle and box. Have him pour some wine from his bottle into a randomly selected vessel, maybe a cup, maybe a golden chalice, maybe a crystal wineglass, and set out half a dozen crackers and the cup on a tray.

I, a militant skeptic, will then pour the same amount of wine from the other bottle into another vessel, and set out half a dozen crackers from my box on another tray.

Someone who doesn’t know either of us, and who did not observe us preparing our trays, will then arrange the contents of both trays identically, and leave the room. A group of priests and scientists will then enter the room, and be challenged to identify which tray carries The Blessed Body and Blood Of Christ, and which one carries some cheap wine and stale crackers.

The results, over many repetitions with a large enough sample, will most likely be indistinguishable from random chance. Yes, even if one of the preparers is Joseph Alois Ratzinger and the other is P.Z. Meyers.

Now, what that means is, the wine and crackers were not changed, in any way, by the priest.

However, Dorothy Day was changed by her reverence for an ordinary kitchen coffee cup. The young priest was changed by the act of consecrating the Host and (presumably, watching Dorothy’s act). Deacon Kandra and the Anchoress were changed by relaying the story, and many of their readers, including my obstinately skeptical self, were changed by reading it. Changed, I believe, very much for the better.

And what that means is exactly that the ceremonies involved were symbolic, and that the ideas involved are far from abstract and arcane. They are very powerful symbols and ideas, and the world would be a far poorer place without them.

There must somehow be a way to preserve these ideas, these symbols, and preserve their power to change people for the better, without asking me to believe that the Sacraments have undergone some detectable change. The change is not in the wine, not in the bread, not in the cup or chalice. It’s in those who participate in the ceremony, or watch it, or even hear about it.

Deacon Kandra’s story has given me a glimpse of that way. I can’t write it down, not yet, and it may not even be something that can be written down, but it’s there, and I’m very grateful for that.

Below the fold, my comment at the Anchoress’ site, still awaiting moderation, concerning objections to the use of a coffee cup as a chalice:

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig tells the story of a congregation, having recently moved to a new church, complaining to their bishop that their old church building is being turned into a nightclub. He remonstrates them, saying that they are making exactly the error of materialism their faith preaches against. They are their church, he explains, the building is just bricks and mortar. Once it was desanctified, no further use is any more, or any less, appropriate than any other.

How is the coffee cup any less appropriate than the ordinary wine poured into it, compared to the holy stuff the wine becomes once it is consecrated? (When I first skimmed the story, I thought the priest had actually used coffee instead of wine, and nodded: “A stimulant rather than a soporific. Excellent choice of sacrament!”) The act of consecration raises the wine, and its vessel, into a plane far above the mere materials they are made of, even as Communion raises us above the mere meat we are made of. This, I think, is what that young priest was trying to communicate.

That said, I agree that in the ordinary course of things, using appropriate vessels for the wine is as important to the ritual as dressing ourselves for worship. It helps put us in the right frame of mind, to focus our attention on the task at hand.

And yet, and yet, had he not thought, in that one instance, to perform that “inappropriate” act, Dorothy Day, and we, would have been denied her act of transcendent reverence.

As a regular practice, yes, inappropriate.

As a slap on the pulpit to awaken the dozing, as a reminder that the glory of God is within our minds and souls, not within our mundane animal clay, nothing could be more appropriate.

Except maybe putting coffee in the cup….