This is my body

I work at an office where we are privileged to have a chapel; daily mass is said there on weekdays. I've been a lector there for about a year, and this week I started reading at my parish as well. Overall it went pretty well; my only blunder was putting the lectionary on the display shelf instead of the book of the Gospels. I think they're going to have me back (next Sunday, actually).

There was something pretty powerful for me in being the only real observer of the liturgy in the sanctuary while the consecration was being performed. Part of it was the fact that I was actually sitting in the sanctuary; part of it was my proximity the altar and the fact that I was facing it; and for me, no small part of it was the absence of a certain fidgety five-year-old at my side. I had an opportunity to reflect on the miracle that I saw taking place in front of me as the priest spoke the words of consecration.

One of the many objections I've read to the dogma of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is that, if the ordinary bread wine truly do become the Body and Blood of Christ, something should appear to happen. There should be a flash of light, or bells (from heaven, not the altar server), or...doves, maybe. Something. It's one of the more nonsensical arguments I've heard, and it flies in the face of the way Jesus did most of his miracles, if not all of them.

When he fed 5,000 people (as well as in the account of the other mass feeding, of the 4,000), there is actually no explicit mention made of a miracle taking place at all. Jesus blessed the food, the crowd ate its fill, and the disciples gathered up a bunch of leftovers. None of that would have been remarkable had the food on hand not consisted only of one rather smallish lunch (as Winnie the Pooh would have said, a Smackerel). The miracle itself could have gone almost completely unnoticed (although the Gospel account tells us the crowd did notice, and followed Jesus hoping for another meal). The miracle at the wedding at Cana actually did go unnoticed; the wine steward chided the host for waiting to bring out the best wine until after everyone was too far gone to care.

Time and time again, Jesus' miracles were done in small ways; large crowds and loose-lipped recipients of his healings were the one who spread the word about what had happened. It's entirely fitting that I could say the same words a priest says and absolutely nothing would appear to happen, while something does happen when the priest says them--however, in both cases, no miracle appears to take place. Jesus and a passerby could have each made mud out of his spittle and rubbed it in a blind man's eyes; only one of them would have restored the man's sight.