The great transformer

A young man comes to me for spiritual direction. He is exceptionally bright, a recent university graduate now applying to medical school. His MCAT score was nearly perfect — a rare feat. He feels called to neurosurgery.

But he struggles in prayer and in his relationships in general. Gradually, he explains that he has a rather intense personality, a trait he loathes in himself. This intensity, he says, seems to drive people away from him, leaving him lonely and feeling like a freak. As he tells me this, his face is wracked with a sharp pain that speaks of self-hatred. He wants to crush this attribute within himself. “How do I get rid of this?” he asks.

But here in this season of National Eucharistic Revival, what this young man’s wounded heart calls to my mind is not annihilation, but transformation. This is the precise work of the holy Eucharist. When we receive the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus does not annihilate us, he transforms us.

Father Wilfrid Stinissen’s book, “Bread that is Broken,” captures the idea this way: “The transformation of bread and wine in the Eucharist teaches us that transformation is something fundamental in our lives. Everything can be transformed. It is enough to ‘offer’ it, to lay it on the paten. ... God is the great transformer. But he transforms only what we give him. Bread that is not presented remains ordinary bread. Much in our life remains as it was, much stagnates, because it is not offered up.”

As an example, he offers the trickiness of having a vivid temper. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with having a temper, especially if it is poured into

CATHOLIC OR NOTHING | COLIN MILLER