One

When you watch a college basketball or football game on TV, what happens when the camera scans the sideline or fans after a big play?  Almost invariably, someone on the winning side will point a finger to the sky and chant: We're number one!

Of course, we don't really believe that silly claim, as the other team's next big play shows it to be false.  Yet, we generally smile at the display, perhaps wishing it to be true if we are on that person's side, perhaps looking forward to a turnabout if we are opposed.

The bottom line, however, is that these claims of position and place are part of our everyday lives.

We rank ourselves against others based on the schools we attended, the jobs we have, the houses we live in or the money we make.

We rank ourselves against others based on our gender, the color of our skin, our age, the countries we are from.

And we may even rank ourselves against others based on the number of Masses we attend, the length of our prayers, the devotions we perform or the sins we don't commit.

What Paul told the Corinthians 1900-odd years ago, what he is telling us today, and what this solemn feast is all about, is that this need to rank and compare is fundamentally, diametrically, radically opposed to our faith.

For our faith tells us and the theologians explain to us that this sacrament of the Eucharist involves two "ontological changes."  Now, "ontological" is certainly a five-dollar word, one that theologians love to use, but it simply means "real."

The first "ontological" change is one we have known since our first instructions: the bread is changed to Christ's body and the wine changed to His blood.  But this change is truly based on faith, for we see no change to the elements, we taste no change, we smell no change, we simply believe.

The second "ontological" change we may not think about as much, yet it is much more demonstrable than the first.  For we believe that as we partake of the Eucharist, sharing the one loaf and the one cup, our community undergoes a change.  We become, as Paul says, one body.  (1 Cor 10:16-17)  When the eucharistic minister presents the host to us and states "The Body of Christ," our "Amen" asserts that not only has the bread been changed, but we - as a community - are also changed into the Body of Christ.

And with this faith, our community changes from one based on rank to one based on equality, from one based on competition to one based on mutuality, from one based on retribution to one based on reconciliation, from one based on power to one based on love.  We turn to the other, rather than the self.  We become one with each other, and thus one with God.

"We're number one!" - Not hardly.

"We're one!" - with the grace of God, most assuredly.