Bread everlasting.

The great catholic southern writer, Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to a close friend recounts a conversation she had one evening while at dinner with friends: "I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. She departed the church at the age of 15 and is now a Big Intellectual.

"We went at 8 p.m., and at 1 a.m. I hadn't opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say....

"Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, he being the `most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.

"I then said, in a very shaky voice, `Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of, but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it ... except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

I can still remember to this day the September morning Father Stack gave my first-grade classmates and me a thorough tour of Our Lady of Grace Church in Castro Valley, California. It was our first foray into the secret and hidden corridors of that massive building whose walls smelled of ancient incense, whose pews had been worn down soft and smooth by years of use.

He showed us the sacristy and where the wine was kept. (I can't help but think that several of my buddies had made a mental note of the location for future consideration.) He pointed out the stations of the cross, the statues of Mary and Joseph, and the huge crucifix hanging behind the altar. He showed us the confessional boxes, and how it looked from where he sat in the presider's chair. He let us walk around, touch the altar, sit one-by-one in the chair.

Finally, he brought us to the tabernacle, gold and glimmering, a befitting home for consecrated bread, the Real Presence of Jesus.

Genuflecting before the tabernacle, Father Stack took a skeleton key and unlocked its front door. I make mention of this only because Walter Stevens had asked him if the house had a back door, too. Sitting before Father, our faces betrayed a kind of awe when he turned toward us with a consecrated Host held gently by the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "This, my children," he uttered in a hushed tone signifying mystery and awe, "this is the Body of Christ." To which we all responded in unison: "Ohhhhhhh," a response that drew a faint smile.

"Now go to recess, children and play fair," the venerable old priest said to us as he placed the host back in the tabernacle. The class broke out into spontaneous cheers and applause, much to the chagrin of our teacher, Miss Sarti. We were supposed to have math next. Walking out into the sunlight, Walter remarked, "Hey, we should do this more often!"

A White Wafer, No Thicker Than a playing card. It becomes the Body of Christ. A cup of red wine, pressed from the fruit of the vine and almost too sweet to taste.

It becomes the Blood of Christ. So this is what brings old men and old women and their children and their children's children to their knees. Presidents and paupers, captains of industry and 16-year-old fast-food workers: When they come here to the table for Eucharist, they are united by the same hunger, the same thirst. It is at the table we take a mere morsel of bread and the slightest sip of wine and admit that there is a fundamental poverty and precariousness to life that when genuinely embraced, helps to bridge the divide that separates us, rich from poor, powerful from weak, young from old.

I remember one weekday Mass when I worked at the downtown parish of St. Vincent de Paul in Portland. While gathered around the table during the Lord's Prayer, the president of the city's biggest bank held hands with Jean, an old homeless woman who had parked her shopping cart next to the statue of St. Vincent de Paul where she could keep her eye on it. It struck me then that Flannery O'Connor was right, that this meal we share has got to be more than just a symbol. Something far more powerful and mysterious is at play when fingers from separate hands -- one manicured, the other mangled -- are laced together in warm embrace at the table of the Eucharist. By little and by little, the Eucharist works on us, often in secret, to soften our hearts, to make us see plainly what God sees.

One Evening Very Long Ago, a Carpenter's son gathered with his friends around a table, one that became the center of existence for them. They ate and drank long into the night as friends are wont to do, the dying sun having long since bestowed upon them her last blessing. Illuminated by flickering candlelight, faces mingled, eyes met, words whispered. Stories of that evening meal paint a picture of a closeness and an intimacy not easily arrived at by human beings on their own. On that holy night, Jesus, in flesh and bone and blood, gazed upon a supper table and those reclining around it with contented bellies must have wished -- although he knew his days were truly numbered -- that this night of peace would never end. That a portion of the bread he broke and a drop of the wine he poured might last forever. Who among them would dare to be the first to say good night!

It was an evening of light, laden with happiness and tears, filled with friendship, graced with laughter, stitched together by stories woven from their days together. That meal could not end because it was so good, so right, so rare. A preacher, a crew of crusty fishermen, a zealot, a tax collector. And yet with all their differences, their petty jealousies, their unbridled ambitions, for that precious night, they were one. That meal could not end. And it hasn't.

For Jesus has Given Himself, in the Flesh and in the blood, and in so doing makes a home with us and in us forever. To the unsuspecting eye it is the thinnest piece of bread ever baked and wine that is not of any notable vintage. But to us it is life itself and everything that makes life worth living: it is peace and joy, comfort and courage; it is passion and love; it is the presence of God. The night of peace, the love feast has never ended. We are living proof of that.

For as Christians and Catholics we gather often around a table as one family: old and young, rich and poor, having made our way from a hundred different points to a table united in our hunger and thirst for the God who comes to us in the flesh and blood. And God, it appears, is very comfortable living among us and dining with us and sharing the stories of our lives. The memory of an ancient meal is reborn every time the power of the Eucharist changes our hearts, makes us a little more hopeful, a little more loving, a little more forgiving.

"Those who feed on my flesh and drink my blood have life eternal," Jesus once said. Even now, Jesus is humbled, Joyful, and thankful, relieved to know, as are we, that a portion of the bread and a drop of the wine is sufficient still for all eternity.