It's amazing how ugly the most lovely gift can become when it is given by a less-than-lovely giver. But any mother will tell you that the inverse is also true. Pre-school finger paintings and third grade Mothers' Day gifts, for example, somehow manage to be as stunningly beautiful as the children who give them are. That, by the way, is how God receives whatever we give him.
It shouldn't surprise us that God resolves the giver versus gift dilemma in a way few of us could anticipate or imagine: Eucharist. In Holy Eucharist, the Giver and the gift are one. There is no tension or competing claim. Jesus is both priest and sacrifice. He does the offering and he is the one who is offered.
The mystery we celebrate on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is that God is self-giving and self-gift. Communion is his communication of himself to us; the word spoken into flesh, into history, and most eloquently in sacrament. When I hunger for Holy Communion, I don't have to make an effort to desire the giver instead of his gift. I can simply receive one through the other because God has chosen to make them inseparable.
It's likely that I'll always ask for something more because I haven't fully received or understood all that I already possess. But that doesn't seem to keep God from hearing and answering my prayers, or from giving me far more than I deserve. It does, however, make it harder to remember that the greatest of God's gifts pales in comparison to God himself.
God is good, and God gives good things. As the Apostle James wrote in his letter "all good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights." (James 1:17) The very best that God gives us is God, that is, his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in Holy Communion. Eucharist isn't just a gift, it is the gift that shows us what giving is and can be. It not only teaches us how but empowers us to become what each of us was created to be -- a gift to God and to one another.
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a wife and mother of eight children, and a disciple of the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales. She is an inspirational author, speaker, musician and serves as an Associate Children's Editor at Pauline Books and Media.