Gaudentius lived in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. He was a priest who gained great renown–so much so that he was uncomfortable with his popularity and decided to leave a beautiful area found in present-day Italy for the hope of obscurity in what is present-day Israel. But when his home-area bishop died, the people there clamored for Gaudentius to be made bishop. They swore that none but him would they obey. Even so, their entreaties (initially) fell on deaf ears. Gaudentius, wanting to walk in humble obscurity, was convinced that the role of bishop would be even worse for him than that of a parish priest.

But Rome was susceptible to the people of the Lombardy region, and decided to strong-arm Gaudentius into returning to home to assume the role of bishop–by telling Gaudentius that any further refusal wold result in his excommunication from the Church and eternal damnation. And this is how Gaudentius became a bishop!

So here we come to Butler’s reports of how Gaudentius described what happens in the Eucharist. For those of you who think on such things, the three main strands of Christian theological thought about what transpires in the sacramental ritual of communion are loosely labeled: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and memorial service. The Catholics are those most often associated with the idea of transubstantiation–that is, that the bread is turned into Christ’s body and the wine into Christ’s blood. The Church has found Christ’s statements at what has come to be known as the Last Supper (“Take, eat, this bread is my body given for you; take, drink of this cup (of wine), for it is my blood shed for you”) literally. Indeed it is a deep mystery as to how bread and wine molecularly become the by-now supernatural body and blood of Christ–inexhaustibly so, much as the flaming bush that Moses came upon burned brightly but was never consumed by the fire.

Now, one might argue that I’m seeking to make a distinction without a difference, but I find refreshing the way that (Butler reports that) Gaudentius chose to describe the mystery of the eucharist:

. . . of which [Gaudentius] says, “The Creator and Lord of nature, who bringeth the bread out of the ground, maketh also of bread his own body; because he hath promised, and is able to perform it; and he who made wine of water converteth wine into his own blood.”

In Gaudentius’s formulation, I find a nuance that sounds more life-giving than most descriptions of what the sacrament may mean. Specifically, the idea that “where there is bread, there can be Christ (‘the Creator and Lord of nature’)” and “where there is wine (or water), there too can be Christ.”

A god made of bread and of wine–where the bread and the wine constitute that god. Somehow this feels hopeful.