Sitting in the draw chair in the pathology lab at 7:30 a.m., and craving my morning coffee, I am not really thinking about the consecrated elements of Eucharist. 

I’m thinking, actually, about how big the needle, how small my vein.

Perky and personable, the lab technician ushers me swiftly into her blood draw cubicle. 

Too perky, I am thinking, for so early in the morning. Her efficiency moves me only faster toward the draw. In no time flat she has me strapped into the big paddle-arm chair.

Well, I’m not exactly “strapped in,” but it feels that way as she tightens that little rubber tourniquet around my upper arm.

She leans in close, and ever so deftly taps at the vein in the tender bend in my arm, assessing its capacity to fill a vial of blood—my blood—which she soon will extract through a needle whose whereabouts right now I do not want to know.

I was hoping we could sort of ease into this procedure. But she has a fresh needle out of its wrapper before I can take a decent breath.

Well, it’s nothing, this little needle prick, and the long minute of draw. It’s over so … soon. 

I open my eyes just in time to see the technician elevate, toward the light, the little vial of rich red blood, a look of serene stillness on her face, as though offering for divine consecration this still-warm specimen of myself.

Whatever this white blood cell deficiency is that brings me here, I consider it healed, my blood made whole, in this simple gesture of silent beholding.

The technician lowers the vial from the light, slaps on a label, shows it to me for my approval, and places the vial in its holder. 

She reaches over, gently unties the tourniquet, and gives me a cotton gauze to press against the puncture. “We don’t want you to bruise now,” she says cheerily.

A bruise! I think. A bruise would be a sweet reminder of this unbidden holy encounter—that little vial of my blood briefly elevated in that reverent way, held up to the Light which only appeared florescent against the path lab ceiling.

By Sunday morning the tourniquet, the needle prick, the draw, the bruise, the technician’s cheery voice, even the delayed early morning coffee—all have faded from my memory. 

I am sitting again, this time not in the paddle-arm chair but in the chair where I usually sit at Sunday Mass, thoughtfully observing the graceful movements in the Preparation of the Gifts.

I cherish this part of the Mass. The priest receives the bowl of Eucharist bread, the flagon of wine, gifts of the people, and gently elevates them for us to see. Then he places them each on the altar. 

And now—the moment I have prepared for all week—he pours the wine from the flagon into the waiting hammered silver cups.

As the choir and assembly sing, as the collection basket is passed, I watch. Four silver chalices, all lined up, glisten under a brilliant spotlight. 

I watch the careful filling of one vessel, then another, the third, slowly, and the fourth. 

A last little portion of blood-red wine remains, and the priest tips the flagon straight down to empty it into the final cup.

All of it, poured out.

This is the moment I wait for, this gesture, this holy act.

Already I understand this wine—holy in its very essence, awaiting a greater consecration—to be a participation in the blood of the living Christ. 

I understand this wine, and that last little drop, to be, dare I say, already a participation in the human blood poured out in the course of the preceding week, everywhere, throughout the world.

Blood poured out in sacrifice by those who risked their lives to save others. 

Blood of innocents spilt in a rushing cry for shelter and protection from assault.

Blood of prophets and witnesses who have pressed with flesh and soul against the injustices that squelch the human spirit. 

Blood of frontline martyrs who refused to back down from the claim of God’s unstoppable mercy and love.

Blood of the poor, wasted in the shadows of the world’s shiny opulence. 

Blood of the uprooted, the banished, the marginalized, the dispossessed, all now tragically spent.

Blood of those whose hearts are rent in two through the violence of separation. 

Blood of those whisked off to the dungeons of torture.

Blood of the abducted, the sold, the exploited. Blood of those laughed at, spit upon, ostracized, scorned. 

Blood of those deceived, stripped of their humanity, locked out from the circle of life.

I offer it all. This is the wine I am given to lift up in sacrifice. 

And the altar? 

The altar becomes the confused, bleeding, and precious world of my 21st century.

I know whose blood flows in my veins.