"I go to Mass because the Eucharist is there. Before the priest raises the disk of unleavened bread and the chalice of wine and consecrates them and they become Christ, the Eucharist is there in the tabernacle. When it is time for us to receive Communion, the priest will go to the tabernacle and take from it the consecrated Hosts to give to us. But the Eucharist is not only there in the tabernacle. I can feel it as I roll into the church. It fills the church. If the church had no walls, the Eucharist would fill the parking lot, the rectory, the nursing home, the football stadium. And the church has no walls, and the Eucharist fills the women smoking outside the nursing home; and the alcoholics waiting to gather, but already they are gathered, as they are gathered when they are apart; fills the man cursing God from the isolation of his mind; fills the old man watching a woman, and looking for robins. When I am enclosed by the walls and roof and floor, and the prayers and duration of Mass, I see this, and feel it; and when the priest places the Host in the palm of my hand, I put it in my mouth and taste and chew and swallow the intimacy of God."