"What is the benefit of such eating and drinking?"
The above question refers to the Sacrament of the Altar. How does receiving communion benefit us? Eating and drinking physical food and water is essential for life. Without it, we will die. So also with the Sacrament of the Altar. It is spiritual food. It is life giving. It renews and restores us. "The words 'given for you' and 'shed for you for the forgiveness of sin' show us that forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation are given to us in the sacrament through these words..." And what is truly amazing is that these gifts are given time and time again, whenever we eat and drink the bread and wine. We don't have to earn them. We may have even acted in ways contrary to the way the Giver would want. Yet, like a loving parent God gives over and over. As Isak Dinesen says in "Babette's Feast," "That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us." That's the love of God, God's grace, offered to you, in the Sacrament of the Altar.
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