I need a good thesis statement for sacrament of Communion. I just finished reading Mere Christianity and Simply Christian.

The perspective of C. S. Lewis offers an

interesting way to approach this topic, since he found both of the major interpretations
of the
sacrament unsatisfactory. The Eucharist or Holy Communion is one of
the seven sacraments, often
listed as the third and final sacrament of
initiation, after Baptism and Confirmation. The Roman
Catholic Church has
traditionally taught that the substance of the Eucharistic bread and wine is

miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ, a doctrine known
as
transubstantiation. This is based on various passages from the Bible, most
expressly John
6:53€“57, in which Jesus says:

I tell you the truth,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever
eats my flesh and drinks my
blood has eternal life.

The
doctrine
of transubstantiation is complex and easily misunderstood. It holds that the bread
and
wine retain the appearance, taste and other properties of bread and wine,
but that the
substance is changed into the body and blood of Christ. However,
critics of the Catholic
church, from both Christian and atheist perspectives,
have derided the idea of a literal
transformation from bread and wine to body
and blood. Protestant churches have taken a range of
views, with some of them
following Martin Luthers notion that Christ is present with the bread
and
wine, though they do not mystically alter (sometimes called consubstantiation) and
others
holding that the Holy Communion is purely symbolic.

Lewis admitted that he
found the various doctrines surrounding the
Eucharist confusing. He wrote in Letters
to Malcolm: Chiefly on
Prayer that he did not understand what the substance of bread
or
wine would be, stripped of appearance and taste, but that he cannot see them as
merely
symbolic either. However, he feels the power of the Eucharist, even as
he does not understand
it:

Here the
prig, the don, the modern in me have no
privilege over the savage or the
child. Here is big medicine and strong magic...the command,
after all, was
Take, eat: not Take, understand.

Although
this viewpoint would not be very effective if used directly
as the thesis of an academic essay
(imagine writing an essay about not
understanding something...) it offers various avenues of
approach along the
following lines.

Is there a third way to appreciate and

understand the Eucharist, between transubstantiation and pure symbolism? What would be
its
theological basis?

Is there any value in participating
in religious rituals
one does not understand? Is there an argument that
understanding is impossible in some cases?
Could it be argued that
understanding is not always desirable? What might be more important than

understanding?

How important are the sacraments and their attendant
miracles
(or the sacrament of the Eucharist and its attendant miracles) in
Christian belief?

Answering any of these questions with a
working hypothesis should result in a strong
thesis statement on the
Eucharist.