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The Eucharist Exposes Capital Punishment

The Eucharist Exposes Capital Punishment

Last updated on: October 31, 2025 at 11:36 am by Jeff Hood

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The Eucharist Exposes Capital Punishment 2025-10-31T11:36:02-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Capital Punishment is Exposed by The Eucharist

The Center of Faith

The Eucharist is the center of our faith. The words from Matthew 26:26, 28 echo in us. “This is my body…This is my blood.” In this sacrament we do more than remember. We taste the suffering of Christ. We meet him…living, present and sacrificed. We take into our own bodies the literal body and blood of the God who was executed. The Eucharist exposes capital punishment for what it is…evil.

The Privileged Get It Wrong

But the privileged get it wrong. They shrink the Eucharist into a spiritual boost…as if grace exists just to make them feel better. The altar becomes a mirror for private devotion instead of a table for the salvation of the world. This view is not just incomplete. It is blasphemy. It survives only by ignoring what Jesus actually said.

Turn to Matthew 25:36, “I was in prison, and you visited me.” Jesus does not hedge. Judgment will hinge on how we treat the oppressed…the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. He leaves no room for abstraction. The prisoner is not a symbol of Christ. The prisoner is Christ.

Here lies the paradox. We proclaim Christ’s real presence in bread and wine yet we deny his equally real presence in the cells of rapists, murderers and those we call “the worst of the worst.”
If Jesus meant what he said, then when we receive the Eucharist we partake in the body and blood of those we have imprisoned. Not because I say so. Not because tradition says so. But because Jesus said so.

We must remember…our Lord was one of them. The Eucharist is an encounter with a man legally condemned and publicly executed. The Cross matters not because the Church decreed it but because Christ bore it in flesh.

The Eucharist Exposes Capital Punishment

If you want to find Christ now, do not look only to the past. Look to the execution chambers of the present. That is where the fullness of the Eucharist is revealed…scandalous, raw, real.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Ramirez v. Collier, condemned prisoners can have clergy present at their executions. Since then, I have stood with the condemned more than anyone else in the country…eleven times, in five states. Each time it’s a sacrament. The body and blood become real. The presence calls…not to comfort but to solidarity.

This is not sacralizing violence. It is stripping it bare. Standing at the foot of the modern cross and refusing to look away. Seeing that the Eucharist exposes capital punishment…not because executions are holy but because Christ refuses to be absent from suffering.

The Executed Christ : How The Eucharist Exposes Capital Punishment

One cannot understand the Eucharist until they have met the executed Christ.

Last Thursday, I stood with Anthony Boyd as he faced his final hours. The chamber was heavy…alive with pain. Fear, grief and prayer hung in the air. Anthony’s eyes met mine…calm, alert, unbearably present. He made small gestures, subtle signals and already the sacrament was happening.

Then the procedure began. His body betrayed nothing of peace. Limbs jerked. Muscles convulsed. His chest heaved violently. Gasping. Every breath torn, frantic. Skin flushed, contorted. Veins bulged. Hands and arms shook uncontrollably. Tremors ran through his shoulders, legs, torso. Sweat and saliva slicked his face. Tiny spasms crawled across every part of him. The gurney shook beneath him. Every motion grotesque, impossible to look away from.

He fought the inevitability and yet the Eucharist was undeniable. Every twitch, every gasp, every tremor became part of the sacrament. The body broken. Blood poured out. Christ’s presence…scandalous, raw, unavoidable…was in that chamber.
This is what it means for the body to be broken, for blood to be poured out.
This is what it means to encounter Christ where the world has abandoned him.

And here is the truth the Church too often forgets. The Eucharist is not clean. It is prison food. It is the body of one on death row. It is Christ…the filthy prisoner…being consumed.
Every time we eat and drink while failing to resist executions we devour Christ even as we crucify him again. We join the mob. We drive the nails ourselves.

The False Sacrament of Death : The Eucharist Exposes Capital Punishment

Every execution is a crucifixion. Every injection, every suffocation, every bullet, every convulsion is Christ’s body broken again.

The bread and wine are not private tokens of comfort. They are the body and blood of the condemned. They are the presence of Christ where the world has turned away.

The Eucharist leaves no room for the death penalty. At God’s table all are welcome. But executions exclude. They say “You are beyond forgiveness. You do not deserve to live.”
That is the opposite of communion. That is the opposite of Christ.

Executions are a false sacrament…an anti-Eucharist. They lift up a victim, shed blood in the name of “justice” and mimic liturgy. But it is a demonic adulation of death.

The Eucharist Demands Resistance

The Eucharist forces a choice.
You cannot stand at both tables.
You cannot take the bread of life while blessing the bread of death.
You cannot sip the cup of mercy while justifying the blood of vengeance.

One feast is from Christ. The other feast is from the executioner.

Last Thursday, as I watched Anthony Boyd convulse…as I felt the weight of the sacrament in that chamber…I understood this truth in my bones.
To receive the Eucharist and do nothing to stop executions is to participate in the crucifixion all over again.

The body and blood of Christ demand witness. They demand resistance.
The Eucharist exposes capital punishment…revealing its cruelty, its blasphemy and its contradiction of everything Christ lived and died for.

Christ lives in the execution chambers…the Golgothas of our age.
If we do not see him there, if we do not respond, then the Eucharist that we take is nothing but empty ritual.

Catholic

Politics and Religion

About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a theologian, writer, and activist who has spent years ministering to people on death row. As a spiritual advisor and witness to executions, he speaks out against state violence and calls for a society rooted in justice, mercy, and the sacredness of life. You can read more about the author here.

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