I’m sitting in the medical school building keeping vigil as the first group of students take their gross anatomy final. They’ll be three sections today on an incredibly cold and snowy day.

It dawned on me today that the students gratitude towards the people who donated their bodies to the school has made an overwhelming impression on me. They all wear pins that say “our greatest teachers” on their scrubs. And indeed that is who these people have been for them.

It dawned on me that these donors are giving them a gift that no M.D. or Ph.D. could offer them, at least not while they still have a heartbeat.

It is another moment of Eucharist, a word that means thanksgiving. These teachers continue to cheat death, just for a moment longer, giving their body to another to learn and become able to cure and heal and save. Perhaps someone here makes a huge discovery that cures some fatal disease? It is here with these first teachers that it all starts to take shape.

For we Christians we hear the words “this is my body” and it has a very definite connotation for us. But today, I hear those words with a new kind of sweetness, where the consumption is based on knowledge and technique. All is grace and a free gift.

This test is not merely one of knowledge for the students but it is more of a test of grace. That measure, where one can respect the very body of another, placed before them as grace, as offering for their learning must indeed be a great motivator to learn, to consume all that they can. These people have said those same words that we hear in the Eucharistic prayer, “This is my body, given for you. Now do this in memory of me.”

We ask God’s blessing on the brains of these students today. May they become what they have received this semester.