The Real Presence is about who gives, not what happens

Discussions of the doctrine of the Real Presence within the Church risk a temptation. They become about the technology of transformation, what happens to bread and wine at the precise moment of consecration. Simply, bread and wine substantially (what they really are) become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Our reception of what seems like bread and wine is the God-man, Jesus Christ.
 
The fact of this transformation is integral to Catholic doctrine. But, as noted, we can get lost in the "how" of this transformation and forget the "why." The real question about the Eucharist is not what happens at the consecration, but what is given in the Eucharist? Perhaps even more properly, who is the giver?

The mystery of the Eucharist is that the gift and the giver are one and the same. The Eucharist is a memorial of the mystery of love that Jesus Christ offered on the cross. Through this act of remembering, Jesus Christ Himself becomes present among us.
 
As the German Catholic philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini wrote in a series of meditations before Mass, "The instant Christ’s representative speaks His words over the bread and wine, Christ steps from eternity into place and hour, to become vitally present with the fullness of His redemptory power in the form of the particular, created species of bread and wine."

Christ’s whole life, His entire existence, was gift. He gave Himself to us when He was born at Bethlehem, when He grew up in the silence of Nazareth, when He healed the sick and preached the Good News, and most of all when He gave Himself in love upon the cross. His total existence was gift; He responded to violence not with power, but with self-giving love.
 
And He still gives Himself to us. On the night before He died, He told us that every time we celebrated this meal, the new covenant would be re-presented. This is the promise that unfolds at every Mass. Christ’s primary concern is not about the miraculous transformation of bread and wine per se but the gift of Himself. When we go to this Mass, we are invited to experience anew the gift of Jesus Himself, the God-man who feeds us with Himself.
 
In the end, the gift given is a person. Jesus wants to be close to us. The consecrated bread and wine should not be treated as simple objects for our devotion. They are not, strictly speaking, mere symbols (the word "mere" is important) that invite us to think about Jesus. Rather, the consecrated elements mediate to us a personal relationship with the Beloved, who gives Himself to me and the entire Church at every Mass.
 
When we stop before the tabernacle to genuflect or to pray in silence, we are in the presence not of an object but of a person. We are in the presence of the person who invites us at each Mass to understand what it means to be a person in the first place. We are made for gift, and every time we receive Him under the species of bread and wine, we become ever more who we were created to be.
 
And you could see, then, why a Eucharistic Revival might be very concerned about eucharistic presence. Not because evangelization demands understanding of the development of eucharistic doctrine (which, of course, is rather interesting). Rather, the more we can appreciate and communicate the personal gift given at every Mass, the more we will want to invite every man and woman to the supper of the Lamb.