We should take the presence of Christ in the Eucharist so seriously that we are willing to accept and lament that the suspension of the mass actually represents a *loss of something* that can be found nowhere else.

So many takes on both sides of the question of virtual communion implicitly diffuse or obscure the absolute particularity of what is conveyed to us in the mass.

On the one hand, there are those who, while affirming that a virtual mass is an impossibility, nevertheless try to assuage the sense of loss by reassuring us that "the grace of God is accessible by all Christians, no matter the circumstances."

On the other are those who counter that it is *precisely because* God's grace is available to Christians at all times that there is no theological impediment to the possibility of a virtual mass.

All of these takes subtly evade the terms as set by sacramental theology as such, relying instead on some idea of a generic and undifferentiated "divine presence" that is almost modalist when it comes to the sacraments.

i.e. the Eucharist is just one "manifestation" among others of a divine presence that is in itself accessible without them.

So the issue is not whether there is an intimacy with God that is possible apart from the Eucharist -- that's indisputable; rather, it is whether we receive something in the Eucharist that is *qualitatively unique* from what we receive through other means of grace.

Side note: this has nothing to do with "memorialism" -- an actual sacramental theology that makes certain claims about the operation of grace that pertains to the Eucharist.

Instead, it's the real presence, but relocated into the private, abstract consciousness of the individual