Transcript

St. John Henry Newman said, "Man is not sufficient for his own happiness.

He is not happy except the presence of God be with him." God desires to share His life with us, and so meets us within time during Holy Communion.

The Eucharist is our greatest treasure on Earth and our greatest hope for Heaven.

Our lives are incomprehensible, except under the gentle call of God's love.

He calls to us through the Eucharistic mystery.

This is no merely earthly call, but a summoning to an encounter with the real and living presence of God.

Glimmering from the lamps of countless sanctuaries throughout two millennia, God's presence in Christ illumines our souls in unbroken light.

He is silent.

He is hidden, but He is here.

We now come to the third of the great sacraments of initiation or incorporation.

We've done baptism, confirmation, and now the Holy Eucharist.

Not only is it the third of the great sacraments of initiation, it is the most important of the seven sacraments.

And why do I say that?

Thomas Aquinas put it this way.

In the other six sacraments, the Virtus Christi is on display.

That means the power of Christ.

But in the Eucharist, Thomas says, "Ipse Christus is present, Christ Himself." Therefore, there's a qualitative difference between the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

Christ Himself, Ipse Christus, is on display.

It's precisely why Vatican II said in one of its most memorable lines that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.

It's where it comes from and where it's going.

The Eucharist, in a way, everybody, is everything.

Let me get at this first with a story.

Um, some years ago with a friend of mine, I did a bike ride, bicycle ride from Paris to Rome.

So I had studied in, in Paris, so I spoke French and I handled the, the French, uh, hotels on the way.

He had studied in Rome and he handled the, the Italian hotels.

And we rode our bikes from Paris to Rome.

It was quite a trip.

It took us about 16 days.

We did about 70 or 80 miles a day.

I was in better shape in those days.

Uh, well anyway, uh, we're going along and we're doing fine.

And it was somewhere in the South of France, I remember.

We're maybe in mile 40 of that day, so I was, what, seven or eight days into the trip.

I had the experience I'd read about, but never actually had had, the experience of hitting the wall.

You know what that is?

That means, it doesn't mean you're just getting tired or you're having a tough time.

It means you can't go on.

It's your body just says, "I'm out." It's like a car get- is out of gas.

It just won't go.

And so I, I signaled to my friend that I, I just, I couldn't go on.

Well, we always had in the- we had these little kind of bags on the side of the, of the, uh, bikes.

We always had these big French baguettes, right?

And of course, a lot of water.

So I just sat down.

I remember it vividly.

I just, I just started eating this baguette just to get, you know, carbs or whatever into my system and then drinking water.

And after maybe a half hour, okay, I was able to get back on the bike and go.

But I had hit the wall.

I had just completely run out of energy.

The Eucharist should have that kind of relationship to our spiritual lives.

It's the food that we desperately need for the journey.

Here's a related story.

Oh, maybe this was 10 years ago.

It was my first time, uh, concelebrating mass at St. Peter's Basilica, one of these...

and I, I think it was Easter mass, big outdoor mass, you know.

And I was one of the priests and, and they asked me to help distribute communion.

So I just assumed that at the, at the propitious moment, someone would show me exactly where to go.

It would be all very well organized.

Well, it wasn't.

They, they handed you the ciborium and, and I looked sort of plaintively at the emcee, and I said, like, "What do I do?" And he went, "Go out." "Go out." And so, so I did.

I just, I just waded into this enormous crowd.

And at one point I stopped and I began distributing, and I was saying it in Latin 'cause people were from all the different languages.

I was saying, "Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi." Well, it's, it's just emblazoned in my mind, all these people...

Now, part of it was just the natural Italian chaos, you know?

But stretching out their hands to me and saying, per favore.

per favore." "Father, please.

Please." And, and I'm, "Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, Corpus..." Until finally, I ran out.

I distributed as many hundreds of hosts as I had, and then they began pressing on me like starving people.

"per favore.

per favore." "Father.

Father." Well, again, some of it's just Italian, you know, melodrama, but-But I thought, you know, that's the right attitude toward the Eucharist.

How many of us...

You know, I'm, I'm guilty as charged.

You know, receive the Eucharist, amen, mm, yep, you know.

Without Ipse Christus, Christ himself, without the source and summit of the Christian life, we hit the wall spiritually.

That's how desperately we need it and how desperately we should long for it.

Now, how do we get at the importance of it?

I, I'd recommend going back to the sixth chapter of John's Gospel.

Can I recommend to everybody, when you get home, take out your Bibles and read in a meditative way the sixth chapter of John?

It's not long.

What do we find now?

The chapter opens with the, uh, John's account of the feeding of the, of the, uh, thousands, right?

The multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

Again, beautiful.

Talk about .

Talk about starving people being fed.

But then it's followed by this famous discourse that Jesus gives in the Capernaum Synagogue.

What, many years ago now when I was first filming the, uh, the Catholicism series that took me all over the world, that's one of the sites that stays most vividly in my mind, when we filmed in the ruins of the Capernaum Synagogue and talked about this very theme.

Well, you remember in that sermon, in that discourse, Jesus says, "I myself am the living bread come down from heaven.

Feed on my flesh and drink my blood." Well, the, the people listening to him, they didn't take this in like a, "What a wonderful sermon." They balked at it, and understandably.

You know, for Jews of Jesus' time, it was expressly forbidden in the Old Testament to eat animal's flesh with blood.

Uh, Leviticus and many other places expressly forbid it.

And so for a, uh, a man, a human being to be talking about eating his own flesh and drinking his blood, it was not only disgusting, it was theologically objectionable.

And so, of course, the people say, wa- "What, what is this?" What did Jesus do now in the face of that objection?

You'd think, "Oh, oh, let me explain to you what I mean, everybody.

I mean, it's a metaphor, you know.

It's a, it's a symbol.

Uh, I don't mean this literally, it's a symbol." He doesn't do that.

He does just the opposite.

"Amen, amen, I say to you," and that's his little code for take this very seriously.

"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you..." And the Greek here is very interesting because the word for eat, the way human beings eat, in Greek it's .

But Jesus doesn't use that verb.

He uses the verb .

You know what means?

It means , like to gnaw, like the way an animal eats.

So they're objecting, "How could he tell us this crazy stuff?" "Unless you gnaw on the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." And then he says to them, "My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink." In other words, when he had the opportunity to render his language more metaphorical, he turned up the heat on the language, making it more vividly realistic.

Well, how'd that go over?

Take a look at John 6.

In fact, the verse that's most interesting, and this is by historical accident 'cause they didn't have the chapter, verse symbols in Jesus' time, but it happens to be John 6:66.

J- John 6:66.

The reaction was, they all left.

Except his little band, led by Peter.

And this is John's version, by the way, of Peter's confession, is at this moment when Jesus says, "Well, are you gonna leave me, too?" And can I suggest to you, brothers and sisters, that's one of the most poignant moments in the whole gospel.

The Lord himself looking at his, his followers have, have now left him in droves, and he turns to his little intimate band, "Are you gonna leave me, too?" And it's Peter, of course, who speaks so beautifully for all of them, "Lord, to whom should we go?

You have the words of everlasting life." The Eucharist, everybody, has always been a divisive and standing and falling point within Christianity from that moment on.

Hard teaching?

Yeah, always has been.

Divisive?

Yeah, it has been from that day to today.

But we stand with Peter, "Lord, to whom should we go?

You have the words of everlasting life.

You've spoken to us of something that ought to be the source and summit of our whole life." Now, watch this, everybody.

As this great teaching comes roaring up out of John 6 into the Christian tradition, listen to how it's repeated and reaffirmed.

First of all, a couple things from the church fathers.

Here's from Ignatius of Antioch, so very early figure.

He says, "The unbelievers abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ."Here's Justin Martyr, second century, very early figure.

"Not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the Word of God, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer is both the flesh and the blood of the incarnate Jesus." Wow.

That's an ancient text, but it's exactly what we do today at every mass, right?

By the words of the Eucharistic prayer, the bread and wine are transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ.

That's Justin Martyr.

Now, move up several centuries into the Middle Ages.

A great debate broke out in the 11th century about this issue of the real presence.

There was a very brilliant monk from Tours in France called Berengarius.

Berengarius, brilliant man, brilliant logician, presented the view that, "Look, we're not talking about the, the literal or real presence of Jesus, but the bread and wine become very powerful, evocative symbols of Jesus' presence." Now, easier to understand?

Yeah, no question about it.

But the church said no to Berengarius.

Fast-forward now to the 13th century, the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.

The church uses for the first time in its official teaching, it's a word that we should savor, we Catholics.

The word is transubstantiation.

What happens, the church taught at the, uh, at the consecration is that the substances of bread and wine change into the substances of the body and blood of Christ, even as the accidents remain.

Now, that's just fancy philosophical talk for the deepest reality changes, even as the appearances remain unchanged.

So there's the teaching of the church in 1215, Fourth Lateran Council.

If you want the real details, I can't begin to go into it today, read in the third section of Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, and you'll find a very detailed accounting of what transubstantiation means.

Now, go forward a few more centuries, the time of the Reformation.

Martin Luther calls into question transubstantiation.

Ulrich Zwingli, another of the great Reformers, goes right back to Berengarius, and he says, "We're dealing with evocative symbols of Jesus' presence." John Calvin gives a somewhat more nuanced but still largely symbolic reading of the Eucharist.

What did the church say?

At the Council of Trent, the church said no.

And it reaffirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Now, fast-forward to the 20th century.

There were theologians, I read a lot of them when I was coming of age as a, as a seminarian, who said, "You know, what we're dealing with here is transignification or transfinalization." Fancy way of saying, "Look, the significance of the bread and wine change in the course of a mass, so ordinary bread and wine now take on a deeper significance during the mass." Or transfinalization, their purpose changes.

What did the church say?

Uh-uh.

Saint Pope Paul VI writes the great encyclical on the Eucharist in which he says, "Okay, you can talk about the change of meaning or purpose, but that's because there's been a deeper change to level of being.

Because the substance is changed, these other things have changed too." Okay, but you've got to reaffirm transubstantiation.

Here's my point, everybody.

From John VI to Paul VI, the church has been stubbornly reaffirming this strange and disturbing and unnerving and wonderful teaching of the real presence.

Okay.

W- with that little theological survey in mind, can I close with my favorite 20th century Eucharistic theologian, the great writer, Flannery O'Connor?

You know the story about her?

Flannery O'Connor, um, who emerges as, as I think the greatest Catholic fiction writer of the 20th century.

But when she's a very young woman just beginning her career, she's invited to dinner in New York with a woman named Mary McCarthy who was an established, uh, writer, and some other folks.

And O'Connor was so shy that she barely said a word.

Well, finally, Mary McCarthy kind of feeling bad for her and, and knowing that she was a Catholic, McCarthy was an ex-Catholic, she s- tried to draw her out and she said, "Oh, you know, uh, I think the Eucharist is a very powerful symbol." To which Flannery O'Connor said, "Well, if it's only a symbol, I say to hell with it." That's my favorite statement- ...

of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Okay.

Having seen how vigorously the church defends this teaching, can we make some sense of it?

Here's how, I suggest.

By looking at the power of words.

So first of all, everybody, words can be descriptive, right?

So if someone, let's say, later today asks me, "Hey, how was the event down at Blessed Sacrament?" "Oh, it was great, you know, we had 1,500 people came.

I gave six talks and church looked great and..." But what am I- I'm doing there is I'm describing reality, right?

I'm not changing reality.

I'm just describing it.

But that's not all we do with language.Language, even our puny language, can change reality.

Suppose you're at Dodger Stadium, right?

One of the Dodgers comes around second base and slides head first into third.

You're right there in the third base, you know, stands and you go, "Safe." Well, you're expressing your opinion, you know, your hope maybe.

But the umpire of the National League, properly, uh, uniformed and delegated says, "Out." Well, like it or not, he's out, right?

That word has changed the game.

If I walked up to you at a, uh, at a party and I said that, "You're under arrest." Well, you'd think properly I was telling a joke or losing my mind or something.

But if a, you know, uniformed and deputized officer of the law says to you, "You're under arrest." Well, like it or not, you're under arrest.

His words have changed reality.

Oh, we all know this.

Words spoken when we were little kids, maybe that were harshly critical, change us, like forever.

They, they, they have adversely affected us forever.

Or flip it around.

Words of, I think of words of, of my dad or my, my mother when I was a little kid that, that so affirmed me or lifted me up that to this day I'm different because of them.

Okay.

Those are our words, right?

Our, our little words can, to a degree, change reality.

Now, consider God's word.

God's word is not descriptive but rather creative.

God in, in the, in the high poetic language of the Bible, God speaks the world into being, doesn't He?

"Let there be light and there was light.

Let the dry land come forth and it came forth.

Let things teem upon the earth and so it happened." What's being expressed there in that gorgeous poetry is that God's speech, God's intelligent speech gives rise to things.

It constitutes things, makes them what they are.

Remember the Prophet Isaiah, "As the, as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return without watering the earth, so my word does not go forth from me in vain." But rather accomplishes its purpose.

See, that's God's word.

Not just describing, but making.

Now, who's Jesus?

Oh, this intriguing first century Palestinian philosopher.

Well, if that's all he is, the heck with him.

There's a thousand philosophers.

No, no, no.

What do we say now?

What do we hear in the prologue to John's Gospel?

"In the beginning was the word." Mind you, the word.

"And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And all things came to be through that Word." There's God's word speaking the world into being.

And that Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

That's Jesus.

Therefore, what Jesus says, is.

"Little girl, get up." Remember how beautifully the gospel retains his Aramaic, "Little girl, get up." And the dead girl got up.

Why?

Because Jesus said so.

"Lazarus, come out." And the dead man, dead in his, in his grave for four days comes out.

Why?

Because Jesus said it.

"My son, your sins are forgiven." And by God, I mean that literally, by God they're forgiven, because Jesus said it.

To the storm, "Be still." And it was still, because Jesus said it.

Now, the night before he died, Jesus took bread from the Passover table.

"Take this, all of you, and eat of it.

For this is my body, given for you." And then the cup of Passover wine.

"This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant." What Jesus says, is, because of who Jesus is, the word made flesh.

If our puny words can change reality, Jesus' word can change reality at the very deepest level.

And so we speak indeed of the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine, the real presence of Jesus.

That's why Ipse Christus is present there.

Now, I'll make one more connection as I close.

What does God want from the very beginning in the biblical vision?

God wanted to feed his holy people.

Think of the, the, um, again, the lovely poetry in the beginning of Genesis.

We put such a stress on the one tree God s- told them not to eat from.

But remember he said, "Eat from all the trees of the garden." He gave 'em this wildly liberal permission to eat of all the trees, save one.

God wants to feed His people with His life.

When He forms His holy people, Israel, He does so through a Passover meal.The Prophet Isaiah envisions this holy mountain on which there are pure choice wines and juicy meats, where God spreads out a banquet for His people.

We hear in fact that when the Messiah comes and this holy mountain is established, the very hills will run with wine.

That's God's desire to feed His people with His own life.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Are we therefore surprised that Jesus spends a lot of time feeding His people?

Think of Jesus' open table fellowship where saints and sinners are welcome, where the tax collectors and prostitutes are welcome.

Think of Jesus gathering the night before He died for this sacred meal.

Jesus is God feeding His people with His very life, feeding them finally with His own body and His own blood.

Why?

That we might become Christified.

It was a German philosopher, Feuerbach, who said, "You are what you eat." Right?

Think of the full implications of that in regard to this great sign.

Not just the Aeternus Christi, but Ipse Christus, Christ really, truly and substantially present.

And when we come forward now to consume that body and blood, then we become what we eat.

We become Christified.

We become prepared for life on high with God.

We have strength for the journey through this life and yes, into the next life.

And so can you see everybody why the proper response when the body and blood of Jesus is on display is ?

That's the bread of life.

That's the cup of eternal salvation.

That's the source and summit of the Christian life.