Transcript

On the night before he died, Jesus celebrated the Last Supper and said there, "Do this in memory of me." When Saint Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians, he recalled this and says, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." What does this have to do with what the Catholic Church calls the Eucharist?

Is the Catholic Eucharist in the Bible?

Yes.

The Catholic Eucharist is in scripture, and in fact, scripture is found in different ways throughout the Catholic celebration of the Eucharist.

But first, we need to back up and consider what this word Eucharist is.

Eucharist comes from a Greek word, eucharistia, which means thanksgiving or gratitude.

The verb eucharisto means I give thanks.

Moreover, after the prefix, which means good or well, the stem of eucharistia is the Greek word charis, which is rendered in Latin, gratia.

The Eucharist is indeed this good grace or thanksgiving.

While you may not see the word Eucharist if you read the New Testament in English, keep in mind that the New Testament books were written in Greek.

The term expresses what we hear in the English as giving thanks.

For example, Saint Paul says in First Corinthians, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you." Eucharist became one of the names of the sacrament.

Saint Justin Martyr, in the middle of the 2nd century, attests to the custom of calling this food Eucharist.

Where do we find the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist in the Bible?

Primarily, it is what Jesus himself teaches during his public ministry.

In all three synoptic gospels, in Matthew chapter 26, in Mark chapter 14, and Luke chapter 22, we read that Jesus institutes the sacred meal where he takes bread and wine and says words that are transformative.

He makes the bread and wine his own body, his own blood.

The Eucharist is Christ himself.

Saint Thomas Aquinas noted that Jesus does this on the night before he died, because this sacrament makes Christ present to us, who suffered for our salvation.

Jesus wants to remain with us always.

All of Christ's life on Earth led to him giving us the Eucharist in the Paschal Mystery, so that we may be united to him.

At the Last Supper, he said, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." In John chapter 6, Jesus says, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh." The Eucharist is the greatest of all sacraments, because it contains Christ himself, and it was foreshadowed in many ways in the Old Testament.

As Abraham was willing in faith to give his beloved son, so God the Father gives his beloved Son as a victim in the sacrifice of the mass.

The Passover lamb was the food for Israel's journey, and its blood saved Israel from destruction.

Christ is the lamb of God who becomes food for our exodus to heaven, and we are saved by his blood.

During their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites were fed daily by God himself in the form of manna, a mysterious bread from heaven.

We are fed by the Eucharist, Christ himself, the living bread come down from heaven.

Saint Thomas Aquinas expresses these Old Testament types, or foreshadows, in poetic form in the mass sequence of Corpus Christi.

In the English translation, the church sings, "Truth, the ancient type fulfilling.

Isaac bound, a victim willing.

Paschal Lamb, its life blood spilling.

Manna to the Father sent." Moreover, not only is the Eucharist foretold in the Old Testament and made explicit in the New Testament, the Church's celebration of the Eucharist is filled with biblical verses and images.

For Saint Thomas, following in a tradition from Saint Augustine, the mass preeminently expresses what Saint Paul says in First Timothy, "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way." The mass is the greatest example of where we find supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings.

The mass begins and ends with the Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the sign of the cross.

We can recall how at the end of Matthew's account of the Gospel, Jesus gives the Great Commission to the apostles to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The sign of the cross expresses how Christ came to save us.

The Eucharist introductory rites include an act of penance when we cry out to the Lord for mercy.

On certain holy days, such as most Sundays, the Church sings the Gloria, which amplifies the angelic statement on Christmas night, "Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace among men with whom he is pleased." After the introductory rites, each mass is composed of the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The Liturgy of the Word gives readings from the Bible, culminating in the proclamation of the Gospel.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist is imbued with scripture throughout, including the very words of institution of the Eucharist said by the ordained priest in the person of Christ, such as, "This is my body."At communion, knowing that the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world is present, we pray in a way reminiscent of the words to Jesus of the Centurion seeking healing.

"Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." The Catholic teaching of the Eucharist is not only in the Bible, the Bible is lived out in the celebration of the Eucharist.

All of this is for our salvation, so that the words celebrated in the Eucharist may heal our souls and that we may live forever.

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The Catholic Church takes Jesus at his word when he says at the Last Supper, "This is my body.

Do this in memory of me." The Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Jesus, present under the appearances of bread and wine.

But how can this be?

We continue to see what looks like bread and wine.

It continues to taste like bread and wine, to behave like bread and wine.

How could the body of Christ be there?

When a priest says mass, he starts with bread and wine.

At the consecration, these elements become the body and blood of Christ.

This miraculous change is caused by God's divine power and it's called transubstantiation.

We have another video that explains it in more detail.

In this video, we're focusing on what results from transubstantiation, the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity.

How is Jesus present?

Saint Thomas Aquinas gives a classic answer, but to understand what he says, we need to review the distinction between a substance and its accidents.

A substance is what is really there.

Think of a dog.

That's a substance.

Fido is the thing that subsists, the thing that's really there, but many things could be said of Fido.

He's white and hairy and skinny.

These are properties or characteristics of Fido, what Thomas Aquinas calls accidents.

They can change over time.

A hairy Fido can get a haircut.

A skinny Fido can become fat.

But the substance of Fido stays the same.

Accidents are the kinds of things that inhere in a subject or a substance.

Fido's skinniness is a property of Fido, but Fido is what stands under his appearances and stays the same, while the skinniness of Fido might come and go.

Whenever we encounter a thing, our senses encounter its appearances, its accidents, and then our mind grasps what is there underneath those appearances, the substance.

For example, we grasp that the same person is present when an embryo grows to a toddler, a teenager and eventually becomes an adult.

Let's now return to the Eucharist.

How can Jesus be present in what looks like bread and wine?

Of course, right now, Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of the Father in his human body.

That human body of Jesus doesn't move or change when we celebrate the Eucharist.

Rather, the Catholic understanding is that the substance of the bread is miraculously changed into the substance of the body of Christ.

But, and this is the key point, the accidents or appearances of bread do not change.

They remain just what they were before.

So transubstantiation, this change of the bread into the body of Christ, is miraculous in two ways.

First, that bread would become the body of Christ, and second, that the accidents or appearances of the bread, its properties, would continue to exist.

They're miraculously held in being by God without being rooted in the substance of bread.

That's because the substance of bread is not there anymore.

It has been changed, entirely changed into the substance of Christ's body.

Now, you might say, where did I read that in the Bible?

The answer that Thomas Aquinas gives is, you read about it in Chapter 6 of John's Gospel.

Jesus tells us that his body is true food and that you must eat it in order to have eternal life.

Then, at the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, broke it and gave it to his apostles saying, "This is my body." When the apostles received it, it looked like bread, but in truth it was his body.

This is because when God speaks, what he says comes to be.

In the beginning, God said, "Let there be light." And there was light.

So when the divine word of God says, "This is my body," it truly becomes his body.

Saint Thomas explains that even though we don't see, touch or taste his body directly through our senses, we believe what Jesus says, that his body is now truly present under the appearances of bread.

This requires an act of faith in the word of God....

and changing bread into the body of Christ isn't impossible for God.

So we should believe him when he says that he does it.

From this key truth, Aquinas draws a number of important conclusions about the Eucharist.

First, the substance of Christ's body is directly present, but the accidents of his human body are not.

That is, his human body has its own height, weight, place, and so forth, and those properties of his body are not directly present in the Eucharist.

Second, the accidents of the bread continue to be present even though the substance of the bread is no longer there.

This means that the bread's shape, its size, its quantity, its extension in three-dimensional space, these accidents have now become a kind of container for the substance of the body of Christ which is hidden within them.

Indeed, the Eucharist will continue to have the chemical and atomic properties of bread, but the substance that is truly there underneath those accidents is the body of Christ.

This also means that even if a priest were to celebrate mass with an enormous quantity of bread, the body of Christ existing in heaven does not increase in size or in weight.

That's because quantity or size is an accident of a substance, just like the size of Fido is an accident of Fido.

Aquinas also explains that the whole Christ is present in this sacrament.

That means that even if you only receive a small fragment of a host, you receive the whole body of Christ, not just a part of him.

What's more, everything that is really joined to the body of Christ is at least indirectly present in the Eucharist.

So in heaven, Christ's body is united with his blood, and both are made alive by his human soul, and his entire humanity is joined to his divinity.

So the Catholic Church says that all of these dimensions are sacramentally present in every Eucharistic host and chalice, Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity.

Because the sacraments are signs that bring about what they signify, we can talk about the body being directly present in the Eucharistic host.

Jesus says over the host, "This is my body." While his blood, soul, and divinity are present there indirectly, or as Aquinas says, by concomitance.

And the same is true about the chalice.

The blood of Christ is present directly, and his body, soul, and divinity are present indirectly by concomitance.

When we make a new friend, we first see his face, we hear his voice, and gradually, under these appearances, we come to know the person who is really there.

Something even more profound happens in the Eucharist.

When we look at a host, we don't see the human face of Jesus.

We do hear his words, of course, as they're spoken by the priest or proclaimed to us in Scripture, but faith is necessary here to believe that God is really speaking and that God is really present here in the Eucharist.

But if we receive Jesus' words with faith, and if we turn towards the Eucharist, it's not unusual for the believer to gradually become more aware of Christ's presence, and even for the experience of Christ's presence to grow and deepen.

Saint Thomas himself wrote prayers and hymns about this.

Let us ask then with Saint Thomas that God would grant us to experience more and more the saving presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

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In the astounding words of John chapter six, Jesus says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." So if someone asks, "Is the Eucharist food?" The answer is absolutely.

Let's explore what that means with help from the Bible and Saint Thomas Aquinas.

On the night before he died, Jesus had a meal with his apostles.

We know this meal as the Last Supper.

This calls to mind the Passover meal with the lamb that Israel ate each year in commemoration of their exodus from slavery in Egypt.

Jesus himself is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

At the Last Supper, he took bread, and giving thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you." Similarly, he took a chalice of wine and gave thanks.

He gave it to his disciples to drink from it, calling it, "The chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant." The Eucharist is food to be eaten, yet it is not ordinary food.

This is Jesus Christ himself, who comes to us under the signs of bread and wine to unite us together with him in grace.

Saint Thomas uses three scholastic categories to consider the sacraments.

In the Eucharist, the sacramentum tantum, or mere sacrament or sign....

is the bread and wine.

The res tantum, or the reality that is brought about, is our union with Christ in grace.

We have the res et sacramentum, or the reality in sacrament, as the body and blood of Christ who comes to us through the consecration at mass in transubstantiation, that complete conversion of substance.

The substances of bread and wine are no longer there when the substance of Christ himself comes.

Christ's real presence in the reality and sacrament together presupposes the signs of bread and wine whose accidents or various characteristics do not disappear.

Saint Thomas clearly thought of the Eucharist as food, calling it a sacred banquet.

He composed a prayer about the Eucharist that Dominicans love to pray.

"O sacred banquet in which Christ becomes our food, the memory of his passion is celebrated, the soul is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us." The sacrifice of the mass is indeed a banquet, and Saint Thomas teaches that its effect can be seen in part through its manner of being food and drink.

He says, "This sacrament does for the spiritual life all that material food does for the bodily life, namely by sustaining, giving increase, restoring, and giving delight." Think about it.

Food sustains us.

If you don't eat, you waste away.

The Eucharist is our spiritual food, the food for the journey that sustains us as we make our way to the promised land.

Food gives increase.

Children grow up big and strong by eating the right food.

So too the children of God grow up to be saints with an increase in the grace and charity that the Eucharist gives.

Food restores what we lose in the day through expending energy.

When you exercise a lot, you need to eat more.

The Eucharist restores what we lose in the spiritual life so that we may have all the grace we need.

In fact, the Eucharist restores the soul from the harm of venial daily sin that tires the soul.

Food gives delight.

Do you have favorite foods?

The Eucharist has all sweetness within.

This is the bread from heaven containing in itself all delight.

Yes, the Eucharist is real food.

We need food when we are hungry.

What kind of food do you hunger for?

Hunger or desire is of greatest importance in understanding the Eucharist.

In our daily life, if you are not in the least bit hungry, but already feel very full, you are less likely to eat.

Think of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Some people make themselves hungry before that big dinner so as to get as much out of that experience as possible.

Similarly, Saint Thomas teaches that the Eucharistic fast, not eating before receiving the Eucharist, is precisely because the greatest devotion is called for at the moment of receiving the sacrament.

We are to hunger for Christ in fervent devotion.

The more we hunger for him, the more we will be satisfied by him in receiving the Eucharist.

We work up our hunger for Christ before receiving him so as to receive much from him.

Now, there are two ways of eating the sacrament.

One is sacramental and the other is spiritual.

First, one eats only sacramentally and not spiritually when one receives the Eucharist without receiving any spiritual benefit.

For example, when someone conscious of unrepentant grave sin receives the Eucharist, that one receives sacramentally, but has done a sinful act.

That is not a spiritual consumption.

Second, one may eat spiritually and not sacramentally.

When someone is not actually receiving the sacrament, but expresses a holy desire to receive, that one receives spiritually the effect of being united to Christ through faith and charity.

In addition to either a merely sacramental or merely spiritual way of eating the Eucharist is what Saint Thomas understands to be the perfect way.

The perfect way of receiving the sacrament is by actually consuming the Eucharist in a state of grace with a holy desire.

This combines both ways of sacramentally and spiritually eating the food of the Eucharist.

Our Lord says, "My flesh is food indeed." With Saint Thomas and all the saints fed by Christ, we can hunger for Christ himself, made present to us in the sacred banquet, the food we need for the journey of life on Earth.

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What happens when you eat the body of Christ?

When you eat normal human food, it sustains your bodily life.

In fact, it becomes a part of your body.

A child eats in order for his body to grow larger.

Is it different when you eat the Eucharist?

In his Confessions, Saint Augustine has an amazing line about this which he writes as if Jesus were speaking to him, saying, "You will not change me into you as you do with the food of your flesh.

Rather, you will be changed into me." That is, when you eat the body of Christ, you don't change it into a part of you.

Instead, it transforms you, and you become a member of the body of Christ.

We've seen in earlier videos that every sacrament has three dimensions or stages, the sacramental sign, an intermediate effect, and a final grace or an ultimate fruit.

In this video, we'll focus on how the intermediate effect of the Eucharist, that is that the bread and wine at mass are truly changed into the body and blood of Christ, produces its ultimate effect in you if you receive the Eucharist worthily.

We'll have a separate video about receiving the Eucharist worthily.

The key starting point for Saint Thomas Aquinas is that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ.

That means that when you eat the Eucharist, you are really receiving Jesus Christ in person.

Aquinas' conclusion is simple.

Christ is contained in the Eucharist, and so when he comes into your soul in holy communion, he bestows on you in particular what he bestowed on the whole world by his incarnation.

Grace itself, salvation itself, eternal life itself.

Jesus himself tells us this in chapter six of John's gospel, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.

As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me." The Father sent Jesus into the world in visible flesh to give life to the world, to pour out on the world the grace of salvation, and Jesus likewise comes to you sacramentally through the sacramental rite of the mass and the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

And that means that when you eat the Eucharist, Jesus brings about in you the same effect that he accomplished in the world in his incarnation.

He gives life to your soul and fills it with the grace of salvation.

Saint Thomas puts this another way, quoting Saint Cyril of Alexandria, "In the incarnation, the human flesh of Christ is united to the divine word of God, who is the very source of all life.

And therefore, when we receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist, that supernatural life of the word is united to our bodies as well." This is the beginning of the gift of immortality and the destruction of our death.

Death could not defeat Jesus.

After his passion, he rose victorious over death in his human body, and he now possesses an unconquerable and eternal life.

This very life enters into our bodies too when we eat the body of Christ.

In fact, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in Rome in the early 2nd century, wrote that the Eucharist is the medicine of immortality and the antidote to death.

And Saint Thomas explains why.

It's because in receiving the Eucharist, we receive Jesus himself, the word incarnate.

We receive into our bodies the seed of our future resurrection from the dead.

There's no Gnosticism here.

Aquinas doesn't think that the Eucharist has only a spiritual effect on us, and Christianity is not dualistic as if it were trying to escape the body in the pursuit of some purely spiritual realm.

Rather, Christianity believes that the word became flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and that the Eucharist is true food, truly the body of Christ.

We receive the grace and life of Christ, a share in his divinity itself, precisely as we eat the sacramental body of Christ with our bodies.

It's important to see that for Aquinas, the Eucharist is not some supernatural thing apart from Christ.

Aquinas' logic is that we receive life precisely because we receive Christ himself in person.

By eating his body, we take his very self into our very selves.

We're united to him, we have a profound communion with him, and we're incorporated into him, into his body.

We become parts or members of the body of Christ.

This brings us back to Saint Augustine.

We don't change this food into us, but we are changed into Christ, into the body of Christ.

It's amazing.

Jesus takes bread and wine and changes it into his body and blood so that he can work this wonderful change in us.

Of course, receiving the Eucharist is not merely a physical act.

It needs to be a spiritual act too.

We'll have more to say on that in another video.

We must receive the Eucharist with faith and love for it to have its full effect.

That's because in the Eucharist, we receive not only the body of Christ, but also his soul and his divinity.

The Eucharist produces a union between the whole Christ and us, and that unity ultimately consists in love, supernatural love or charity.

For Aquinas, this supernatural charity is the ultimate measure of the Christian life, and it's what brings about our true union with and indeed our possession and enjoyment of God Himself.

And because the Eucharist gives us a communion in Christ, it also at the same time gives us a communion in the body of Christ, which is the church.

Indeed, that communion of believers in Christ is the unity wrought by the Holy Spirit who is love.

It's a communion in Christ, in love.

Love for God, love for Jesus, and love for one another.

And it produces the unity and peace that proceeds from the bond of love, which is why the Eucharist is called the sacrament of unity.

It's the cause and the source of the church's unity.

We can sum up the effect of the Eucharist on the person who eats it in this way.Because it's the Son of God in person, the Eucharist produces the same effect as did the coming of the Son into our world: salvation itself and eternal life.

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Can the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross, which happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, be present to us today?

The Catholic Church answers yes.

Even though the historical moment of the Passion of Jesus is in the past, it is made present to us, not only in our memories, not only when we read about it in Scripture, and not only when the grace of Christ is given to us.

Above all, Jesus Himself left us a special way in which His passion is made present to us today and becomes effective in us.

It's in the sacraments, and above all, in the Sacrament of his passion, which is the Eucharist.

He instituted the Eucharist with His disciples at the Last Supper, the night before His crucifixion.

And when he did so, He told them, "Do this in memory of me." And the Church has been following this command of the Lord ever since in the Mass, which is the celebration of the Eucharist.

Saint Thomas Aquinas has something magnificent to say about this.

He writes in his Summa Theologiae that the Eucharist, quote, "Works in man the effect which Christ's passion brought in the world." But what does this mean?

In order to understand how Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the Catholic Church more generally, thinks about this, it's important to remember that the Eucharist is a sacrament.

A sacrament is a holy sign that causes what it signifies.

That is, it causes what it points to and represents.

And in fact, the sacrament causes through signifying.

In this sacramental way of thinking, because the Eucharist signifies sacramentally the Passion of Christ, it therefore makes the sacrifice of Christ present to us in a sacramental mode and works its effect in us.

Let's unpack that.

Think of what happens at the celebration of the Eucharist.

A priest takes bread and wine and pronounces over them the very same words that Jesus used at the Last Supper, "This is my body.

This is the chalice of my blood.

Do this in memory of me." The Last Supper is explicitly the model for what happens at Mass.

We're doing what Jesus told us to do.

In order to understand this, we should go back to the Last Supper and its rich symbolism.

Jesus gathered His disciples for a special Passover meal.

It was the evening before His death.

And, of course, in the background is the Jewish Feast of Passover, which itself harkens back to the commands God gave to Moses when He brought His people out of slavery in Egypt.

We read about this in chapter 12 of the Book of Exodus.

God commands Moses that each family must select an unblemished male lamb, free of defects.

Then they are to sacrifice the lamb and collect its blood in order to put its blood on the doorposts and lintels of each of their houses.

The Old Testament has a lot to say about the importance of the blood in any sacrifice, and especially this one.

The blood represents the life of the animal, and it's the key component in the sacrifice.

Much later, after the temple is built in Jerusalem, the Passover sacrifice calls for a Jewish priest to take the blood from the slaughtered lamb and to pour it out on the altar of sacrifice in the temple.

But there's another key element in the Passover meal.

Each member of the family must eat the roasted flesh of the lamb, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

This eating of the lamb is crucial, and it helps us to understand the wider context in the Old Testament, and in fact, in many other ancient religious traditions for a sacrifice like this.

It was important for ancient religions not only to slaughter an animal in sacrifice, but that those who were to share in the sacrifice needed to eat a portion of the roasted flesh in a ritual meal.

And this is what the Passover meal was accomplishing for the Israelites.

It signified that they were the inheritors of the covenant promises of God.

So to sum up, the Passover had several key elements: the sacrificial death of an unblemished lamb, the anointing of homes with the blood of the lamb, and the eating of the flesh of the lamb.

Now, at the Last Supper, which is a Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus institutes a new covenant.

He takes bread and wine and changes it by His divine power into His body and His blood.

And with the chalice, He says, "This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins." Jesus is reconfiguring all of the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and especially of the Passover, the most important sacrifice, around Himself.

He's establishing a new covenant in His blood, and that calls for a new sacrifice and a new ritual sacrificial meal.

"Do this in memory of me," He says.

It's also clear that Jesus is speaking about what He's doing at the Last Supper......

as an anticipation of what he's about to do on the cross.

It's a sacrifice in his blood.

He thinks it's the same sacrifice as the cross.

He offers that sacrifice at the Last Supper in an unbloody and sacramental mode under the appearances of bread and wine, and then he offers the very same sacrifice a few hours later in a bloody mode on the cross.

This means that when we celebrate mass, according to the command of the Lord, we are making present again in a sacramental mode precisely what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and therefore at the cross.

He is offering the sacrifice of his body and blood to the Father for the salvation of the world.

In other words, the mass is simply extending this sacramental mode into the present for us so that we can receive it in the Eucharist.

And this is why Aquinas says that the whole effect of the passion for the world is the same as the effect of the Eucharist in us when we receive it.

And our sacramental eating and drinking of the Eucharist is our participation in this Paschal feast, this feast that celebrates the new covenant instituted by Jesus, in a way that echoes and fulfills the ancient Passover sacrifice and ritual meal.

In this, we see how wonderfully God provides for his children.

He did so in a supreme way at the moment when Christ offered himself on the cross, and that sacrifice is sacramentally made present to us through time whenever the mass is celebrated.

And what is more, the effects of Christ's passion, that is the salvation of the world, the reconciliation of sinners, the pouring out of the love of Christ, and the gift of all his merits, all of this is applied to each person who receives the Eucharist worthily.

Notice how this is just like the Passover.

In order to share in the covenant, in order to participate in the sacrifice, you need to eat the Passover lamb.

You have to put its blood on your doors.

That is, it must mark your lips.

For the Christian, of course, all of this begins with baptism.

You're baptized into Christ's death and thus into his resurrection.

But it reaches its full perfection in the Eucharist as you share most fully in the power of his blood poured out for the remission of your sins and in his body, which is given up for you.

Indeed, when you eat his flesh and drink his blood, he comes to dwell in you and makes you a member of himself.

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Do you need the Eucharist to be saved?

How necessary is the Eucharist for our spiritual life?

That's like asking how necessary food is for our physical life.

Let's find out about this great importance of the Eucharist for our salvation.

In John chapter 6, the Lord Jesus knows that some ask, "How can this man give us this flesh to eat?" He doubles down on the truthfulness of eating his flesh.

It is there that we hear, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." Saint Thomas Aquinas comments by paraphrasing, as if to say, you think it is impossible and unbecoming to eat my flesh, but it is not only possible, it is very necessary.

Saint Thomas knows that the Eucharist is spiritual food, and spiritual food is necessary for the spiritual life to such an extent that without it, the spiritual life cannot be sustained.

Does that mean that anyone who does not receive the Eucharist cannot be saved?

Not exactly.

How so?

Let's compare the necessity of salvation in the Eucharist with the necessity of salvation in baptism.

Baptism is the first sacrament, and baptism is necessary for salvation.

The normal way of being baptized is by water and the Holy Spirit, but there are other ways to receive the grace of baptism, such as someone dying for the faith or a catechumen who dies desiring to receive baptism.

In neither of those cases is there water, but in each, the grace of baptism is still present.

When we consider the Eucharist, which presupposes our baptism, we can call to mind that the Eucharist conveys the grace of the unity of the mystical body, without which no one may be saved.

Saint Thomas teaches that the baptized who die before receiving the Eucharist may be saved by the grace of desire for the sacrament's reality.

In other words, one may receive the grace of the sacrament of the Eucharist through a desire for it, just as one may receive the grace of the sacrament of baptism through a desire for it.

Baptism is necessary for the beginning of the spiritual life.

The Eucharist is necessary for the consummation or perfection of the spiritual life.

The beginning is order to the end, or perfection, and so all those baptized are in some way ordered to the Eucharist, which is the sacrament of sacraments.

Take the example of a child who is baptized, but who sadly dies before receiving the Eucharist.

Saint Thomas teaches that a baptized child is ordered to the Eucharist and may receive the grace of that sacrament's reality by the church's intention expressed in the sacramental life.

A baptized child need not receive the sacrament of the Eucharist in order to be saved.

Indeed.Just as there are other ways of receiving the grace of baptism without water, so Saint Thomas teaches that if one does not receive the Eucharist in a sacramental manner, that one may still receive the grace of the Eucharist in a spiritual manner.

The Eucharist is indeed given for our salvation, principally because this sacrament is Christ himself, our Savior.

Saint Thomas loves to consider the Eucharist's quality as food.

He differentiates physical food from spiritual food in this way.

Physical food is changed into the substance of the person nourished, but spiritual food changes us into itself.

We receive Christ himself as spiritual food.

Our salvation is for us in becoming the body of Christ, as his very members or as branches on him who is divine.

We are saved by being in him.

The liturgy of the Mass instructs us about our salvation when making present the mystery of the Eucharist.

The Catholic Church's first Eucharistic prayer, the Roman Canon, calls the Eucharist, "The holy bread of eternal life and the chalice of everlasting salvation." Also, in the first Eucharistic prayer, the priest prays to God that, "All of us who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy body and blood of your Son may be filled with every grace and blessing." Christ wants to be in us for our healing and salvation.

Before receiving communion, after the priest calls blessed those who are called to the supper of the Lamb, the faithful pray, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." After receiving communion, we thank God for the great gift that we received.

In our gratitude to God, we can pray the beginning of the prayer after communion that has been attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas.

"I thank you, Lord, Almighty Father, everlasting God, for having been pleased through no merit of mine, but of your great mercy alone, to feed me, a sinner and your unworthy servant, with the precious body and blood of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

I pray that this holy communion may not be for my judgment and condemnation, but for my pardon and salvation." In the Eucharist, Christ comes to be our bread of life so that way we may be healed.

In Christ, present in the Eucharist, we find the fullness of salvation.

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The greatest gift God has given the world is the Eucharist, and to receive holy communion even once is a gift of inestimable value, for the Eucharist is truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ himself present in our midst.

And Jesus Christ taught us, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him." The Eucharist actually causes the life of grace to grow in our souls, but our state of mind and heart also makes a difference in how fruitful the sacrament is when we receive it.

So, let's talk about the spiritual dispositions necessary for a fruitful holy communion.

Jesus Christ is the source of all grace, and he has established sacraments in his Church so that through them you and I might receive his saving grace from on high.

All of the seven sacraments give grace in one way or another.

Each is an instrumental cause of grace in our souls, and each has its own proper effects on us.

The Eucharist, however, is the greatest sacrament of them all, for the Eucharist is nothing less than the sacrifice Jesus Christ himself offered once and for all on Calvary.

The Eucharist is also the real presence of Jesus Christ, and in this great sacrament, he shares with us his very being, his life, his body, blood, soul, and divinity.

Thanks to his real presence in the Eucharist, when you and I receive holy communion Jesus Christ himself says in effect, "Here, I am yours." Who could comprehend the impact of such a gift?

The wonder of it all is rather beyond words, yet the Fathers of the Church have taught us many things about the wonderful effects of holy communion, and Saint Thomas sums up their teachings succinctly.

The primary effect of the Eucharist is to enkindle in our hearts the fire of divine love.

Holy communion also works to knit our hearts together in love.

Holy communion unites all the members of the mystical body of Christ in Heaven and on Earth into one supernatural fellowship with the Most High God.

Holy communion also forgives venial sin, preserves us from future sin, gives increase to the virtues, grows the life of sanctifying grace in our souls, and has many more wonderful effects.

Now, let's ponder ordinary causes and effects for a moment.

When natural causes produce their effects, the effects come about under certain conditions.

Those conditions in turn modify the effect in various ways.

When a flame touches dry paper, the paper catches on fire easily and the fire grows bright quickly.

When a flame touches damp paper, however, the paper might barely catch on fire and perhaps even just smolders.The conditions of the paper make a difference in the effect.

When grass seed is scattered in good soil and good climate conditions, with the right sort of nutrients and the right amount of water, the seed yields a thick green field of grass.

When grass seed is scattered in poor soil and poor climate conditions, however, the seed yields much less grass, and perhaps hardly any.

So too it is with holy communion.

When certain conditions are present in the recipient, holy communion works great effects and bears great fruit in the soul.

Under other conditions in the recipient, however, holy communion bears less fruit.

The conditions for a fruitful holy communion are sometimes called the spiritual dispositions of the recipient.

The spiritual dispositions are certain qualities of mind and heart that make the soul more receptive to the grace of the Eucharist.

Obviously, we want to cultivate these qualities with the help of God's grace when approaching holy communion.

But what are they, specifically?

The most minimal and absolutely necessary spiritual disposition is to be in a state of sanctifying grace.

We have discussed this point in other videos, so we will not say more here, except that scripture and tradition both warn of the death-dealing consequences of receiving holy communion in a state of serious sin without repentance.

Provided there is no serious question of mortal sin on one's soul, there are five further spiritual dispositions to consider and call upon God to receive.

The first is a living faith in the Eucharist.

Faith in the real presence is most favorable to coming under the influence of the working power in the sacrament.

It is good to recall often, but especially in preparation before mass, how the appearances of bread and wine are merely appearances.

In reality, the sacrament is truly the body and blood of Jesus Christ himself.

In this sacrament, God himself comes to us in love and floods us with his grace.

One might even remember the words of Saint Thomas about the Eucharist, "Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore." Even if one does not have a lively sense of the real presence, one might at least consider the teaching on the real presence and make a fresh act of faith in the mystery.

One should also ask for the grace of a livelier sense of the real presence.

The second disposition is humility before the Eucharist.

To receive holy communion is a gratuitous gift.

It is not something owed to us as a matter of natural justice, but is bestowed on us as a matter of supernatural grace.

At the last supper, the Lord Jesus humbled his disciples when he stooped down to wash their feet.

In the mass, however, he does something far greater than wash our physical feet.

Jesus Christ, God himself, shares his own eternal and divine life with us in holy communion.

Humility remembers that we are but finite little creatures in comparison to God.

Humility acknowledges how undeserved is the great love coming to us in this sacrament.

The acknowledgement of his gratuitous love shown to us in this sacrament in turn opens the heart for his love to work wonders in our souls.

The third disposition is confidence in the Eucharist.

Confidence consists of counting on God for good things to come.

And the best way to approach holy communion is to be full of expectation for his grace.

Indeed, the sacrament always gives grace, regardless of the dispositions of either the minister or the recipient.

Our confidence should be in God, even if we are not as well prepared as we would like to be.

Having good spiritual dispositions matters, but holiness is not about us.

It's about God.

It is about how God works in our lives, how God sanctifies us, even though we are often so poorly prepared to receive him.

So, when we approach holy communion, let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who loves us, and confide completely in the power of the bread from heaven.

The fourth disposition is desire for the Eucharist.

Friends desire to be in one another's company.

"With desire have I desired to eat this pass with you," Jesus said at the last supper.

And when he said those words, he was speaking to you.

He had you in mind.

The Lord Jesus instituted the sacrament to gladden our hearts with himself, with God.

The only appropriate response to such a mystery is to desire the sacrament, to desire his love and grace, to desire God.

The more our hearts burn with desire for him as we approach the Eucharist, the more we shall receive from his fullness, grace upon grace.

The fifth disposition is reverence for the Eucharist.

For Saint Thomas Aquinas, reverence is primarily interior.

It is an act of the intellect.

Reverence is the acknowledgement of the greatness and the majesty of God.

Such interior reverence spontaneously shows itself in certain physical signs and gestures.

Dressing well when we go to mass, for example, expresses our interior reverence for God.

So too does the proper posture of our bodies at mass.

So too does making the sign of the cross upon entering the church and genuflecting before the tabernacle.

So too does the manner in which we receive holy communion.

In the ancient church, receiving on the hand was customary in some places, but the practice eventually faded away.

Receiving on the tongue became the universal practice of the church in both the East and West for over a thousand years.

Recently, however, receiving on the hand was reintroduced in the Western church.

Although it is not prohibited in the Latin rite, receiving on the tongue remains a most commendable practice.

Receiving on the tongue expresses a special reverence for the Eucharist.

...

and prepares a person for a particular receptivity to grace.

Receiving on the tongue remains the norm in the Eastern rites.

All in all, the spiritual dispositions we need for a fruitful Holy Communion are faith, humility, confidence, desire, and reverence.

With qualities of mind and heart such as these, what marvels the Eucharist shall work for us?

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When God heals me and saves me, is He like a surgeon who works on me while I'm under general anesthesia?

Or is He like a coach, who teaches me what to do and inspires me to do it?

Well, He works in both ways.

In this video, we'll look at how God works through the Mass like a coach to prepare us to receive the Eucharist.

We'll also explore how the Mass can benefit those not actually present when it is celebrated.

So why do I need to be prepared to receive the Eucharist in the first place?

Well, because the Eucharist is the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and receiving Jesus at Mass is a profound act of reason and will.

That is, of reason and will elevated by grace in faith and charity.

If we don't know what we are doing or we don't believe in Jesus, receiving the Eucharist would be pointless, even an offense against God, because the Eucharist should never be rendered pointless.

So we have to be prepared.

If we had any doubts about that, Saint Paul would set us right where he says in his first letter to the Corinthians, "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord." How then are we prepared by God to receive the Eucharist?

Well, let's compare receiving the Eucharist to undergoing surgery.

During surgery, you, the patient, are typically unconscious, thanks to general anesthesia.

As the surgeon repairs and heals you, you're entirely passive and simply receiving the care of a medical professional.

Our reception of the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is not entirely like that.

On one hand, much like a good surgeon, God does repair and heal us in a way that we are totally passive to.

We receive His loving care and are healed by His grace and we contribute nothing.

But on the other hand, once we are healed by His grace, we still need His grace to flourish as a son or daughter of God.

This is where God acts like a coach who teaches us what to do and inspires us to do it.

Our salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ, which means that we have to know about Jesus.

We are saved by coming to accept the truth and then living by it.

Salvation is an appeal to our minds.

What we know, what we think, what we believe changes everything.

Contrast our situation as rational beings with the situation of non-rational beings.

We might almost prefer to be treated like a stone that is lifted up and put in a higher place.

The stone cannot resist.

It cannot lose its way because it makes no decisions.

By contrast, we can decide not to follow God.

But God wishes to save us not only from the outside, as an exterior force lifts a stone, He wishes for us to be transformed by faith and love, to become like Him.

We are saved by becoming like Christ, our Lord.

Saint Thomas Aquinas gives us some key insights on preparing to receive the Eucharist worthily.

First, he observes that we begin the Mass with praise.

We either have a hymn or an entrance antiphon.

Praise has the power to cut through the noise of our daily routine and wake us out of our self-absorption.

And I don't mean only sinful self-absorption.

Since we have to take care of ourselves, we naturally develop a default self-centered disposition.

When we offer praise and thanks to Almighty God, we can take the focus off ourselves in a healthy way.

Gratitude draws us out of self-pity.

After all, happier people are not focused on themselves.

Next in the order of the Mass, notes Aquinas, we have the penitential rite.

In the Mass, this action can forgive venial sins.

This is critical because none of us is perfectly innocent, so we must enter into the Mass through an act of penitence.

Imagine if you could not be forgiven.

What if you had a loan debt, for example, and you kept slipping further and further behind?

That would be intensely depressing.

We should always be grateful that the Lord Jesus is ready to forgive our sins.

We should not hide, as Adam did after sinning, but should instead run to our Father, confess that we have sinned, and beg to be saved.

Jesus tells us in a parable that He will receive us just as the prodigal son's father received him with joy.

Then, also at the Mass, as Saint Thomas highlights, we have readings from Scripture.

That is, we are instructed by the very Word of God.

In this way, God makes an appeal to our intellects in saving us.

Listening to and learning from His Word is an act of reason.

Recall when Jesus appears to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.

Before He breaks the bread, He opens their minds to the Scriptures....

Then he disappears, remaining only in the bread.

Our minds need to be open to the scriptures before we receive the body of Christ.

We need constant reminders that we are made for glory because we live in a world that has been darkened by sin, including our own.

And then also, Aquinas notes, we profess the Creed during the Mass.

The Creed is the church's formal response to error, so at Mass, we have the privilege of saying it together as a community of faith.

We should be eager to say it and to say it together.

Why does this prepare us to receive Jesus in the Eucharist?

Because receiving communion is a statement of faith.

You are saying by your actions that you believe all that is in the Creed, all that the church teaches, including the fact that Christ instituted the church to teach in his name.

If you don't believe that, then you shouldn't receive communion.

This is why Catholics practice closed communion and why only Catholics who are properly disposed are invited to receive the Eucharist.

Receiving the Eucharist is an intense act of faith.

So we've looked at how the Mass can powerfully prepare us to receive the Eucharist.

Now let's explore how the Mass can benefit even those who are not actually present when it is celebrated.

Aquinas explains that the sacrament of the Eucharist is not only a sacrament but also a sacrifice.

What does this mean?

The Eucharist is a sacrament insofar as invisible grace is given through a visible sign.

Christ's very body and blood are shared under the signs of bread and wine.

But it is also a sacrifice in so far as Christ's passion is represented, the passion whereby he offered himself as a victim to the Father.

Now, those who participate in this sacrament benefit in both ways.

That is, by invisible grace through the Eucharist as a sacrament and also by Christ's offering himself through the Eucharist as a sacrifice.

But even those who are not present to participate in the Eucharist as a sacrament can benefit from the Eucharist as a sacrifice.

Christ offers himself both for those who are present and those who are absent.

This should draw our attention to the fact that Christ gathers a community of believers where we are to be our brother's keeper even on the spiritual level, and this is profoundly Christian.

God became man, and God the Son saves us through his human nature.

Recall that when Christ forgave sins, the Pharisees rightly asked how he could do so since God alone can forgive sins, but they did not realize that Christ is God in the flesh working to save us through his humanity.

As we've discussed in previous videos, God works through secondary causes.

He gives us the dignity of being real causes in other people's lives.

Recall that in Matthew's Gospel, after rising from the dead, Jesus says, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." What would you expect him to say next?

I would've expected him to say, "I have all authority now, so you clowns can get out of the way.

You have been doubting and stumbling, and you ultimately abandoned me.

Get out of the way." But that is not what he tells them.

Instead, the next thing he says to them is, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

You go and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you." And Christ has continued to work through us as real secondary causes to this very day.

So to recap, we are prepared in our minds to receive Jesus in the Eucharist and be saved.

Furthermore, we are to act as God's ambassadors to others to work for the salvation of the whole world, and that is astonishing.

For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com.

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And don't forget to subscribe, like, and share with your friends because it matters what you think.