Transcript

The night before He died, Christ instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist.

There are four accounts of this event that occur in the New Testament.

One's in Mark and Matthew, basically the same way of phrasing the institution narrative.

Another is in Luke and in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

Now, these four versions of the institution narrative resemble one another and are identical in most respects.

They tell us that during the Passover meal, Christ took bread and wine, blessed them, and said of them respectively, This is my body, and, This is my blood, before distributing them to the disciples.

He commanded that they perform this rite after His death saying, Do this in memory of me, and characterized the Eucharist in sacrificial terms as, The blood of the covenant poured out for the many.

From the earliest times, the apostolic community celebrated the Eucharist as the center of Christian life.

We see this in the Acts of the Apostles.

We see this in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where he notes that our participation in the Eucharist is a true communion in the body and blood of Christ, and is the source of the visible unity of the Church.

Consequently, he adds, in that letter, 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.

Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself.

The Gospel of John does not contain an institution narrative, but does contain a prophetic discourse of Christ in chapter six, where Jesus foretells the institution of the Eucharist and speaks of it as His true body and blood.

John 6:53-56 reads thus: 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.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

The Fathers of the Church consistently taught that the Eucharist is the true presence of Christ's body and blood.

Indeed, the Church has always held that in the celebration of the Eucharist, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

This occurs only when a validly ordained bishop or priest celebrates the Eucharist.

Writing in 110 AD, St. Ignatius of Antioch, already early in the second century, noted that the Eucharist is the center of the visible communion of the Church.

He writes in this way: Take heed then to have but one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup to show forth the unity of His blood, one altar as there is one bishop, along with the presbyters and deacons, my fellow servants, so that whatever you do, you may do it according to the will of God.

That's in his Letter to the Philadelphians, chapter 4. The Jerusalem Catechesis, written in the fourth century, is traditionally ascribed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

This is a text that was used to instruct adults entering the Church, you might say, in the ancient church's RCIA program.

Regarding the Eucharist, the text states the following: Since then, He Himself declared and said of the bread, 'This is my body,' who shall dare to doubt any longer?

And since He has Himself affirmed and said, 'This is my blood,' who shall ever hesitate, saying that it is not His blood?

Wherefore, with full assurance, let us partake as of the body and blood of Christ.

For in the figure of bread is given to you His body, and in the figure of wine, His blood, that you, by partaking of the body and blood of Christ, may be made of the same body and the same blood with Him.

For thus we come to bear Christ in us, because His body and blood are distributed through our members.

Thus it is, according to the Blessed Peter, we become partakers of the divine nature.

They're referring to the Second Letter of Peter chapter 1 verse 4, and saying that in taking the Eucharist, we begin to participate in the divine life of Christ.

The Catholic Church gradually developed a precise language for this mystery by speaking of transubstantiation, first at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1213, and again at the 13th session of the Council of Trent in 1551.

What do we mean by this term transubstantiation?

That term denotes the change of the whole substance of the bread into the body of Christ, and the change of the whole substance of wine into the blood of Christ.

In short, before the words of consecration, there are bread and wine on the altar.

After the words, though they still have the appearance of bread and wine, they are now the body and blood of Christ.It's possible for God to accomplish this change because God is omnipotent, and because the mystery contains in itself no intrinsically contradictory idea or notion.

It's not irrational to believe in transubstantiation.

It's a mystery of faith.

God can change bread into the body of Christ while leaving the properties of bread present as signs of Christ's real presence.

The mystery of transubstantiation is something that natural human reason can never prove or disprove.

It's something we can only know about through a judgment of faith, but this judgment is realistic and we can experience the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist mystically by attending to His presence in faith.

By effectuating the change known as transubstantiation, God renders Christ's glorified body present substantially under the appearances of bread, and His blood present substantially under the appearances of wine.

Christ in glory is not changed in any way.

The Eucharist doesn't manipulate Christ or alter him.

On the contrary, he's rendered present to us sacramentally without being changed in Himself so that we can have access to Him.

He's present in what we call the sacramental species present on the altar.

The properties of bread and wine such as the quantity and qualities of bread and wine, their taste, their color, even their chemical composition, all that remains, but now they both signify and contain the real and true presence of Christ's body and blood as food and drink for our spiritual life.

We can consume the body and blood of Christ that are truly present under the appearances of bread and wine.

Where the body and blood of the living Christ are truly present, so too are present His spiritual soul and His deity.

Christ is one in His glory, so when we have His body and blood present, there's also the soul and divinity of Christ present.

And so consequently, the church traditionally says rightly that Christ is present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity.

The catechism of the Catholic Church notes how fitting it is that Christ should remain present to the church down through the ages in this sacramental and mysterious way.

Well, why?

Because it allows us to commune with Christ, which is in accord with our nature.

We approach spiritual realities through our body, through experiences of the senses, just like we have friendship with other human beings through sensate contact with them.

So Christ has become manifest to us as a friend in the Eucharist, and the church is sustained down through time in her earthly pilgrimage, especially by her communion with Christ in the blessed sacrament of the Eucharist.

Let me finish this session by just reading a slightly longer quote from the catechism.

It's really beautiful.

Since Christ was about to take His departure from His own, in His visible form, He wanted to give us His sacramental presence.

Since He was about to offer Himself on the cross to save us, He wanted us to have the memorial of the love with which He loved us to the end, even to the giving of His own life.

In His Eucharistic presence, He remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave Himself up for us, and He remains under the signs that express and communicate this love.

Today we talked about the Eucharist.

Next time, we'll transition into something that follows directly from this, the Mass and liturgical prayer.