Memorial, Communion and Real Presence

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Year A

The readings provide us with three words which serve as the basis of our reflexion on the Eucharist.

The first word is “memorial” or as Moses uses the imperative command: “Remember!” The Book of Deuteronomy is a retelling of the most important event in the history of Israel, their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their journey in the wilderness. The Passover meal was a ritual meal that celebrated the memory of this deliverance from Egypt. But when the Jews celebrate this meal, they bring God’s action into the present by asking for deliverance from whatever is harming their communities right now. By doing this they are not just remembering an event of thousands of years ago. Deliverance is a present experience; it is happening now.

Why is this important? It is the background needed to understand the Eucharist which was instituted by the Lord at the Last Supper. When the Lord celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples, they were following the ritual of the Passover meal, at least in part. But our Lord changed the whole dynamic by the words He used, shifting the focus from the Passover lamb to the bread and wine which He now describes as His own Body and Blood. There is no mention of the ritual lamb in any accounts of the Last Supper because Jesus is THE Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. No other sacrificial animal or gift is needed. Then he added the sentence that would change forever what the Paschal meal was all about for his followers. He said, ‘Do this in memory of me.’ “Remember!”

No longer would we Christians celebrate the meal in memory of the escape from slavery in Egypt. We would celebrate this meal in memory of Jesus who freed us from the slavery of sin by His death on the cross. That is why we explain the Holy Mass as a re-presentation of the One unique sin atoning, life redeeming sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Re-presentation here does not mean symbolising something or someone standing in place of Jesus’s death on the cross. The key word is “present”. Every Mass makes present that sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. At every Mass, we are standing at Calvary, witnessing His crucifixion, agony and death. This is what we remember. That is why in the Collect of today’s Mass the priest describes the great Sacrament of the Eucharist as “a Memorial of your (Jesus’) passion.”

Remembering this should lead us to revere and worship Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not just a ritual symbolic meal. It is Jesus who presides at the altar. It is Jesus who dies on the cross giving us His Body and Blood. Without such reverence, we risk condemning ourselves as St Paul warns us that “for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor 11:27). Such reverential remembering prepares us for the next word in our Eucharistic vocabulary: “communion.”

Communion is a very popular word these days, perhaps seen as interchangeable or synonymous with Synodality or conciliarism or unity. This is a nice idea but that is not the primary meaning of the Greek word “koinonia” which is translated as “communion” as we had heard in the second reading: “the blessing-cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a communion with the body of Christ.” Communion is generally understood in a horizontal sense. A better translation of the word is “participation” which implies sharing something in common. What do we Christians share in common? St Paul in the second reading provides the answer - the Body and Blood of Christ. The concept of communion is above all anchored in the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, the reason why we still today speak of the act of consuming the Eucharist as communion. So, the community does not make the Eucharist communion but it is Jesus in the Eucharist which makes our ecclesial community. The Eucharist makes the Church, as St John Paul II taught. Through communion, there is a participation, a communion, a commingling with the life of Christ. It is truly the one Lord, whom we receive in the Eucharist, or better, the Lord who receives us and assumes us into Himself. When we consume bodily nourishment, it is assimilated by the body, becoming itself a part of ourselves. But in the Eucharist, it is not we who assimilate it, but it assimilates us to itself, so that we become in a certain way "conformed to Christ", as Paul says.

Communion with Christ necessarily means communion with the members of His mystical Body. This is beautifully expressed in our Holy Father’s motto which is attributed to St Augustine: “In the One, we are One.” We all are assimilated into Christ and so by means of communion with Christ, united among ourselves. To communicate with Christ is essentially also to communicate with one another. We are no longer each alone, each separate from the other; we are now each part of the other; each of those who receive communion is "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23).

Finally, understanding the Eucharist as both memorial and communion leads us to this question: “what is it” (the meaning of the word “manna”). What is it that we are asked to make a memorial of? What is it that we are asked to communicate and makes us enter into communion with Christ and His mystical Body, the Church? And the answer is given by our Lord Jesus in the gospel: “my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.” And this is the third and last word in our Eucharistic vocabulary – “Real!” We affirm that the Eucharist is truly, really and substantially the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, soul and divinity. This is what we affirm when we assent to the words of the priest or extraordinary minister of holy communion, “the Body of Christ,” with the Hebrew word, “Amen.” At the core of our belief in the Eucharist is that He is really present. When we genuflect before the tabernacle, when we kneel at the words of the consecration, when we say Amen before receiving holy communion, we are ultimately declaring: “Lord Jesus, You are here!”

Today, as we contemplate the mystery of the Eucharist, let us be led to worship Our Lord who lived not just two thousand years ago but who is even now “truly and really” present here in our midst and who now offers His Body and Blood to us so that we may be one with Him and He with us. Not only does this sacred meal allow us to enter into sacred time and bring a past event into the present, it also incorporates the future because we are always looking forward to celebrate the fullness of this meal in the heavenly banquet. Sacred events collapse past, present and future into one mysterious and eternal NOW. And so we echo the words of Eucharistic Prayer IV as we pray:

“Therefore, O Lord, as we now celebrate the memorial of our redemption, we remember Christ’s Death, and his descent to the realm of the dead, we proclaim his Resurrection and his Ascension to your right hand, and as we await his coming in glory, we offer you his Body and Blood, the sacrifice acceptable to you which brings salvation to the whole world.”

What's missing in your life?

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, I came to realise that I had taken many things for granted - a congregation at every Mass. The faithful could also expect a Mass waiting for them at every church and those who lived in urban areas could even pick and choose the time and place based on personal preference and convenience. But all that changed with the pandemic. Even when churches were reopened gradually, attending Mass was a privilege and a luxury because of the radical restriction of numbers and SOPs. I guess for all of us, the suspension of public Masses and closure of churches had helped us see what we had regularly taken for granted. We had received the Eucharist merely out of habit and could only appreciate its irreplaceable value when it was missing from our lives. Perhaps, God allowed this all to happen so that we might reevaluate the way in which we’ve been receiving the Eucharist.

This experience is not without precedent. There have been times throughout history when Christians were prohibited from worship. In the early centuries, attending Mass was not just a dangerous thing but life-threatening, not because there was a raging pandemic that threatened the safety and life of every congregant. Attending Mass could get you killed. In the Year 304, Christians of the northern African region of Abitinae gathered for Mass despite a prohibition on penalty of death. They were arrested and summarily sentenced to death. No one, neither old nor young, was spared. When confronted by the authorities about why they defied the Emperor, they replied, “Sine Dominico non possumus” – “Without Sunday, we cannot live.” Just like one cannot survive without food or oxygen, these Christians understood that they could not live without the Eucharist. They would risk everything, including their personal safety and lives, just to have a taste of the Bread from Heaven.

Can we live without the Eucharist? The pandemic has helped us become aware of how much we take the Eucharist for granted. When we do not eat, we grow weak and become sick. The lack of reception of the Eucharist makes us vulnerable to sin, we literally become spiritually dead. Without the Eucharist, we lose direction in life and we risk losing something far greater - eternal life, our immortal soul’s salvation.

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi was instituted in the 13th century to address this concern. It was a direct result of the private Eucharistic devotion and mystical experiences of a nun, St Juliana of Liège. When Juliana was 16, she had her first vision which recurred subsequently several times during her Eucharistic adoration. Her vision presented the moon in its full splendour, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. This was not the dark patches that one can see on the moon surface on a clear night. It was something entirely different - unnatural.

The Lord made St Juliana understand the meaning of what had appeared to her. The moon symbolised the life of the Church on earth; the opaque line, on the other hand, represented the absence of a liturgical feast: namely, a feast in which believers would be able to adore the Eucharist so as to increase in faith, to advance in the practice of the virtues and to make reparation for offences to the Most Holy Sacrament. In other words, Juliana was shown what was significantly missing from the liturgical life of the Church.

When Pope Urban, who was personally acquainted to St Juliana, finally declared the Feast of Corpus Christi, he did so not because of any personal favour owed to this nun or because they both hailed from the same locality. Some questioned whether it was even necessary to add another feast since the Institution of the Eucharist is already celebrated on Holy Thursday.

But our Lord in the vision granted to St Juliana explained that: “Holy Thursday is more a day of sorrow than of joy,” since it coincided with Good Friday. Pope Benedict XVI also added that: “The Feast of Corpus Christi is inseparable from Holy Thursday, from the Mass in Caena Domini, in which the Institution of the Eucharist is solemnly celebrated. Whereas on the evening of Holy Thursday we relive the mystery of Christ who offers himself to us in the bread broken and the wine poured out.” But he adds, “on the day of Corpus Christi, this same mystery is proposed for the adoration and meditation of the People of God, and the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession through the streets of the cities and villages, to show that the Risen Christ walks in our midst and guides us towards the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi allows the faithful to look at Our Eucharistic Lord with a greater sense of appreciation for the Blessed Sacrament and to tell the world: “this is exactly what you are missing in your lives!” That is why this celebration is marked by Eucharistic processions. These processions specifically are a reminder that we are to share the gift of the Eucharist with the world and make a bold proclamation of our belief in the Real Presence. We cannot control how other people react to Jesus but we can control how we respond to indifference, and our response should ultimately be one of charity. Public processions provide us with an opportunity to be a faithful witness to Christ in a world that has become indifferent or in some cases hostile towards Him. We are declaring to the world: “Without Sunday, without the Eucharist, we cannot live!”

In a world so obviously confused about the nature and purpose of human life, where so many sense something deeply missing and struggle to grasp at straw to fill that empty space, the sacred liturgy rightly celebrated is a most effective tool of evangelisation. In the sacred liturgy it is our Lord Himself who speaks to us and whose grace is at work in and through us, perfecting our nature and transforming it so that it might participate in the very life of God Himself. Thus, the Mass brings our Heavenly Lord down to earth but it also takes us up to Heaven. When the Mass is celebrated with reverence, love and devotion it truly becomes the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider beautifully describes the symbiotic relationship between the Church and the Eucharist: “The Eucharist is at the heart of the Church. When the heart is weak, the whole body is weak. So, when the practice around the Eucharist is weak, then the heart and the life of the Church is weak. And when people have no more supernatural vision of God in the Eucharist then they will start the worship of man, and then also doctrine will change to the desire of man.”

So, today, if you sense that there is something missing in your life, look no further - that something is a person: Jesus Christ. He comes to us in the Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood, to feed us when we are hungry, to quench our thirst when we are thirsty, to accompany us when we are lonely. He alone can fill the emptiness inside of us with joy, and by so doing, give our lives purpose and meaning.

The Perfect Sacrifice

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Year B

Many a young child’s dream and ambition of becoming a doctor had been dashed by one simple fear - they were haemophobic. Not “homophobic” but “haemophobic”, the fear of blood, wounds and injuries. So, if you happen to have this sad condition, today’s feast and its readings, if you had really listened and paid attention to every word, may make your stomach churn. What unites all three readings is the mention of blood and bodies? Today’s feast is definitely a bloody affair!

Why is blood and a corpse involved in today’s feast? It would be stating the obvious that we are speaking of the blood and body of Jesus Christ since this is the proper name of this feast. But to understand why our Lord would sacrifice both His Body and Blood, we would need to understand two concepts in the Bible, that of sacrifice and the covenant.

The idea of sacrifice arises from the first and the highest duty of man, which is to hand himself over, to surrender, to submit himself to God. This sacrifice involves two parts - first, an interior and invisible offering of ourselves to God; and second, this offering must be outwardly and sensibly signified. In other words, one cannot sacrifice by merely intending it and making a mental offering to God. This must be matched by an external sign which signifies and makes visible that internal sign. This is fundamentally the basis of our sacramental theology - outward sign of inward grace.

What the Pharisees were guilty of and which our Lord condemned was that they had confined their sacrifices to outward show but lack the interior disposition necessary to make a true offering of oneself. Virtue signalling is a modern term coined for this. Today, the tendency is reversed. Many modern Christians argue that good intentions are enough and we should disregard external rituals and practices which are considered showy and frivolous. This would explain why so many Christians have abandoned the Holy Mass and even removed the altars from their sanctuaries.

But, for the Jews, the shedding of blood and the immolation (or killing) of the animal was necessary for the atonement of one’s sins. This was not just something which man cooked up in his sadistic blood thirsty mind but was in fact commanded by God. According to Hebrews (9:22), “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” By the very act of offering and giving these animals over to death, men acknowledged that they themselves were deserving of death because of their sins; and in this action, they expressly admitted, that did God will to judge them as their sins deserved, He could in justice inflict death on them. These poor animals would literally be the “scape goats” that take away the sins of the world. But the sad truth, as Hebrews tells us, is that these animal sacrifices could not remove the stain of our sins, nor could they reconcile us with God. A far greater and more perfect sacrifice was necessary.

Before considering that far greater sacrifice, it is necessary to look at another purpose of such blood sacrifices. Blood and sacrifice were also needed in the sealing of covenants. Ancient peoples did not just resort to lawyers and their penmanship to enact pacts with each other. Pacts and covenants were sacred affairs and to make them lasting and their breaking almost impossible, the gods were invoked to not only stand as witnesses to these agreements between mortals but to also be a party to them.

So, from the very beginning, the patriarchs entered into covenants with God by making animal sacrifices - Noah, Abraham and Moses just to name a few. The Mosaic covenant which we heard in the first reading required that the blood of the sacrificed animals be sprinkled on the altar, the tabernacle as well as the people. Just imagine the climatic scene in Stephen King’s Firestarter, where the protagonist Carrie is drenched in pig’s blood. In fact, everything that is to be used in the ritual sacrifice had to be cleansed with blood, not water. Can you picture a more bloody scene than this and happening in the sacred Temple of all places? With the use of blood in the sealing of the covenant, God, in essence, was declaring He would give His life if His promises were broken. There could be no greater encouragement to believers, since God is eternal and can no more break an oath than He can die.

All of these things were only “copies,” or “shadows,” of the better and more perfect covenant to come. The lives of animals could never remove sin; the life of an animal is not a sufficient substitute for a human life. The blood of bulls and goats was a temporary appeasement until the final, ultimate blood covenant was made by Jesus Christ Himself – the God Man. In the second reading, the author of Hebrews tells us that “the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement and they restore the holiness of their outward lives; how much more effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God.” Furthermore, Hebrews adds this claim: “His death took place to cancel the sins that infringed the earlier covenant. The shadows became realities in Christ, who fulfilled all of the Old Testament blood covenants with His own blood.”

We often forget that the Eucharist is the sign which signifies the new covenant of Jesus, and because it is a covenant, it also makes demands of us. Whenever we partake of this sacrifice and covenantal meal, we are declaring what Moses did in the first reading, but in a far more intense and firmer way: “We will observe all the commands that the Lord has decreed.” This becomes a real challenge to your average cafeteria Catholic, and there are many who fit this label. What is a cafeteria Catholic or using a metaphor closer to home - an economy mixed rice Catholic? A cafeteria Catholic is typically defined as one who picks and chooses what Catholic teaching he wants to believe. But the truth of the matter and a bitter pill to swallow, is that Catholics are not free to choose which teachings to obey. The faithful must give “a religious submission of the intellect and will” to the teachings of Christ and His Church. First and foremost, would be the faithful celebration of the sacraments of the Church according to their proper rubrics (rules) and not just adapt and make alterations which suit the celebrant’s preferences. It is hard to justify when claiming that one values Christ but chooses to ignore or reject what His Church teaches. Eschewing cafeteria Catholicism might satisfy our appetite temporarily, but only the full banquet prepared by the Lord can fill our souls.

What is it?

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 

“What is it?” 

With child-like simplicity and curiosity, that was the first verbal response in the form of a question which emanated from the lips of the Israelites when they saw this strange fluffy object on the ground, something which had miraculously materialised out of thin air and which they concluded was God’s gift to them. Manna! The Hebrews did not know what it was, and, with a word-play typical of the Bible, etymologised it as ‘man-hu’, Hebrew for ‘What is it?’ 

The Israelites first crisis in the desert was a lack of water; now comes the next crisis, a lack of food. God answers the Israelites’ call and begins the longest running, continuous miracle in the Old Testament—the daily manna from heaven. Each morning, manna rained down from heaven like the dewfall, and this continued to sustain the Israelites for 40 years during their long track through the desert before it finally stopped when they entered the Promised Land. 

But God was not just contented with providing water from a rock and bread from heaven to sustain the Israelites on their long pilgrimage. The wind, or “ruach,” also directed an abundance of quail over the camp of the Israelites. The Hebrew word ruach is the same word for “spirit.” Thus, the Spirit of God provides the Israelites with the bread of manna from heaven, and the flesh of the quail. God provides bread and flesh for the Israelites, as Christ provides the “bread” and flesh of His body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is our daily manna from heaven, where the bread is transubstantiated into the flesh of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, ruach. He is our daily manna from heaven that sustains us on our desert wanderings in this earthly sojourn, until we cross over into the Promised Land of heaven. Again, the miraculous in Exodus becomes the supernatural in the New Testament. God is not subtle with His symbology. The supernatural Sacrament of the Eucharist is our daily manna from heaven. 

To the Protestant objection to the Catholic preeminence of the Eucharist by proposing that the Word of God should take precedence, citing our Lord’s reply to Satan after the first temptation (“Man does not live on bread alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of God”), we have to remind our separated brethren as did Moses in the first reading that this text actually points to the manna which God provided in the desert. “Remember how the Lord your God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you and know your inmost heart – whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you, he made you feel hunger, he fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known, to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Moses was speaking of the gift of manna as God had promised. 

And in response to the second temptation, our Lord responds, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Matt. 4:7). This time, He’s recalling Deuteronomy 6:16, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” And what happened at Massah? It’s where God had Moses miraculously brought water forth from the rock (Exod. 17:1-7). 

So, our Lord’s first response to Satan recalls the manna in the desert, and His second response recalls the water from the rock. What’s the connexion between these two and the Holy Eucharist? These are the supernatural (or “spiritual”) food and drink that St Paul presents as foreshadowing the Eucharist (1 Cor. 10:1-4): “I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” So, our Lord’s answer to Satan is profoundly Eucharistic. 

This brings us back to the gospel. The context is the discourse which takes place after the miracle of the multiplication of bread and the feeding of the multitude. When the crowds ask for manna in John 6:30-31, they’re falling into the same error as the devil. They want the bread alone, without the theological implications. But our Lord reveals more in His reply: “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (John 6:32-33). Our Lord in today’s gospel reveals His true identity: “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” 

So, when we talk about living off “comes from the mouth of the Lord,” our minds go quickly to Scripture, and that’s not wrong. But the true Word is Jesus Himself. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb. 1:1-2). This Son, Jesus Christ, is the definitive Word of God, the Word made flesh (John 1:1-5, 14), and our spiritual lives need to be rooted in Him. 

So as we gaze upon this white wafer and this gilded chalice, what do we see? We ask, “what is it?” As the Sequence declares: “Bread is made flesh by words from heaven: Into his blood the wine is turned.” 

What is it? 

“The living body is our food; Our drink the ever-precious blood; In each, one undivided Lord.” 

What is it? 

“Behold the bread of angels, sent for pilgrims in their banishment, The bread for God’s true children meant, That may not unto dogs be given.” 

What is it? 

The true manna sent from heaven; the medicine of immortality; the antidote to death. 

What is it? 

Jesus, the living bread from heaven, truly, really, substantially, body and blood, soul and divinity. 

What is it? Not what but who? 

My Lord and my God!

The Greatest Miracle

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

The readings for this feast are interesting. Our story of the Eucharist reaches back in time to the earliest point in Salvation History, bearing historical and spiritual resonance with Christ.

The first reading introduces us to an enigmatic figure, whose background and role in the storyline of Genesis remain obscure but who is mentioned again, but this time with greater elaboration, in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. Although Melchizedek may not be a major figure in Scripture, he’s an important one, so important that he would fuel the imagination of the author of Hebrews and inspire him to make this connexion with Jesus. Hebrews, more than any other book in the bible, tells us that Melchizedek is a key forerunner to Jesus, and his story in Genesis helps us to understand what our Lord was doing when He instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

After Abram (later renamed “Abraham”) had rescued his nephew Lot from a bloody battle with pagan kings, Melchizedek immediately showed up in the story, seemingly out of nowhere. His name, as we are rightly told by the author of Hebrews, means King of Righteousness. He is also described as the King of Salem (many scholars take this to be an ancient name of Jerusalem), the King of Peace. Both titles could easily be ascribed to Jesus, thus reinforcing the link. But perhaps, the most significant connexion with Christ is not to be seen in these titles nor in Melchizedek’s mysterious origins, but in the action of this Old Testament figure.

Melchizedek, after he is summarily introduced, brings out bread and wine. Why did he bring out bread and wine? Was he just being hospitable to his guest, Abram? Was he planning a picnic? The text doesn’t explicitly tell us, but it does give us a clue. Right after it mentions the bread and wine, the text tells us that Melchizedek was a priest. This is very telling. He is the first person in the Bible, to be referred to as a priest. It suggests that the bread and wine were somehow linked to his priesthood, so he did not bring them out just because he thought Abram might have been hungry. Rather, he brought them out because he was a priest, and since priests are by definition people who offer sacrifice, he must have offered them to God as a sacrifice. This interpretation is supported by his next action as a priest - he offers a benediction to Abram.

In response, Abram gives Melchizedek a tithe, a tenth of all the spoils of war, a practice that would be continued by all the tribes of Israel, as they paid an annual tithe to the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe, as compensation for their full-time priestly services. The author of Hebrew even makes this audacious claim that Levi paid these tithes through Abraham, indicating the superiority of the priesthood of Melchizedek over that of Levi’s. This mysterious figure then disappears, after having appeared mysteriously as a brief interlude to Abram’s story. He or at least his name, reappears again in the only other passage in the Old Testament, a key verse from the Psalms (which appears as an antiphon which is sung immediately after a priest has been ordained): “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4) In its original context, this Psalm referred to the royal descendants of King David who ruled over the Israelites, but the New Testament applies it to Jesus (Hebrews 7:17).

We can already see the strong Eucharistic overtones in this passage, the offering of bread and wine being only the most obvious. But all of this was merely a shadowy anticipation of what Christ would accomplish. It was only a partial picture. God is not done in history until He is with us, until He is one of us, until the true King and Priest “after the order of Melchizedek” arrives to offer sacrifice, not just ordinary bread and wine, for us, the true children of Abraham.

Next, let us consider today’s Gospel - the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Only one miracle of Jesus is recorded in all four Gospels and it is this. We might find it strange that on the Feast of Corpus Christi, instead of giving us an account of the Last Supper where the Eucharist was instituted, the Gospel focuses on this miracle. Despite modern popular explanations given to this story, it must be reiterated that this is a miracle of multiplication and not a “miracle” of sharing. Modernists want always to reduce the supernatural to the natural. Hence, they say that this event was really about how people spontaneously started to share the food they had, but hadn’t told anyone about.

But no matter how spectacular this miracle is, it is merely another foreshadowing of a greater miracle – it looks forward to another miraculous feeding at the Last Supper – the Eucharist. Although, the Gospel does not give us one of the narratives of the Last Supper, the second reading does – it is St Paul accounting the tradition that had been passed down to him, which he attributes directly to the Lord: “this is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you.” Note the manner in which he describes this event, as having received it first-hand, even though we all know that he was not present in the Upper Room during the Last Supper. Consider the parallels. Both events were proximate to Passover. It was evening. Those present all reclined. Christ took, blessed and broke the bread. He gave thanks (from the Greek root – eucharisteo) and gave it to the disciples.

Starting from the distant past of Melchizedek’s offering, we move through the manna of the Exodus to the new miraculously multiplied bread to the true bread from heaven, the bread transformed into Christ’s own Body and Blood, which is Itself a foretaste of the new creation and the world to come. One miracle points to a greater one. Instead of being fed bread that can satisfy the body, we are given bread from heaven that will last forever! The Eucharist may seem less spectacular than the miracle of multiplication, but it is in no way inferior. In fact, the miracle of the Eucharist is God’s greatest miracle, and because it is not something which can be recognised by our senses, it is one that calls for greater faith. God deigns to give us, under the guise of mere bread, His very Self. The Eucharist, the Bread of Life, the food of angels, sustains our pilgrimage on this side of eternity. The Body of Christ is broken and given to the multitudes during the Mass.

The beauty of the miracle occurring at each Mass—that Jesus becomes really, truly and substantially present under the forms of mere bread and wine—grounds our faith and reflects the words our Lord spoke: “I am the Bread of Life. He who feeds on my Flesh and drinks my Blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (Jn 6:35, 54-56) This is no small matter—what an incredible gift from God! We must, therefore, never forget that when we participate at Mass, we witness a miracle, and we participate in this very miracle through the reception of Holy Communion, we share in the Divine Life of our Saviour. Let our petition echo the words of the Sequence: “Come then, good shepherd, bread divine, still show to us thy mercy sign; Oh, feed us still, still keep us thine; So may we see thy glories shine in fields of immortality.”

Truly, Really, Substantially Present

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Two weeks ago, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Pentecost. And as our Lord had promised, the Holy Spirit is given to the Church, to us, so that we can be led to the complete Truth. Before the Apostles received the Holy Spirit, much of what our Lord had taught them remained a fuzzy mystery. They not only struggled in their understanding but also in their faith. But with the coming of the Spirit of Truth, their understanding and imagination were now expanded beyond their natural capacity.

Beginning with last Sunday, the Church invites us to contemplate a series of the most profound mysteries of faith. Last Sunday, we contemplated the central mystery of our faith - the Most Holy Trinity - One God in three distinct persons - a mystery which is bigger than the universe and escapes rationalising by even the most erudite geniuses on this earth. But the mysteries of faith do not only come in mega cosmic proportions like the dogma of the Holy Trinity; they can also be found in the seemingly unimpressive and mundane objects of our world. This week, we are asked to focus on something equally baffling, though tangible at the same time. It is the Most Holy Eucharist - that is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ fully present, truly, really, substantially, body and blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist.

The real presence takes the human mind to the very limits of its capacity. After the consecration, the priest at every Mass proclaims that the Eucharist is a mysterium fidei, a mystery of faith. In the end we have to acknowledge that the mystery is ineffable and should be greeted with wonder and amazement. It is a truth that only the mind of God can fully understand. Nevertheless, God in His love has revealed this truth to us. God has not revealed Himself simply to mystify us, but to save us. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.” (John 6:52).

The Church accepts the real presence as a matter of faith, because it is contained in the Word of God, as attested by Scripture and tradition. Our Lord said clearly as we had heard in today’s gospel, “This is my body ... this is my blood”, and in the controversy surrounding His teachings on the Bread of Life, He insisted that He was not just using metaphors. “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”. (Jn 6: 55-56) Many of the disciples found this saying difficult to accept and chose to part company with Him, but our Lord refused to revise His audacious claims to win them back. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church have confidently proclaimed the real presence century after century, notwithstanding objections and misconceptions. The Council of Trent defended this belief against the incredulity of the Protestants and gave a full exposition of the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and that of the Real Presence.

In describing Christ’s presence in this sacrament, the Council of Trent used three adverbs, “truly, really, and substantially”. These three adverbs are the keys that help us understand and explain the nature of Christ’s Eucharistic Presence. They may appear to be repetitive and superfluous, but each adverb takes us beyond another layer of truth.

“Truly” is a common word often used by the Lord in the Fourth Gospel. It translates from the Hebrew “Amen.” In saying that Christ is truly contained under the Eucharistic species, the Council repudiated the Protestant argument. The Eucharist is not a mere sign or figure pointing to a body that is absent, perhaps somewhere in the heavens. Christ’s body and blood are “truly”, not symbolically nor figuratively present in the consecrated bread and wine.

Secondly, the presence is real. That is to say, it is objectively real. It is objective because it does not depend on the thoughts or feelings of the minister or the communicants. The body and blood of Christ are present in the sacrament because of the promise of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, by the words and actions of a duly ordained minister. In so teaching that the presence is “real,” the Church rejects the view that faith is the instrument that brings about Christ’s presence in the sacrament. Faith does not make Christ present. Christ is present when the priest speaks the word of consecration over the bread and wine. But faith is needed if we want Christ’s presence to bear fruit within us. To receive the sacrament without faith is unprofitable, even sinful, but the lack of faith does not render the presence unreal. To put it simply, Christ being present in the Eucharist does not depend on you or your feelings. But how the Eucharist affects you, depends on you. So, if you see no changes in yourself after attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion, don’t blame Christ. You have only yourself to blame.

Thirdly, the Church teaches us that Christ’s presence in the sacrament is substantial. “Substance” denotes the basic reality of the thing, i.e., what it is in itself. For example, I am in substance a human being, a man. The white grainy stuff which I eat every day is substantially rice. Although appearances may change, for example water can take various forms (it can be solid as in ice, gaseous as in steam or fluid), its substance remains the same – it is still water but under different forms. Water is “transformed.” But what happens at the consecration is different. After consecration, the bread and wine are changed; but not “transformed” in the sense that the consecrated species will still look like and taste like, bread and wine. But there is a substantial change in that they cease to be what they were and become what they were not. The consecrated bread may still look like bread and taste like bread, likewise with the wine, but they are no longer bread and wine. They are now Christ’s body and blood in substance. The Church has coined the unique term “transubstantiation” to designate this process.

Although the mystery of the real presence certainly stretches our powers of comprehension to the utmost, just like the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, it is not simply a puzzle meant to test us or condemn us to eternal confusion. Rather, it is a consoling sign of the love, power, and ingenuity of our Divine Saviour. He willed to bring Himself into intimate union with Christians, and to do so in a way that suits our nature as embodied spirits; beings needing both physical nourishment for our survival, and spiritual refreshment for eternal life.

Finally, the Eucharist instituted by Christ invites us to look in two directions - to call to mind the crucifixion of Christ, who shed His blood for our redemption and to prefigure the everlasting banquet of the blessed in the heavenly Jerusalem. The Eucharist has the singular power to recapture the past, transform the present, and anticipate the future because it contains the Lord of history truly, really, and substantially, body and blood, soul and divinity.

If we really understood, we would die with joy

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Let’s be honest. Out of all the teachings of the Catholic Church (and we have quite a number of teachings to defend; for example, the Holy Trinity, the infallibility of the Pope, the cult of Mary and the saints) by far one of the most outrageous, unimaginable, and seemingly ludicrous is the dogma of Jesus Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist. We are not just stating that it is merely a symbolic presence that flows out of our sentimental attachment to the actions and words of Jesus, but that He is really truly present in the Eucharist. In light of such a seemingly ridiculous claim, it should at least pique one’s interest how so many millions of people, including some of the most brilliant minds in all of history, have believed it. Do we all need to have our heads checked?

What is it that we Catholics believe in or should believe in? The Council of Trent dogmatically defined it in this way: “After the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ…is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of [the bread and wine]” because the “whole substance of the bread [is turned] into the Body, and the whole substance of the wine [is turned] into the Blood.” It is not just enough to state that we believe that Jesus is “really” present, we have to use a string of adjectives to emphasise this truth beyond any shadow of doubt.

This means that after the consecration, there is no longer bread or wine but only Jesus’ whole Person: His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. The Church teaches this not as a metaphor, sign, or symbol but as literally true. Any person, therefore, who has gone to a Catholic Mass can say just as truly as any of the Apostles who personally walked, talked, and ate with Him,  that they have been in the same room as Jesus.

Although it is relatively easy to understand this dogma, what becomes difficult is explaining how to make sense of it. To do this, a bit of philosophy is needed. Aristotle asserts that every changeable being has a “substance” and “accidents.” Substance is that which remains the same about a thing even after it undergoes change. It is what is essential to it, what the thing truly is. A thing’s substance is its “what-ness.” The accidents, on the other hand, are all those characteristics that exist in a substance, but that are not essential to what it truly is. For example, I am substantially a human person. I have been a human person from the time I was conceived in my mother’s womb. I was born human. I was human when I was 12 years old. Now at 53, I am still human (I hope). But I look quite different now than when I was 12 years old or when I was a baby. I’ve grown in size. Perhaps, I possess less hair on my head. My shape has also changed. But, all of these are accidents. Even though these accidents may change, my substance as a human person has not.

Using these distinctions to explain the Eucharist, St. Thomas Aquinas explains at the consecration, the substance of bread and wine—what the thing really is—ceases to be and is replaced by Jesus Himself. This is why the dogma is called “Transubstantiation,” meaning a “change of substance.” However, unlike all other substantial changes, this change does not also involve a change in accidents. After the priest has consecrated the bread and wine, it still looks like bread and wine, tastes like bread and wine, smells like bread and wine. But this is the amazing truth about this miracle – we say that it is no longer bread and wine. It is the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The accidents or non-essential characteristics of bread and wine remain the same. They have not changed. But the substance has changed. It is no longer bread and wine, but Christ truly, really, substantially present.

That is the reason why Saint Thomas Aquinas could confidently insert these words in the first two lines of his Eucharistic Hymn, Adoro Te (the popular English version is known as Humbly we adore thee), “I devoutly adore you, hidden deity, Who are truly hidden beneath these appearances.” Imagine that: God who hides in plain sight – “hidden deity … hidden beneath these appearances” of bread and wine. Although this might sound crazy, remember the religion we follow. We believe that the infinite God became man, the Word became flesh, the Invisible Deity became visible in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Although no doctor with any microscope could discover God hiding in the consecrated bread and wine, He still is. And why should we believe this? Because our Lord expressly says so, “‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote, “Since then [Jesus] Himself declared and said of the Bread, ‘This is My Body,’ who shall dare to doubt?”

Once we come to accept this great truth of transubstantiation, we realise in a new way God’s humble and immense love for us. Not only did He become man in the Incarnation, but He also instituted the Eucharist so that until the end of time He would never be separated from us. God who became one of us, allows Himself to be consumed by us, so that He may truly be one with us, and we with Him. Although He knew that in the Eucharist He would be abused, trampled, and disgraced countless times, yet He saw it as a small price if even one humble and contrite person would receive Him in faith. In the face of such a beautiful mystery, then, it is no wonder Saint Thomas Aquinas would cry while elevating the host at Mass, knowing the greatest love story of all time lay before him. As Saint John Marie Vianney reminds us, “if we really understood the Mass, we would die with joy.”

O Saving Sacrifice

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

As visitors enter our Church for the first time, they would most likely be captivated or dazzled by the size and prominence given to the two geometric shapes that form the backdrop of the sanctuary - the chalice where the Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is contained, and the host-like medallion perched above it, a symbol of the Blessed Sacrament, the Precious Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But now with the recent renovations to our sanctuary, that very same medallion now boasts of a beautiful and colourful mosaic. Most people can discern that this is a figure of a lamb sitting on some sort of dais. Well, it isn’t a dias. It’s actually the Book (or scroll) with seven seals mentioned in Chapter 5 of the Book of the Apocalypse.

St John’s vision in the Book of the Apocalypse introduces us to this scene of the scroll with seven seals. Everyone in the court of God is extremely concerned to the point of despair, in knowing that no one is worthy to break those seals. But then finally One emerges, the only one who can open the seals and read the scroll. It is not a powerful, ravening predator with dripping claws and fangs but a weak, vulnerable prey animal that has been mortally wounded – a Lamb. Who is the Lamb? I believe you already know the answer. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the son of David, the Lion of Judah, the King of the new and heavenly Jerusalem, and the firstborn is that unblemished lamb, who offers a perpetual, timeless, everlasting sacrifice of praise of Himself to the Father. Christ’s sacrifice has ended all ineffective, repetitive, bloody animal sacrifice that never did any good anyway.  He is the perfect holocaust or victim. In fact, the word “host” which we use to refer to the communion bread, is derived from “hostia” which means “victim” or “sacrifice.”

But there is more to the Lamb who takes on the role of a “saving sacrifice” (O Salutaris Hostia). Placed here in the Book of the Apocalypse, He acts as Judge of both the living and the dead. Thus the opening of the seals releases God’s judgment and wrath, in order to clean the earth of evil in preparation for the Messianic Age. But this vision in the Book of the Apocalypse is not meant to be a pronouncement of what “must” come about – a future written in stone. Rather, it is meant to be a warning – a warning of what “might” come about, if we fail to heed the stern warnings of the vision. That is why every time we approach the Eucharist, we must remember that we are coming before the glory of the Lamb that was slain for our redemption, the King of the new and heavenly Jerusalem, the Judge of both the living and the dead. At every mass, we are rehearsing that Final Day of Judgment.

How then is the Eucharist connected to judgment? In the second reading taken from Chapter 11 of St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we are introduced to the words of institution, the words of consecration which the priests, for centuries thereafter until the present time, use at every mass. Omitted in the text are the following words by St Paul: “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. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.” (vv. 27-32)

“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.”  Now that language is actually like civil judicial language. Somebody who's practically guilty of murder or causing physical harm to some person’s body or desecrating a corpse is guilty of the body and blood. For St. Paul, the Eucharist being Christ and thus God himself, communion is not only an opportunity to eat and drink salvation, but also an opportunity to eat and drink judgment on oneself.

And for St Paul these dangers are not just theoretical, just as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not merely symbolic. To receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin is playing with fire of the worst sort. That is why St. Paul teaches that examining oneself is a prerequisite for worthy reception of the Eucharist. If that is violated, Holy Communion has the opposite of the desired effect. Rather than bringing the blessing of union with our Lord, it brings condemnation. Rather than offering an antidote to death and an elixir of immortality, the Eucharist can prove to be fatally poisonous to a person whose spiritual immunity has been compromised by the infestation of sin. Therefore, we are required to abstain from Holy Communion when there is mortal sin and should only come forward to receive Holy Communion after we’ve made a sacramental confession.

The Didache, written sometime between 90 and 110 A.D, provides us with an early understanding that the Eucharist was not merely a table fellowship with sinners but rather a sacral meal that presupposed grace and communion with the Church. “If anyone is holy, let him approach; if anyone is not so, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen. … But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptised into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, “Give not that which is holy to the dogs” (Didache 10, 9). In this text, we see a tradition that is scriptural, ancient, and clear: the Eucharist is a sacred meal that requires of us something more than just “showing up.”

It is here that we discover the Scriptural roots of the theology and practice of fencing the altar, of excommunication, of withholding communion, of refraining from partaking in Holy Communion when one is not in a state of grace. And that theology and practice is in turn rooted in the thoroughly biblical idea that there are different sorts of sins, some minor, some major, some venial, some mortal. Neither Paul nor the Church after him is being legalistic or unmerciful or mean in exercising Eucharistic discipline. Ultimately, if encountering God directly in the Eucharist is dangerous, even deadly, withholding it should be seen as an act of charity, an act of love. It is not an act of love to give someone something that may kill them.

In our present day where notions of inclusivity and unity seem paramount, love has been reduced to simply giving people what they want. To a large degree, such unity is a contrived unity, one that overlooks the truth necessary for honest, real, substantive unity. Such a notion of communion is shallow at best, and a lie at worst. For St Paul, truth requires conversion and repentance. Communion is a matter of doctrine (faith and morals) and not just hospitality; it is a matter of life and death. But no one is forever barred from this life-giving food. Reconciliation and conversion opens the door to Holy Communion. A worthy reception of the Sacrament of Confession cleanses, purifies, enlightens and sanctifies the soul to receive the Eucharist with a better and more fervent disposition. As Pope Emeritus Benedict so wisely puts it: “The Eucharist is not itself the sacrament of reconciliation, but in fact it presupposes that sacrament. It is the sacrament of the reconciled, to which the Lord invites all those who have become one with him; who certainly still remain weak sinners, but yet have given their hand to him and have become part of his family.” The Lamb of the Book of the Apocalypse stands as a sign, a warning to those who are in need of repentance and a sign of hope to those who are committed to the path of repentance and conversion. For the latter, the Lamb will no longer be seen as a stern judge, but He will be their “lighted torch”, illuminating the heavenly city that would no longer “need the sun or the moon for light” (Rev 11:22).