The Real Presence of Christ: The Eucharist Makes The Church

The Real Presence of Christ: The Eucharist Makes The Church

 
“A new Pew Research Center survey finds that most self-described Catholics don’t believe this core teaching. In fact, nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) say they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.” - Pew Research Center

 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” - Matthew 26:26 (NABRE)

 
Introduction

 
In Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, there is found the oldest passage in the New Testament concerning the actual celebration of the Eucharist:

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. - 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (NABRE)

 
There is a tendency to define the Church solely as an institution, while neglecting that the reality of the Church is also and most importantly an event, the Eucharistic event. By reflecting upon the nature of the Eucharistic celebration we discover that the Church is not just another human institution or even just another religion within the pantheon of world religions, rather it is the event in which God transforms humanity through The Prayer of Great Thanksgiving = The Eucharist.  By receiving together as brothers and sisters in the Lord, his Body and Blood, the faithful constitute the Ecclesia of God.

Recent studies have shown that as regular participation in the public worship of the Church has plummeted in the “western world” in general and in the United States in particular, so has belief in the Real Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  At the heart of this crisis of faith is a lack of clarity of doctrine and teaching in three significant areas: Catechesis, Liturgy, and Theology.

Catechesis

Unfortunately, with the closing of the Second Vatican Council there was nothing resembling an “official catechism” to help the faithful make sense of the new directions in which the Catholic Church was about to embark upon.  This created the now infamous dichotomy between the spirit of the Council and the actual teachings of the Council. 

In the United States and other English speaking areas of the Church, many unofficial catechisms emerged.  Some like the so-called Dutch Catechism were translations into the English language and others like Christ Among Us, were personal theological speculations masquerading as catechisms.  It was not until The Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated in 1992 by Pope Saint John Paul II, some twenty-seven years after the closing of the Second Vatican Council, that an official Catechism was available for catechists, clergy, and the entire faithful, as an aid in learning the teachings of the Church.  

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this concerning how the Eucharist makes the Church: 

I. The Eucharist - Source and Summit of Ecclesial Life

1324 The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life."134 "The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch."135

1325 "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."136

1326 Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.137

1327 In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."138

134 LG 11.

135 PO 5.

136 Congregation of Rites, instruction, Eucharisticum mysterium, 6.

137 Cf. ⇒ 1 Cor 15:28.

138 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 4, 18, 5: PG 7/l, 1028.     

- The Catechism of the Catholic Church

 
It is of extreme importance that in our age of secularism, where Christianity has been expelled from the classroom, that the Church prepare youth, and all those preparing for the Sacraments in an in-depth and extensive manner.  That they be properly and thoroughly catechized on the beliefs of the Church, the history of the Church, and the worship of the Church. 

Liturgy

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us of the essential elements of the liturgy by which Our Lord promised he would be present to his Church:                                                   

 1352 The anaphora: with the Eucharistic Prayer - the prayer of thanksgiving and consecration - we come to the heart and summit of the celebration …the Church gives thanks to the Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, for all his works: creation, redemption, and sanctification. 

1353 In the epiclesis, the Church asks the Father to send his Holy Spirit on the bread and wine, so that by his power they may become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and so that those who take part in the Eucharist may be one body and one spirit.

In the institution narrative, the power of the words and the action of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine Christ's body and blood, his sacrifice offered on the cross once for all.

- The Catechism of the Catholic Church 

The firm belief that Christ is present in the bread and wine offered by the Holy Church to the Holy Trinity, to be transformed into the Body and Blood of its Savior, is held as an article of faith by all the Ancient Churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Ancient Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Orthodox).

In the disciples encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus in Luke’s Gospel, there is given to the Church the Apostolic Witness that Christ is really present in Word (Sacred Scripture) and Eucharistic Mystery (Bread and Wine):

And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” - Luke 24:30-32 (NABRE)

 
The Church is the Body of Christ in the world because its Eucharistic Lord and Savior, is present in the Holy Mysteries given to the faithful.  It is important that the Eucharistic Liturgy reflect the ancient dictum of “lex orandi, let credendi” (the rule of prayer, is the rule of belief).  It is at attending and participating in the communal worship of the Church, that the faithful are most exposed to the beliefs of the Church.  

As a priest of an Eastern Catholic Church, celebrating an ancient liturgy; it appears often that the Roman Mass has been subjugated to the whims of contemporary tastes and culture. With little regard at times for the necessity of sacred space and solemn worship, in conveying the timeless truths of the Sacred Mysteries we celebrate as the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Declaration on the Sacred Liturgy by the Second Vatican Council, Sancrosanctum Concilium never envisaged a Divine Liturgy or Mass where the priest would become actor, entertainer, and often more central to the liturgy than the Eucharist itself.  The document never speaks of an army of  extraordinary ministers, or communion in the hand, or liturgical music dominated by everything but sacred instruments.  

What needs to be recaptured is a sense of the sacred in all its dimensions.  What we do at the Eucharistic Liturgy is not merely a meal but a Holy Sacrifice, we worship at not only a table, but a Holy Altar, we are not only fulfilling a personal obligation, but we are worshiping with the Angels, Saints, and the Church Universal, we not only consume bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of Christ.  This Divine Supper which we are participating in deserves the best we have to offer: from the building, to the vestments, to the music, and the hearts we bring full of hope and longing for salvation, love, and peace.     

Theology

Theology today has increasingly locked itself in the ivory towers of academia and removed itself from the living, praying Church of the faithful.  Theologians it seems have forgotten that the Fathers of the Church are forever “the” example of doing theology.  The Fathers of the Church were pastors, monks, nuns, bishops, confessors of the faith, and often martyrs.  The theology of the Fathers was brilliant in scholarship, but also profound reflections based on living the Christian life; rooted in the celebration of the sacraments, austerity of lifestyle, and embracing the Cross of Christ in their lives.  

We find in the era of the Fathers debate on many issues, but seldom about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or how the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ is foundational to the reality of the Church.  These truths were not open to debate for they understood that the whole edifice of the Church stood upon them.  

Theology today needs to share the fruits of contemplation upon the significance of the New Testament Church and the Church of the First Christian Millennium.

Reflections on such important texts as the Road to Emmaus, where Luke walks us through the various ways in which the Son of God, Jesus Christ has been “really” present throughout salvation history. Christ was present in the Jewish Scriptures, he was present in his Incarnation, in his earthly ministry, in his Cross, Death, and Resurrection, and by the power of the Father’s Holy Spirit he is Real and Present in the Eucharist, forming the faithful into His Body, the Church. 

In the same way in which St. Athanasius responded to the heresy of Arianism by proclaiming that if Christ is not eternally the Son of the Father, we are to be pitied for we are dead in our sins.  We must say that if Christ is not Real and Present in the Eucharist we are to be pitied for we have no Church of Christ, but merely a social club detached from the saving grace of God. 

Conclusion

To deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist creates a crisis within Biblical interpretation, where the data of Scripture clearly reveals to the faithful the presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  It creates a crisis within Christology in so far that it separates the abiding and real presence of the Lord from his Church which is his living body because his body makes the Church.  Lastly, it creates a crisis within Pneumatology by denying the power of the Holy Spirit to communicate to the faithful the continual real presence of Christ in all the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist.  

The Church must teach the truth, worship in truth, and never cease to contemplate the truth.  The disciplines of Catechesis, Worship, and Theology must communicate to the faithful the Real Presence of Christ.

Rev. David A. Fisher,