The Real Presence

This is based on a talk at the annual Legion of Mary Auxiliary Luncheon at St. Vincent Ferrer, DelRay Beach, Florida.

To Jesus through Mary. All of our Marian devotion rightly points us towards her Son, our Lord. We ask her to intercede for us with the Risen Christ. For we are an Easter people; a people of the Resurrection. We preach Christ crucified, and Christ resurrected. And we preach Christ among us today, in the Eucharist.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us at #1324 that the Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life." “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…”

“Namely Christ Himself.” Not Christ as a symbol; not a reminder of Christ, but Christ Himself. The Real Presence.

The Real Presence. That one teaching might just be the biggest theological difference between Catholic and non-Catholic Christians. And even between Catholics who have studied their faith and those who may only be nominally Catholic. At least one study found that only 63% of Catholics personally believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ at the consecration. Moreover, 50% of Catholics don’t know this to be a teaching of the Church!

The Real Presence. Transubstantiation. People claim that concept is too hard to understand, but I have over two decades experience of teaching CCD, and from second grade on, our kids could say, spell, and define transubstantiation: the conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ at consecration, only the appearances of bread and wine still remaining. Maybe it takes the faith of a child to believe in what cannot be seen.

The Real Presence. The hymn “God With Hidden Majesty” (which tradition tells us was written by the great Doctor of the Church St. Thomas Aquinas) succinctly sets this mystery out, especially in the third verse:

God lay stretched upon the cross, only man could die.

Here upon the altar God and man both lie;

This I firmly hold as true, this is my belief,

And I seek salvation, like the dying thief.

The Real Presence. In second grade, we learned about Saint Tarcisius, a twelve-year-old acolyte during one of the fierce Roman persecutions of the third century. Each day, from a secret meeting place in the catacombs where Christians gathered for Mass, a deacon would be sent to the prisons to carry the Eucharist to those Christians condemned to die. At one point, there was no deacon to send and so Tarcisius was sent carrying the "Holy Mysteries" to those in prison. On the way, he was stopped by boys his own age who were not Christians but knew him as a playmate and lover of games. He was asked to join their games, but this time he refused and the crowd of boys noticed that he was carrying something. Somehow, he was also recognized as a Christian, and the small gang of boys, anxious to view the Christian "Mysteries," became a mob and turned upon Tarcisius with fury. He went down under the blows. Someone – some say a soldier, some say a fellow Christian, - drove off the mob and rescued the young acolyte.

The mangled body of Tarcisius was carried back to the catacombs, but the boy died on the way from his injuries. He was buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus, and his relics are claimed by the church of San Silvestro in Capite.

Some versions of the story say Tarcisius died holding the Host; others that the Host miraculously disappeared. But I tell you this story to illustrate what the Real Presence is. Tarcisius knew he was carrying the Holiest of Holies. He didn’t set down his bundle to join in boyhood games. He didn’t offer his friends a peek. He didn’t set it aside to save his own life! At the age of 12, he lay down his life not for a piece of bread that “symbolizes” Christ, not for a piece of bread that “represents” Christ, not for a piece of bread that “reminds us of” Christ, but for a piece of bread than had become the Body of Christ.

The Real Presence. In fourth grade, we learned about Saint Isaac Jogues, a Jesuit priest, a missionary and martyr who traveled and worked among the Iroquois, Huron, and other Native populations in North America in the early 1600s. He was the first European to name Lake George, calling it Lac du Saint Sacrement (Lake of the Blessed Sacrament). There came a time when he, his companions and a group of Christian Hurons were heading back from Quebec City when they were waylaid by a war party of the Mohawk Nation, part of the Iroquois Confederacy. They were taken captive, beaten, brutally tortured. Jogues suffered a particular horror; he was beaten with sticks, his fingernails torn out; the ends of his fingers gnawed until finger bones were visible; his thumb amputated.

That mutiliation of his hand kept Jogues from being able to celebrate Mass after his escape, as Canon law at the time prohibited the touching of the Eucharist by anyone other than a priest, and then only using his thumb and forefinger. Pope Urban VIII considered Jogues a "living martyr," and gave him dispensation to say Mass with his mutilated hand.

The Real Presence. I was a few years out of High School when the use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion became widespread in our area. My Godfather and his wife were asked to consider the ministry. Joan was enthusiastic, but Jack was not so sure. He had learned those same stories of the saints, of Saint Tarcisius and Saint Isaac Jogues, and he didn’t consider himself to be a saint. Jack went to see the pastor, and told him that he was flattered to be asked, but that he didn’t consider himself to be worthy to touch the Host. His pastor told him “None of us are.”

The Real Presence. Watch toddlers go up to Communion with their parents. They know; they have been told by their parents that we approach the altar to receive Jesus. But week after week,

they only see Mom and Dad take a little round white thing. So week after week, those toddlers come up, and try to peer into the ciborium, try to look into the Chalice. I think they expect to see a tiny Jesus sitting there, waving at them. They believe, because their hearts are open.

The Real Presence. In the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, God sends down manna from heaven for the Israelites to eat as they wander in the desert. In Wisdom 16: 20-21, we are told “God nourished His people with food of angels and furnished them bread from heaven, ready to hand, untoiled-for, endowed with all delights and conforming to every taste. For this substance of yours revealed your sweetness toward your children, and serving the desire of the one who received it, was changed to whatever flavor each one wished. Manna may be seen as a foreshadowing of Eucharist; people being given food from heaven. Manna was food for the body; Eucharist is food for the soul. But in what it perhaps my favorite sentence in the entire Old Testament, it is said of manna “mere men ate the food of angels.” Now we have something much greater, not food eaten by angels, but food for the soul which is Christ Himself, adored and glorified by the angels.

The Real Presence. I have been ridiculed for believing this. I have been told I am “too smart” to believe it. I have been told that I am wrong, that the Church does not teach that. I have been told that makes me a cannibal. (The answers are, No, I am smart enough to believe it; Yes, that is exactly what the church teaches; and No, just no, it’s not cannibalism, and really, get a grip.)

The Real Presence. This I firmly hold as true, this is my belief, and I seek salvation, like the dying thief.

In memory of Saint Isaac Jogues and all the other martyrs, Jesuit or not, I would like to close with the motto of the Society of Jesus: ad majorem Dei gloriam: "To the greater glory of God”. Let us take that as our motto in all things.