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I wanted to talk about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and I did, briefly. Most of the homily is about scandal.
Readings: JOS 24:1-2A,
15-17, 18B; PS 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; EPH 5:21-32; JN
6:60-69
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on Scandal
This homily was the 9th in the series. Click on the links below for the other homilies.
Below are my two bulletin articles mention in the homily about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. My plan was to have my homily closely follow these articles with some of my own personal spiritual journey added to it. Instead, my homily was mostly about scandal, but below is some great information about the Eucharist.
Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist Part 1
Jesus
spoke about eating His flesh and drinking His blood in the Gospel in John 6. He refers to Himself as the Bread from
Heaven. When many disciples were
disgusted with the idea of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, they
grumbled about it. Surely, Jesus
couldn’t mean really eating His flesh, could He? Jesus responded by using even stronger language
to make His point that He means His real flesh and blood, not a sign or
symbol. The crowd then dispersed and
many of them returned to their former way of life. It seems Jesus would rather have the crowd
believe that they must eat His real flesh and drink His real blood, and leave
Him, then have them stay and believe that He meant it only figuratively.
Our
tradition hold His Real Presence as well.
Early Church Fathers such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple
of St. John the Apostle, and St. Irenaeus, who was a disciple of St. Polycarp
(a disciple of St. John the Apostle), held in their teaching that the Eucharist
is really Jesus Christ. That He is truly
present in what appears to be bread and wine.
The idea that the Eucharist is only a sign or symbol was condemned as
heresy in the 11th century, because the bread and wine really become the Body
and Blood of Jesus Christ. The Real
Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is infallibly taught by the Council
of Trent in the 16th Century.
Still
it can be difficult for us to accept this teaching. St. Thomas Aquinas can help us. First, we can know by faith and by our sense
of sound that it is different. When the
priest speaks the words of Christ “This is my Body” and “This is the chalice of
my Blood” we know that what once was bread and wine is now Jesus Christ. The substance changes. A substance is what a thing is. “Sub” meaning under and “stance” meaning
stand. What stands under the appearance
is what a thing is. Usually the
appearance corresponds to what it is, but not so with the Eucharist. (To be Continued…)
Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist Part 2
(Continued from the previous bulletin…)
Let
us think of a manikin covered in a ski suit.
What is it? A manikin. We see the height as well as the positioning
of the arms and legs and the color, texture, and size of the ski suit on the
manikin. What if we came back later and
saw what looked like the same manikin based on the height, position, etc but
without our knowing it a person of the same height put on the ski suit and
stood where the manikin was. What is
it? This time it is a person, although
he appeared to be the same as the manikin.
It’s not a perfect analogy, because if you remove the mask you can see
the person, and with the Eucharist all that you can physically see is the
appearance of the bread, but hopefully this expresses the idea of the
appearances remaining while the substance changes.
Someone
might object to this since it still looks like bread, so it seems that the
Eucharist is deceiving us. This is a
good objection, but it is not deception in that what we see is the real
appearances of bread since only the substance, not the appearances, was
changed. Remember the manikin, and how
the appearance was the same even though the second time it was a person not a
manikin. God upholds the appearances with the substance of bread no longer
being present. So, we can think of the
Eucharist as a double miracle, first that bread and wine become Jesus Christ,
and secondly, that the appearances remain.
Thanks
be to God, for the second miracle of the appearances of bread and wine
remaining. Otherwise, it would be really
difficult to eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of Jesus Christ as He commanded
us to do. Also, if the Eucharist wasn’t
really Jesus, then we would be worshiping unleaven bread instead of God, which
is idolatry and breaks the first of the Ten Commandments. So, let us thank God for the gift of Jesus
Christ truly present in the Most Holy Eucharist.
