Thursday, September 22, 2005

The Real Presence

Last week I went on retreat at the Trappist Abbey of Gesthemani in Kentucky. Gesthemani is where Thomas Merton lived until his death in 1968. When I checked in they had a stack of these prayer cards on the counter. It says, “We will never fully appreciate the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist until we see the intimate connection that exists between the mystery of the Holy Eucharist and the mystery of the Church, the Body of Christ.” Thomas Merton

I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out exactly what he meant. What is this “intimate connection”? I knew that Merton didn’t just go around writing prayer cards, so this had to have come from somewhere. There had to be more to it. So I asked around. Nobody knew where the quote came from.

In the library I found a book that Father Merton wrote called “The Living Bread.” It was old and falling apart. It was written in 1956, almost 50 years ago, but the stuff is as good today as it was then. I spent the better part of the week reading the book and copying the good parts by hand.

Just a side note, but it’s an interesting sensation to be sitting in a Monastery hand-copying a book that was written just down the hall nearly 50 years ago. I felt very monk-like.

When I got home, I went on-line to Amazon.com and was able to buy the book.

So, what did Merton say is this intimate connection between the mystery of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Church, the Body of Christ?

St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians “Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread”. [xvii] In eating the sacramental Body of Christ we are absorbed into the Mystical Body of Christ. It’s that “mystical connection that Merton was talking about.

But, couldn’t we be connected just by eating ordinary bread? Does it have to be the Body of Christ? Yes, it does. Every day millions of people eat McDonald’s hamburgers but that doesn’t make them connected in any way. It’s just random folks eating random meals. But when we partake of Christ’s actual Body and Blood, we are connected in a mystical way to every Catholic in every church in every corner of the world. Like the song says, “We are one body, one body in Christ.”

Fr. Merton writes, “Our life of Eucharistic prayer and adoration is, in fact, the beginning of that contemplation of God in Christ which will be our whole life when we enter into His Glory.

“When we grasp the meaning of this truth we will understand that although we may be praying alone in a small, dark, empty church, praying with difficulty, dry and distracted, we are in fact not only united by love to Christ in His Passion, not only prostrate in adoration before Christ in glory, but we are one body with all those who are praying in different places at different times.” [page 17]

Most of the non-Catholic world doesn’t believe that the Eucharist is really the Body and Blood of Christ. They say that Jesus was only speaking symbolically when He said “This is my body.” How can we say that Fr. Gary and every other priest in the world has the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our savior?

“The Council of Trent clearly defined the truth which is the very foundation of all Christian life and worship. ‘In the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, there is contained truly, really and substantially, the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, together with his soul and divinity, indeed the whole Christ.’” [p55]

If you go the 6th Chapter of John’s Gospel, the day after Jesus fed the 5,000 with a few barley loaves and fishes, he tells them not to work for food that perishes, but “for the food that endures for eternal life.” He tells them that He is the Bread of Life. He says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world…..Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”

At this point, Jesus lost a lot of his followers. They just couldn’t accept what He said. You would think that if He was speaking figuratively He would have said “Wait! I didn’t really mean that you have to eat my flesh. Come back!” But He didn’t. In fact, this is where it gets really interesting. He says, “There are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe AND THE ONE WHO WOULD BETRAY HIM. Jesus asked the twelve if they wanted to leave too. Peter, speaking for the others said “Master, to whom shall we go?......We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

Jesus responded “Yet, is not one of you a devil?” Judas Iscariot, the one who would turn Christ over to the authorities to be executed, did not believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

But, the consecrated bread and wine don’t look like Jesus. They look like bread and wine. Merton says, “The substance of the Body of Christ made present by the words of Consecration is the living, actual substance of the Body in which Christ is naturally present in heaven. It is therefore the substance of a glorified Body. It is not a dead, crucified Body, not even a suffering Body endowed with mortal life. The Christ of the Eucharist is immortal. This is the Body of the King of Glory.” [p 75]

How can anyone say that Jesus isn’t really present? They can’t. It’s a miracle. He’s God. He can do that.

But, can we bring this mystery a little closer to home? OK, Sunday before last you were asked to contribute to Catholic Charities for the relief of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Here we go again. Another second collection. It seems like every week we’re asking you for money. But this was different. Our fellow human beings are suffering. Catholic Charities likes to say “we don’t help people because they’re Catholics. We help them because we’re Catholics.” And boy did you help. You contributed more than $5,000. That’s considerably more than our usual weekend collection. The Archdiocese as a whole contributed more than a million dollars.

That’s a powerful example of the unity between all of us that can only be explained by our sharing in the Body of Christ. When we share in the Eucharistic meal, we become one. Not just with the other people in this building, but with every Catholic, living or dead, who has ever partaken in the mystery. Why? Because Christ is truly present in the Consecrated Bread and Wine. How do we know? Because He said so. Because we can see the effects that the Eucharist has on each one of us.

Christ loves you and me just as much as He loved the twelve Apostles; just as much as He loved all His followers while He was here on earth. They got to see Him and hear Him. He was physically present to them. But He knew He would have to leave. He had to die to save us from our sins. How could He die yet be physically present to us, just as He was 2,000 years ago? He does it through the sacrament of the Eucharist. He’s present on the altar and in the tabernacle just as surely as He was present in the Holy Land all those years ago.

But, remember that “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a Cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)

“If we are to unite ourselves with His sacrifice in the most perfect manner we must strive as far as possible to unite ourselves with these dispositions of His soul. [p 79]

We must try to be like Christ before we can be united with Him. What Paul’s saying is that if we approach the altar in a state of sin; if we approach the altar hating our neighbor; if we approach the altar like robots, not thinking about what we’re doing, then we can’t be united with Christ. Remember that Paul also said that anyone who receives the Body of Christ unworthily is GUILTY of the Body of Christ.

We can consume Him and make Him part of us. We can also sit in His Presence and talk to Him. If you haven’t done that in a while, this Tuesday is our monthly Eucharistic Adoration. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed from just after 8:00 am mass until 8:00 in the evening; a full twelve hours. As He said in the garden, “couldn’t you spend one hour with me?”

In just a few minutes, Fr. Gary will take the bread and wine and do as Jesus commanded him through the Apostles. And you and I will be able to consume the Real Presence of the Savior in communion with millions of other Catholics, both on earth and in heaven.

We’re united with Him through His Presence in the Eucharist and we’re united with every other Catholic in the world, with every Catholic who ever lived, through that same divine presence.

Which brings us back to where we started, near the end of the book when Father Merton says, “We will never appreciate the Real Presence fully until we see the intimate connection which exists between the Mystery of the Eucharist and the Mystery of the Church, two sacred realities which completely interpenetrate of form a single whole; Mysteries which, when separated, elude the grasp of our spirit altogether. For we will never really appreciate the Eucharist or the Church if we conceive them to be two entirely different ‘Bodies of Christ.’” [p132]