Mass readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi):
Deuteronomy 8.2-3, 14-16 Psalm 147.12-15,19-20 1 Corinthians 10.16-17 John 6.51-59
Finding something to say today has been a challenge: like Trinity Sunday, this is a celebration of doctrine, and often the preacher poses for himself the challenge of briefly but with clarity, explaining the teaching. However, reflecting on that possibility, I asked the question, what purpose would that serve?
We’re talking about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; that the communion host, consecrated by the Holy Spirit through the prayer of the Church and the action of the priest truly becomes the body and blood of Christ. Then at communion we receive the divine substance of God. Pretty remarkable stuff. But if someone doesn’t believe it, does anyone think that my offering ten minutes of explanation is going to convince them otherwise?
Our own St. Augustine said that, “What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ, and the chalice is the blood of Christ… which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; faith does not desire instruction.”
We don’t live in an age of religious faith, but in a time of corrupt humanism that cannot see beyond, nor celebrate anything but the flesh.
You may have seen in the Catholic media a few years ago a poll from the United States showing that only a third of American Catholics believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. I can’t imagine it is different among Canadian Catholics. And that statistic makes sense since only about 1 in 5 Catholics regularly attend mass. The 60-odd percent who think the Eucharist is just symbolic, are likely part of the 80 percent who rarely come to mass. Why would you bother? As the great Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor remarked when someone said the Eucharist was a “pretty good” symbol of God’s presence, “Well, if it’s just symbol, to hell with it.”
And I think that’s where a lot of nominal Catholics are today, they’re saying of mass and the whole sacramental apparatus that is the system of parishes and priests, “to hell with it” – we don’t need it.
Now, frankly, that makes them at best Protestant, yet ask them, and they most definitely say they are Catholic. So, they send their kids to the publicly-funded schools for Catholics, and when asked by Statistics Canada their religion, they tick the box that says “Roman Catholic.” In a few instances I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Catholics of this spiritual stripe, some of them teachers in the Catholic school system, and they’ve told me in as many words: I don’t need the mass, I don’t need the Eucharist; I read my Bible, I say my prayers, in my home I am surrounded by symbols of my faith – a crucifix on the living room wall, a rosary on my bedroom dresser, and so on.
So, what happens when you abandon the Eucharist as being real, and account it as just another symbol, and so one that can be dispensed with provided you hang a rosary on the car rearview mirror? Well, history is our teacher in this.
At seminary we learn about the history of the Eucharist; we look at the research into the earliest days of the Church. One reads fascinating documents, some from the time of the Apostles that tell us just how particular communities worshiped and what they believed. One such text is the Didache – that’s Greek for “Instruction” and the whole of the title is something like “the instruction of the Apostles.” It was used as a teaching manual for about a hundred years from the time of Saint Paul into the era of people like St. Ignatius when Christianity was spreading like wildfire around the Roman world. But the Didache went out of circulation after that, and the community that used it disappeared. A copy of the book resurfaced 1700 years later and that’s why we know about it and the community that used it.
In reading it one discovers that this ancient community didn’t believe the Eucharist was the body and blood of Christ. So, we have an example of a Christian community that effectively does not have the Blessed Sacrament and in just a few generations vanishes.
The Protestant Reformation is this writ large, and there we see a huge part of the Church ripped out and living apart from the sacraments as handed down by the Apostles. Sheer cultural momentum, and the active support of the state meant they have lasted several centuries, but now stripped of political support, and with growing inertia, they are rapidly failing – but then, what’s up with our fellow Catholics?
Well, as best I can tell, and from commentary I’ve read, it can be put down to a few things. Poor catechesis by the Church, sure. However, more significantly, we send our children as we ourselves were sent, to schools that teach that what is real is only what science can prove. Now, it’s not that we’re all scientists, far from it; rather we now have a new quasi-religious faith in what “science” tells us; the clergy, so to speak, all wear lab coats. But I rather think our faith in them is fast eroding; growing scandals in the world of scientific research being fraudulent should give us all cause for concern, but the bigger issue is that we’ve become lazy thinkers, more and more dependent on others to explain the world while we lack the ability to critically analyze what we’re told.
We don’t train ourselves or our children in even the rudiments of philosophy – that is, we don’t teach people how to think. So, theology and the reasoning behind it are impenetrable. Instead, we indoctrinate children in all the current year fashionable causes and call that “critical thinking.” So, forget understanding transubstantiation – the Church’s technical explanation for the Real Presence. You’d have to have some familiarity with Aristotle.
Another compelling observation I noted was that we’ve taught our children and grandchildren about the Eucharist by several generations of irreverence in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, by making our worship too much like our entertainment, by mistakenly believing that formality in our worship could be dispensed with and that everyone should just relax and not be so fussy around our friend Jesus on the altar and in the tabernacle. We live in a time when multi-billionaires wear blue jeans and t-shirts, the “casual” attitude seeps into everything such that the exceptions stand out – I remember during the recent hockey play-offs remarking that the coaches on the team benches were wearing suits! But then, that is to convey a sense that the game is serious business; but really, it’s a game.
If we treat this space, this sanctuary, this nave like any other social space, then that is what it becomes. If we come into this building as we would a school auditorium or banquet centre, well, others see that and come to believe there is no difference. How could they possibly grasp the significance of the Eucharist when the place where it comes into the world and resides cannot be differentiated from any other? So, how can that tasteless wafer be anything other than what it appears to be?
So, I am always thankful for those who are so reverent here and in our other churches, for those who serve at the altar, assist at the church entrance, proclaim God’s word with the effectiveness that comes of prayerful preparation, for those who give of their time to minister at communion, and for a choir that helps us enter into that mystical space of encounter with our Lord in the Eucharist. All of this militates against a world that has forgotten its creator and too often childishly mocks what it no longer understands.
When I do baptisms Sunday afternoons, I can speak directly to parents and godparents. And I share a tidbit from the Church’s research in the area of religious education: what effectively teaches children isn’t so much what you say, but what you do; not by what you say you value and respect, but that which they can see you value and respect – your children’s ideas about God will be directly derived from you. And if God is someone you can neglect, never give any serious recognition to, show any meaningful respect toward, it’s not just that they won’t have religious faith, but they will also fail to learn about ultimate responsibility, respect for tradition, the importance of recognizing the roles of others in one’s life. Most devastatingly though, is they fail to learn reverence – that there are holy things and sacred ideas of central importance to us all as the source of meaning, of life, of our most cherished values as expressed in the virtues of faith, hope, love, justice, wisdom, and so on.
Of course, the Church is not in the end about ideas, but about a person: Jesus Christ who embodies, gives flesh to them; and we encounter their reality through him in the Eucharist. Does the Eucharist work? Well, as Saint Paul tells us, if received worthily, yes. If received in humility and in thanksgiving, yes. If received in the beauty of holiness, as St. Augustine tells us, “nobody eats this flesh without first adoring it.”
We’re in the midst of this great experiment of the last fifty years, and we’ve an extensive cadre of secular missionaries and catechists for a new faith, and they are now at work in our schools, in our governments, in our places of worship, who’ve sold us all on this prescription for what ails humanity and they’ve pretty much overturned everything including the importance of the sacred in our lives, the need to cultivate by prayer and worship a spiritual sensitivity about ourselves and our world that goes beyond virtue signaling about how much we care about this or that cause.
To renew, revive and rebirth this essential reverence into the world, we need to be a community that with care and commitment shows that the Body and Blood of Christ is not mere symbol, but a reality around which we congregate, and live and learn to be people of love, justice and truth, things that are not mere intellectual abstractions but real, real and tangible and capable of being made a part of us as we receive Christ in the Eucharist.
And so, our work as a faith community lies not just in the good corporal works we do beyond the doors of this church, but actually begins here and must be engaged in with all the effort and intention we can bring by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For as you have likely heard so often, the Eucharist is the source and the summit of our lives and we must show the world it really is.
Amen.
Links:
Red Flags Raised Over Chinese Research Published in Global Journals
Many scientific “truths” are, in fact, false
TRUST US, WE’RE SCIENTISTS
When Studies Are Wrong: A Coda
Fewer Than 1 Percent Of Papers in Scientific Journals Follow Scientific Method