“The Real Presence”
Ivanhoe
by The Most
Reverend John C. Nienstedt
Scriptures: 1 Cor
John 6:51-58
Intro:
Years ago there was a play about Noah
and the ark which contained one very humorous scene. After 40 days and nights of floods and
thunder and lightening, the rain stops, the water recedes and the ark comes to
rest on dry land. Mrs. Noah looks out
the window of the ark and cries: “Where’s the rain? Where’s the lightning? Where’s the flood? Why all these changes?
I thought it helpful to begin with that
story because oftentimes adult Catholics seem to think that they have been
bombarded by changes in the Church their whole life. In my own lifetime, I have seen the Holy
Eucharist change from the Tridentine Mass, with its emphasis on the priest
facing the high altar offering the Eternal Sacrifice of Jesus Crucified to the
Father, to the present day liturgy with its emphasis of gathering both priest
and people around the Altar of Sacrifice where Christ is central to all. I have seen changes in the roles of those who
enter the sanctuary: lay persons doing the Scripture readings, functioning as
cantors, serving as Eucharistic Ministers and young ladies serving the
Mass. I have seen changes in the way
people participate in the prayers of the liturgy. My grandfather learned as a seminarian that
the value of his attendance at Sunday Mass was enhanced by how many rosaries he
could pray during the Eucharistic service.
Today he would be encouraged to pray the rosary either before or after
Mass and to participate instead in the prayers of the congregation.
At the heart of the Sacred Liturgy, of
course, is change. Fundamentally, bread
and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus, our Lord and
Savior. But this change, miraculous as
it is, calls for another change to take place in you, me and all who
participate in this sacred action. We
receive the Body of Christ so as to live as the Body of Christ at home, in
school, at the work place, in the public and private areas of our world.
But, I also know that change can upset
us, confuse and confound us. Quite
honestly, not all the changes that occurred after the Second Vatican Council
were helpful and some were downright harmful.
We weathered a period of “experimentation,” wherein changes were forced
upon us that were often just silly and at other times inane.
The most harmful of all this, however,
might be the impression given to some that because this or that change is
valid, then everything could or should change.
And that simply is not so. I
would like to comment this evening on just three of those unchanging truths in
relationship to the Holy Eucharist, namely:
1. The Eucharist makes the Church and the
Church makes the Eucharist;
2. The Eucharist is both Sacrifice and
Banquet;
3. The Eucharist calls us to contemplate the
face of Jesus in adoration.
Then I would like to apply these truths
to three practical questions that confront our present day Church.
1. Our obligation to attend Sunday Mass;
2. The status of the Divorced and Remarried;
3. Intercommunion between Catholic and
Lutherans.
First of all,
“Because the
loaf of bread is one, we, many though we are,
are one body for we all partake of the one loaf.” (1 Cor
The Eucharist is first of all a
gathering of God’s people, baptized into full communion and professing the one
faith handed on from the apostles. This
is meant to be represented in our processions, whether as we begin Mass on
Sunday morning or in the context of a Corpus Christi procession or that of a
Eucharistic Congress. All ages, all
sectors of the community of faith, should be represented in such a procession,
demonstrating a vital link between liturgy and life.
However, not all the roles in the
liturgical action are of equal weight or meaning. The priest or bishop who presides over the
Eucharistic assembly does so in the very person of Christ in whose name he
acts. This comes about through his
consecration in the Sacrament of Holy Orders.
The sacraments are not the result of
some magical powers given to the priest at ordination. Rather, the priest acts in the person of
Christ and in the name of the Church by the action of the Holy Spirit and not
by mandate of the community assembled.
The Eucharist, then, can never be
viewed as the priests’ personal possession to do with as he pleases. No, the priest through the bond that he
shares with his bishop (and through the bishop to the rest of the Universal
Church) becomes a channel of the Holy Spirit, whose power it is that transforms
the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Should the priest knowingly and deliberately break
the bond of unity with his bishop in an act of disobedience within the ritual,
he invalidates that sacred action as well as the Holy Spirit’s transforming
power.
This is also why Catholics cannot
invite non-Catholics to share in Holy Communion. The very word “communion” means “union with”
and implies that there is agreement not only on the theological meaning of the
Eucharist, but indeed on every tenet of the Creed. I honestly don’t think our people realize how
important this teaching is or how dishonest the practice of “intercommunion” is
before God. The Church makes the
Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church.
Secondly, the Eucharistic celebration
combines the Last Supper with the Lord’s death on Calvary. It is both a banquet and a sacrifice, the
memorial of Christ’s Passover, Death and Resurrection.
As sacrifice, it not only recalls the
death of Jesus as a historic event, but it memorializes it, by way of an anamnesis,
allowing the event to be made present and real.
As we read in the Constitution, Lumen Gentium from the Second
Vatican Council:
“As often as
the sacrifice of the Cross by which ‘Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed’ is
celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out.” (3)
I believe the words we find in the
sixth chapter of
“Let me
solemnly assure you,” Jesus said, “if you do not eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink his blood, you have
no life in you . . .
For my flesh is real food and my blood real drink.” (Jn 6:53-54)
The Catholic Church believes that Jesus
was most serious about what he intended by these words and she takes him
literally at his word. There were those,
both then and now, who could not abide this teaching and who thus walked
away. This is a matter of faith and each
one of us has to ask himself or herself, “Do I truly believe
this? And if so, has it transformed my
life?”
At the same time, the Eucharist is a
Paschal Banquet, the direct result of a power released in the event of the
Lord’s Resurrection. In this regard, the
Eucharist is always an invitation to draw more deeply into union with the Risen
Jesus.
In particular, our reception of Holy
Communion in uniting us more closely to Christ is meant, at the same time, to
cleanse us of our past sins and preserve us from future sins. St. Ambrose once wrote:
“For as often
as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord. If we proclaim the Lord’s death, we proclaim
the forgiveness of sins. If, as often as
his blood is poured out, it is poured for the forgiveness of sins, I should
always receive it, so that it always forgives my sins.”
Just as physical nourishment restores
strength to our bodies, so too the Holy Eucharist strengthens our charity,
which is regularly tested in our daily routine.
In his recent Apostolic Letter marking the beginning of the Year of the
Eucharist, Pope John Paul II makes clear that every Eucharistic celebration ought
to lead to a greater commitment on our part to the poor, the sick, the
imprisoned, the stranger. The Mass
derives its name from our being sent forth to build a world that is more just,
more understanding, more peaceful. While
the Church proclaims the truth that man does not live by bread alone, the voice
of the poor cries out that man does not live without bread either. Hence, the mercy of God experienced at the
Paschal Banquet is meant to be multiplied over and over again in the mercy we
show to others.
Lastly, while we all know that the
major Eucharistic celebration is the holy sacrifice of the Mass,
it is equally true that prayerful worship of the Eucharistic mystery continues
outside of
The Council of Trent in response to
attacks by the Protestant Reformers emphasized the true, real and substantial
presence of the Body and Blood of the Risen Christ. Of course, the definition of the “Real
Presence,” however, is not just limited to our Blessed Lord in the tabernacle.
Pope Paul VI in his encyclical, Mysterium
Fidei, presents an ascending order of the Presence of Christ beginning with
his presence to the Church at prayer, to the Church performing works of mercy, and
to his presence in both the recipients and the givers of gifts.
Christ is present in the Church when
she preaches the Word of God and when she governs her people. Christ is present in the administration of
the sacraments, especially in the Sacrifice of the
Yet, at the end of this list, Pope Paul
asserts:
“But there is
another way in which Christ is present in His Church, a way that surpasses all
the others. It is His presence in the
Sacrament of the Eucharist . . . for it contains Christ himself and is “a kind
of consummation of the spiritual life, and in a sense the goal of all the
sacraments.”
“This presence
is called “real” not to exclude the idea that the others are “real” too, but
rather to indicate a presence par excellance, because it is substantial
and through it Christ becomes present whole and entire, God and man.”
Pope St. Gregory VII, writing in the
eleventh century, summarized our Catholic belief in these words:
“I believe in
my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine that are placed on the
altar are, through the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the
Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and the proper and life-giving
flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration they
are the true Body of Christ – which was born of the Virgin and which hung on
the cross as an offering for the salvation of the world – and the true Blood of
Christ – which flowed from his side – and not just as a sign and by reason of
the power of the sacrament, but in the very truth and reality of their
substance and in what is proper to their nature.”
The first purpose of reserving the
Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle was to provide out of necessity the Holy
Eucharist for the sick and the dying.
But over time there also developed a sense of devotion to the Sacred
Species as the faithful began to spend time in adoration before Christ hidden
in the tabernacle.
Even the simple habit of genuflecting
before the tabernacle is a gesture of deep faith in his continuing
Presence. It is so important that we teach
our children that practice and remind them to think about the significance
behind why they do it.
In summary, then, let me recall that
the Second Vatican Council did call for change and the major change it mandated
was to see that the Eucharist becomes the center of all Catholic spirituality –
in our parishes, our homes and in our individual lives.
In his encyclical, Ecclesia de
Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed that the central event of the
Lord’s death and resurrection becomes really present in the Eucharistic
celebration. Then he asks an especially
probing question:
“What more could Jesus have done for
us?”
That question should both haunt us and
fill us with joy.
For indeed:
“What more could Jesus have done for
us?”
Part II
Now I would like to complete this
presentation by reflecting briefly on three practical issues that are regularly
discussed, if not often misunderstood, in Church circles today.
The first of these is our obligation to
attend Sunday Mass. This may first
strike you as an old saw, (“there he goes again.”) But I am convinced that there is a new
urgency to the matter. And the reason
for that lies in the fact that less and less Catholics are going to Sunday Mass
than ever before (and here I include the Saturday Vigil Mass). Here in our Diocese, about 30,000 Catholics
out of 69,000 or roughly 44% attend Sunday Mass on a regular basis; this is
down 3% or 3,200 practicing Catholics since 1999.
For me, as bishop, and for you, as
invested members of the Body of Christ, this should be a major concern. One priest told me of a fine mother and
Catholic lady, one of the “pillars” of his parish, who told him without any
remorse or shame that she always attends Sunday Mass except for those weekends
during soccer season when her daughter has out-of-town games. On those weekends, instead of looking for a
Mass in the town where the game is taking place, she simply doesn’t bother to
attend.
Now I am sure that on those same
weekends that woman makes sure that she and her daughter eat regular meals. What kind of mother would she be if, just
because she is away from her own kitchen, she didn’t arrange meals for her
child’s nourishment and subsistence?
Yet, when it comes to her family’s spiritual hungers, there apparently is
no such sense of urgency or desire.
Surely a lack of hunger pangs in the spiritual realm of the soul
reflects the dulling of one’s conscience.
If I truly love Jesus, I don’t miss those opportunities I have to be
with him and Sunday Mass provides a verifiable standard for each of us to prove
just how much we love him.
It simply amazes me, as well, that a number
of Catholic parents can be so dogged about seeing that their child attends
Religious Education on Wednesday evening, but then deliberately fails to take
that same child to Church on Sunday.
There is a serious disconnect here, which more often than not the kids see
much better their parents. What’s really
being said is that it is important for young Johnny and Mary to know about
Jesus, but it is not so very important for them to know Jesus in and
through his Bride, the Church.
Often young people and not-so-young
people tell us that Mass is “boring.” My
answer is: well, that has to be because of one or two reasons, namely either
Jesus is boring or you are boring. And
since Jesus is the Son of God who was present at the creation of the world, who
left heaven to come among us to suffer and die for our salvation, who is the
only person ever to be raised up to new life and who sits now at the Father’s
right hand . . . well, he can’t possibly be boring. So, I guess that leaves “you” as the only
reason why Mass is boring.
Pope John Paul II wrote an Apostolic
Letter, Dies Domini, on the importance of the Sunday Mass. And Pope Benedict has already addressed this
concern since his recent election. He
told us at World Youth Day on the Marienfeld:
“Dear friends!
Sometimes, our initial impression is that having to include time for Mass on
Sunday is rather inconvenient. But if
you make the effort, you will realize that this is what gives a proper focus to
your free time. Do not be deterred from
taking part in Sunday Mass, and help others to discover it too. This is because the Eucharist releases the
joy that we need so much, and we must learn to grasp it ever more deeply, we
must learn to love it. Let us pledge
ourselves to do this; it is worth the effort!”
“Let us
discover the intimate riches of the Church’s liturgy and its true
greatness: It is not we who are
celebrating for ourselves, but it is the living God himself who is preparing a
banquet for us.” (Origins, 9-1-05, vol. 35, no. 12, p. 203)
My second point deals
with persons who have divorced and, without a judgment of nullity by the
Church, have entered into a second marriage and who, therefore, are not free to
receive Holy Communion. Such
persons are not technically excommunicated, but their public witness has
compromised Christ’s own teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and
thereby they have distanced themselves from full communion with the Body of
Christ.
So often, in such cases, the Church is
looked upon by society as being the “bad guy” in this picture. Yet couples who freely stand before a priest
and two witnesses to state their “I do’s” thereby form a permanent union of
mind, heart and soul which they themselves have created. Theirs is a public statement of a religious
nature; it subsequently, therefore, takes a public judgment, rendered after
serious and objective investigation, to retract what the couple themselves have
publicly testified. To decide privately
that those vows no longer apply is not sufficient or humanly responsible. A public ecclesial pronouncement of the creation
of a permanent union requires a public rescinding of that same personal
pronouncement.
Addressing this issue with the priests
in northern
“. .
. Even if these people cannot go
to sacramental communion, they are not excluded from the love of the Church or
from the love of Christ [for]. . . it is also true that taking part in the Eucharist without
eucharistic communion is not the same as nothing; it still means being involved
in the mystery of the cross and resurrection of Christ. . .
He goes on:
“. .
. they
must be made to understand that even if, unfortunately, a fundamental dimension
is absent, they are not excluded from the great mystery of the Eucharist or
from the love of Christ, who is present in it.
This seems to me important, just as it is important that the parish
priest and the parish community make these people realize that on the one hand
they must respect the indissolubility of the sacrament,
and on the other, that we love these people who are suffering for us. Moreover, we must suffer with them because
they are bearing an important witness and because we know that the moment when
one gives in “out of love,” one wrongs the sacrament itself and the
indissolubility appears less and less true.” (Origins, 8-18-05. vol. 35, no. 11, p. 187)
In his 1994 interview published under
the title, Salt of the Earth, the then Cardinal Ratzinger, said that this
problem is exacerbated by the misinformed notion that one has to receive Holy
Communion every time one attends Mass.
The Cardinal pointed out that there are others, besides the divorced and
remarried, who know they should abstain from receiving Communion but go ahead anyway
out of social pressure or other mistaken notions. One of the topics for the Synod of Bishops in
October is whether or not to bring back the three hour fast before receiving
Holy Communion. This requirement might
help to alleviate the situation for those who know they should not communicate by
giving them an excuse or “alibi” as it were for not joining the Communion line.
Lastly, the question of intercommunion
between Catholics and Lutherans: why is
this not allowed?
The answer here is both theological and
historical. First of all, there are
different understandings among our two denominations and among Lutherans
themselves on the nature of the Eucharist.
Theologians cite three such understandings as transfiguration,
transfinalization or transubstantiation.
Transignification is a theological
understanding of the Holy Eucharist based on Christ’s gift of himself to
believers and, through them to the Father.
The Eucharist becomes the sacramental visibility (i.e. a sign) of this
continuous self-giving. The words of
consecration are not simply directed toward the bread and wine, but toward the
believing assembly. The bread and wine
are given new meaning by Christ’s gift of himself for the community.
Transfinalization rests on the fact
that Christ gave the Church his body, the body which was born of Mary, which
was crucified and raised to new life. In
giving new meaning to created things, the Risen Christ now gives new being to
the ultimate reality (or substance) of the bread and wine as his gift to
the Church even though the empirical reality of the bread remains the same.
Transubstantiation, as defined by the Catholic
Catechism, declares that there takes place in the consecration a change of
the whole substance of the bread into the substance of Christ’s body and the
whole substance of the wine into the substance of Christ’s blood. The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at
the moment of consecration and endures in each of the species and whole and
entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the bread
does not divide Christ. (1376)
Martin Luther’s belief in the Eucharist
has been called “Consubstantiation.” He
believed that not just the accidents (appearances) but also the substance
(reality) of the bread and wine remained in the sacrament on the altar. The Mass, then, was not a sacrifice offered
to God, but a memorial celebration of the Last Supper which when celebrated by
the Body of Christ of the baptized becomes the Body of Christ made present in
sign and symbol. In Luther’s Mass drawn
up in 1523, there is no Offertory or Eucharistic Prayer, even though he prescribed
the recitation of the words of consecration in I Cor. 11:23-25 over the bread
and wine. However, for him the presence
of Christ does not remain in the bread and wine after the believing assembly
has dispersed. Because baptism
constitutes the believing assembly as the priesthood of Christ, there is no
need for a Sacrament of Holy Orders as demanded by Catholic doctrine. Therefore, Lutheran pastors and bishops are
not ordained, but installed. Their
authority depends upon the mandate of the assembly of believers.
A Lutheran bishop, for example, may be
elected for a term and then return to his duties as a member of the
Church. No “ontological” change as we
understand it as Catholics takes place.
Since there is no ordained priest to consecrate bread and wine by means
of priestly powers, certain notions of transfiguration and transfinalization
are more easily discovered. But it is also clear to see that we are not dealing
with the same reality that each of us calls “the Eucharist.” This may not be a question of apples and
oranges, but neither is it a question of apples and apples. There are definitions of the Eucharist by
each party which are inherently different.
To pretend that these differences do not exist or do not matter does
violence to the theological understandings of both Churches. Rather than fostering ecumenical relations,
intercommunion between Catholics and Lutherans or the sharing in a common
Eucharistic service by a Catholic priest and a Lutheran pastor actually
confuses the understanding needed to achieve Church unity and thus becomes a
further obstacle to its attainment.
Pope John Paul II, recognizing this
fact, said in his encyclical, Ecclesia De Eucharistia: “The Catholic faithful, therefore, while
respecting the religious convictions of these separated brethren, must refrain
from receiving the communion distributed in their celebrations, so as not to
condone an ambiguity about the nature of the Eucharist and, consequently, to
fail in their duty to bear clear witness to the truth. This would result in slowing the progress
being made towards full visible unity.
Similarly, it is unthinkable to substitute for Sunday Mass ecumenical
celebrations of the Word or services of common prayer with Christians from the
aforementioned Ecclesial Communities, or even participation in their own
liturgical services. Such celebrations
and services, however praiseworthy in certain situations, prepare for the goal
of full Communion, including Eucharistic Communion, but they cannot replace it.”
“The fact that the power of consecrating
the Eucharist has been entrusted only to Bishops and priests does not represent
any kind of belittlement of the rest of the People of God. For in the Communion of the one Body of
Christ, which is the Church, this gift redounds to the benefit of all.” (no. 30)
The Church is not saying here that intercommunion
can never happen, but that it would be permitted only in extremely rare
instances. If, for example, a Lutheran
pastor was imprisoned with a Catholic priest in a concentration camp during
World War II and the Lutheran knew that he would be so deprived of the
Eucharist for a number of years, and if he was without the resources necessary
for his own celebration and if he spontaneously asked to receive Holy Communion
from the priest, after affirming his belief in a Catholic understanding of the
sacrament, that, I believe, would be legitimate. The terms required are the inaccessibility
of one’s own denomination for a long period of time, some evidence of a
Catholic belief in this sacrament, and the spontaneous desire for the spiritual
nourishment of the Holy Eucharist.
However, these are certainly not the conditions we are talking about in
our own situation, here on the Prairie.
In summary, then, we receive the Body of
Christ (as sacrament) to become the Body of Christ (as Church) so as to serve
the Body of Christ (in the poor).
There is a teaching in this proposition
that is full of hope for our future.
That message, too, has been wonderfully summarized by our new Holy
Father who said:
“[Here] is the
substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was
destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the
transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf 1 Cor. 15:28). In their hearts, people always and everywhere
have somehow expected a change, a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of transformation
that alone can truly renew the world:
Violence is transformed into love, and death into life.”
My dear sisters and brothers, there is
a marvelous transformation waiting for us in the Eucharist to live both now and
forever.
Thank you!