In this first article in a series that will focus on understanding better the Holy Eucharist, so central to Catholic worship, let me begin with a human analogy.
When you offer a gift to someone, you are offering more than a material object or money: you are showing your regard, your care, even your love for that person. If the person seems indifferent to your gift or doesn’t acknowledge it, you rightly feel disappointed. Even a gift which does not please the recipient should be acknowledged and the giver thanked – precisely because the gift represents the person who gave it, however trivial or unwelcome the gift itself might be.
In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ gives a gift to us. In his case, the gift does not merely represent the giver but is identical with him. In a mysterious way which we can describe but not truly explain, the risen Lord gives himself to us, transforming bread and wine in their deepest reality into his own Body and Blood. Because he said, holding bread, This is my Body, and has the power as the Son of God to make it happen, we join the Christians of the first and all subsequent generations in saying, “Amen, yes, it is Jesus whom I receive in Holy Communion.” This superlative gift of Jesus himself is meant to invigorate us with the Lord’s risen life so that, individually and corporately, we produce good fruit in the world.
The reason we American bishops decided to inaugurate a Eucharistic Revival over three years is that we came to realize that many Catholics no longer believe that it is Jesus himself whom they receive in Holy Communion. Some see it as a symbol of the Lord but nothing more, others as simply a piece of bread which, for some reason, is given to them during the Mass. Surely some of the Catholics now absent from our assemblies on Sunday do not go to Mass because they look at the Eucharist in this reduced way. Even some who go regularly seem to have lost the full sense of the Sacrament’s meaning.
Our concern as pastors is that, if the giver is not acknowledged in the gift, the one receiving it may not derive any spiritual benefit from it. The Lord gives himself to us in Holy Communion in order to build us up, individually and as a people, so that we may live as children of God in faith and love and bear him witness in the world. A lack of faith on our part does not diminish Christ’s true
presence in the Sacrament but it means we have closed the door of our heart to him even if we opened our mouth to consume the host. We will lack the grace, both as individuals and as a Church, to be faithful witnesses to Christ. The danger is that our faith may gradually wither and even die.
What has caused this lack of full Eucharistic faith among some Catholics? How is it that they no longer believe that Jesus truly gives himself to us in the Sacrament of the altar?
One cause is that many people today do not allow room in their lives for the transcendent, that is, for God and His action on their behalf. They live mostly on the horizontal level and ignore the vertical. They may believe vaguely in God but it doesn’t lead them, for example, to put Sunday Mass first over other worthy activities such as soccer games, a community picnic or a trip to the beach. It is even easier to deny the Church’s faith in Christ’s gift of himself in the Eucharist because, lacking a robust faith, they see only the appearances of bread and wine and do not take seriously the Church’s claim that the transcendent God changes those material elements into Christ for their benefit.
Some, if questioned, would likely say that science proves such a change is impossible. But that is confusing two spheres of investigation. The physical sciences seek to explain material creation but they cannot handle God’s intervention in His creation. Their instruments cannot measure it nor their theories account for it. Through the ages people have turned to religion and philosophy to help them understand why anything exists at all, why a yearning for contact with the spiritual world persists in history, how it is that human beings possess an inner freedom, why we should choose good over evil, what makes people often capable of sacrificial love, what happens to us after we die. Some scientists reduce all of these non-material questions to material causes but that does not ring true to people’s experience of them. Nor can the physical sciences grasp the reality of the Eucharist and its effect on people of faith.
There is another reason in the United States to account for a weak or absent understanding of the Church’s faith in the Eucharist: our exaggerated individualism. Phenomena as distinct as transgenderism, abortion, gun use and getting vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus reveal that many of us prioritize our private opinion over other factors that might be more objective and deserve our
consideration. With respect to the Eucharist, some Catholics apparently think that, since they do not see beyond the bread and wine to Christ, they are free to dismiss the Church’s faith in Christ’s sacramental presence – despite that faith’s origin in Jesus’ own words and actions, the continuous celebration of the Eucharist for two thousand years and the abiding belief of faithful Christians that Jesus gives himself to his disciples in that Sacrament. The courageous individual is rightly admired but the Christian, who sets him or herself against the whole tradition of the Church in order to adhere to a private opinion, stands outside the community of faith by denying the truth God has revealed to that community.
So, we have begun a Eucharistic Revival. This year is the diocesan phase, in which you will be hearing of talks and regional conferences on the Eucharist. Next year we will conduct the parish phase, in which more intensive catechesis on the Sacrament will be offered for adults and children. The third year will be the national phase, culminating in a great Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana. Remember, the purpose is to strengthen and, for some, retrieve our understanding that Jesus gives his very self to us in Holy Communion. Like the householder praised by Jesus [Matthew 13:52], we want to bring out of the storeroom of our Catholic faith both the old: the Church’s constant teaching on the meaning and purpose of the Eucharist; and the new: prayer and activities appropriate to our time and place for reinvigorating our appreciation of this admirable Sacrament. Please join me in praying for the success of this project.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
+Mark E. Brennan Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston