A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Now, I hope you will give unusual attention to this gospel just as I ask you to recall that quotation from Saint Paul in the second reading. How Saint Paul was appealing to the Corinthians. I remember what I said last Sunday about the Corinthians, some some time past. What a what an immoral city it was, right, between the two seas and all that great city of commerce.
And so Paul appeals to the Christians that they've got to live chaste lives because otherwise they blaspheme against the bloody the blood body and blood of Christ. You couldn't have a clearer expression of the real presence. Now this is this reading this reading from Saint John is and it's only in Saint John. It's not in the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So this is the promise of our lord of his body, and it's so clear, the promise.
So let us take it up from Saint John. Our lord this is right after the trans the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, right after Christ walking on the water and and calming the storm. The crowds have followed Jesus, and now he's talking to this the same long discourse. He says, I myself am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he shall live forever.
And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. How did his how did his hearers react? This great multitude who had eaten the fish and the bread and were very satisfied and wanted to make him king. How did they react to that? How did they understand it?
Listen. All at this, the Jews quarreled among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? Remember, cannibalism was the father although they've been guilty of it, cannibalism was as as remote as blasphemy to a good Jew. Now how did our lord reply to this? They're taking him literally.
He says, let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and do not drink his blood, you have no life in you. Now notice how our lord dwells on this. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day. Now you think, well, that's plenty. But our lord keeps going at this.
For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I remain in him. Now some people are repelled at that. Of course, you should be repelled if you know what Christ is saying, and he doesn't minimize his words at all. Our lord then continues, just as the father who has life sent me and I have life because of the father, so the man who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Like your ancestors who ate and died, nonetheless, in the desert, the man who feeds on this bread shall live forever. And this is the gospel the gospel of the lord. But there's a lot more if you take the time to read that in Saint John chapter six. I earnestly ask you to do so.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Indeed, I beg you to do so because there is nothing so intimate in your religious lives as the real presence of Christ. Now last Sunday, we have the had the feast of the most holy trinity. Well, that was a that's a miracle or a word of mystery. Mystery is a better word, of course.
Mystery. And, I had a few words to say about it. And how you can't escape the fact of the mystery in the New Testament. You can't escape it. To try to explain it is impossible.
But an attempt to express it philosophically was made chiefly by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century following the ontology or metaphysics of Aristotle. We make not because we know this by reason, but because we know it's by revelation that there's a distinction between person and nature. And that in god, the trinity, you have three persons but one nature. In the incarnation, you with Jesus Christ, true god, son of Mary, we have one person but two natures. Now you'll say, I don't understand that.
I don't care. I try I've I've given you the words, and I'll say this with Chesterton. We're not solving the the we're not solving the mystery. We're not explaining the mystery, but we're we're we're keeping it from becoming a muddle. Because said, a mystery is not a muddle.
We're not saying two and five are set are eight or nine or something like that. Now when you come to this matter of the real presence, the body and blood of Jesus Christ who is god and the son of Mary, an individual baby born of a Jewish girl is god. God was born because in Jesus Christ, you have just one person, and that's divine. But the two natures, completely human, completely divine, but it's one person. Now what do we do with the Eucharist?
Now you see the trinity most of us could live without the Trinity without our paying much attention to it. It's unfortunate. I tried last Sunday to to emphasize we ought to make the sign of the cross with great significance. But the thing is it doesn't impact upon our daily lives, upon our religious lives, upon our job, the way we react in our family, to our friends, to our enemies, to money, to the world, to sickness, to grief. None of it.
None of the trinity impinges on us like the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. None of it. This is something that touches us profoundly. And for that very reason, it's hard to talk about it. It's hard for good husbands and good wives to speak fluently about their love for one another.
You know when they do it, you keep your fingers crossed. Because some things are just too profound, too solemn, too deep, too touching, too mysterious, too moving to try to put into words. But we do the best we can if we try to communicate, And that's what we try to do. A lot of so called thinkers to the in the present world to the contrary, notwithstanding. Now this doctrine of the Eucharist is, is one of the most authenticated, best witness doctrines in the New Testament.
Here you have in in John chapter six this long passage. It's it's much longer than what I read or what we have to read today. Much and I pray you to read it. This is something so terribly important in your lives. And I'm told today by the latest statistics that there are great numbers of Catholics who don't believe in the real presence.
I read very recently of a Eucharistic minister up in Connecticut. A Eucharistic minister. She doesn't believe in the real presence. Someone said, well, then why are you a Catholic? Why are you doing this?
She says, it's because it's culturally elevating or something like that. Is that the kind of a Catholic I am? Remember, making an act of faith, it's faith. Sight, touch, taste, indeed are each deceived, Thomas has said. You'll it's in in in a few minutes, it'll seem more than few minutes to you.
But sooner or later, you'll come up here to communion, and you bend your knee or you or you do the equivalent. And here, I'll put a a translucent, that is you can see light through it, a wafer made of wheat. And then you say, my lord and my god, that's Christ, the god who died on the cross. Notice you with Jesus Christ, you can call him god under all circumstance. It was God who nursed at the breast of Mary.
It was God who helped his father in the carpenter. It was God who walked the roads of of Palestine. It was God who stood before Pilate. It was God who laid down his life on the cross. And in that wafer, you say that is now the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.
How can you believe it? Well, the answer is a lot of people don't. And a lot of people that heard our lord promise it walked away from him. They couldn't accept it even to his apostles. And our lord said, will you leave me too?
And old Peter said, lord, if we leave you, where are we going? In other words, completely helpless and hopeless. It's either Christ or nothing. Not that he understood it. Who understands it?
This is in chapter six of John. It's absolutely astounding. And the Christ didn't mean that what he said, he made absolutely no effort to correct the misunderstanding of his hearers. He was willing to let his apostles and disciples go, and at the same time, he was willing to stand alone unless he meant what he said. He is the worst hypocrite and and liar that the world has ever seen.
There's no other escape. There's no way to escape it. Now then, we have the institution of the blessed of the Eucharist in the in the last supper. It's not in Saint John. It's in the three synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
And here to me, the the the the terribly persuasive evidence is Saint Paul, completely separate witness. When in trying to talk sense to the to the Corinthian conquer yes. In trying to bring them back to living chaste lives, his best argument is, how can you do this and not blaspheme the body and blood of Jesus Christ? The Eucharist was that well accepted in Paul's time in Corinth, in the Corinthians. How can you escape?
And the answer is you can't. You can't. To try to say that Christ was just talking in some vague spirit or, you know, spirituality or idealism or, you know, the spirit of Vatican two and all that mishmash. Even Luther could not go along with Malinthon, Zwinglian, and the rest of them when they had when they met at Marlborough in in 1529. Remember, the great issue among the protestants revolters, the reformers was, what is the Eucharist?
Is it the real thing? Is it just a spiritual thing? Is it just a a kind of a more memorial thing? They all rejected the idea it was real except Luther. And Luther took some chalk and wrote on the table and drew a circle and said, the lord said, this is my body.
That doctrine was upheld without any serious objection whatsoever until the sixteenth century, the century of reformation. As I said, even Luther did not reject it entirely as the others did. Remember, Protestantism became Presbyterianism, not Lutheranism. Now the council of Trent, in in response to the, to the reformation, issued its its great documents on on Catholic plea. Now the council of Trent put the Thomas's Summa on the altar along with the gospel.
And when it came to the to the trinity, they appealed to Saint Thomas's way of trying to formulate a philosophical expression about the trinity so we could talk sensibly about it. And Saint Thomas does the very same thing about the Eucharist. So the council of Trent followed Saint Thomas, Aquinas, where you make a distinction. Here we're getting into some philosophy again. We make a distinction here in the Eucharist between the substance, the substrate of the core, the essence of something and its accidents.
Time and space limited sight, touch, taste, things, all of these elements, all the phenomena that fall under your senses, they are accidental to the reality of the thing. This applies oh so strongly to the whole idea of the development of the fetus into a baby and to a human being. And so Aquinas says that in the holy Eucharist see, there were all kinds of theories that try to to make some sense out of you how you can have a a Christ present in the Eucharist and then yet see have had and have nothing but the phenomena of what appeals to your eye or to your nose or to your taste or to your touch. How do you put all this together? Aquinas says you do it this way, that that underneath appearances, you have the sub the core, the essence of something which he called substance, substari, to stand under.
And that is divorcible from the accidents. That's where revelation comes in. You don't know that from philosophy. And so in the Eucharist, Aquinas says, the accidents of the bread and the wine remain. They taste the same.
The alcohol content content is the same. The appearance is the same, but the substance underlying those accidents added to those accidents that has been changed. And the substance of the bread, the substance of the wine have become the divinity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. That and he called that transubstantiation. Now they can't that's the way the wording goes.
The council of Trent used that used that phraseology from from Aquinas' and Aristotelian metaphysics to apply to some way, not to explain the mystery, but to give us an intelligent, intelligible way of talking about it and not to make a model out of a mystery, which need not be done. Now as I said last Sunday, when we bring in philosophy, when we talk about, let us say, a metaphysical or ontological theory like substance and accident, person and nature, you don't have to accept that at all to be a good fervent believing Catholic. Saint Augustine was not enarrest at Tilian and at Thomas. That's one thing I'm sure of. On the other hand, what do you put in his place?
It's being tried, present tense. It's being tried. But you nothing has succeeded. Now Vatican two, what did it do? It reaffirmed Trent.
It used the word transubstantiation. I have some quotations here which I can't use. But believe me, the Council of of the Vatican too has some especially in in Lumen Gentium, that is the the constitution on the church and the constitution on the liturgy, it has some more magnificent things to say about the Eucharist. That it's the core, the essence of our worship, and that this holy sacrifice of the mass is the source and the summit of all our religious truth and and practice. Notice the source and the summit, and it says holy sacrifice, not banquet or communion.
It's repeated time and again in Vatican Two. As I said last Sunday, I have a copy of the the new it's not the new. We call it. It is now the catechism of the Catholic church. And I I went over that.
What it has to this is the French edition. I went over that to see what it says about the Eucharist. I own I it's it's just terrible that we're not getting the English version. It's just awful. That's due to this matter of of inclusive language.
It it devotes 24 pages to it. It repeats Trent. It re and above all, it does what no other book that I've seen does. It gives you the ancient witnesses. It gives you the doctrine of the church.
It gives you the why and the where for where it came from. It's absolutely splendid, magnificent. It's all there. It'll be old stuff to many of you, but it'll be absolutely new to many good Catholics. New.
We're not asked to go out and just willy nilly say, yes, I believe in the real presence or this or that. Catholicism is profound. It has roots. It has history, and it doesn't ashamed to open the books to everybody. Not to justify our faith.
You don't get faith by reading a book. Faith is a gift, but that doesn't eliminate the part that we have to play in fostering it, taking opportunities. It doesn't come by us, Moses. So you you have then the the promise of our lord, the institution, afterwards with Saint Paul and the church fathers, you have the council of Trent, you have the the Vatican two, and now the catechism of the Catholic church, and they are absolutely solid, clear, inspiring, enthusiastically inspiring to give us some basis, some groundwork for this tremendous act of faith that we make when we receive that host on our in our hand or on our tongue and participate of the chalice. It's absolutely astonishing, and it's also true.
Today, it is being ignored. Ignored. Go into that church down in Davidsonville. Go into the good shepherd church over in Alexandria. You can't find the blessed sacrament.
It's hidden. The church is just a big community hall. The altar is no different much different from just a lectern where you read the gospel from. In conclude, I have to get a conclusion always, and it's always short of where I intended to go. Last week, for for practical purposes, I tried to emphasize the sign of the cross.
It's a summary of the trinity and our faith and the me. Make the sign of the cross significant. And now I say about the our belief in the youth, make it significant. Prepare for it. Remember, there's a fast.
Remember, you're supposed to be in the state of grace. There are Catholics coming men and women who are living together without marriage coming to communion weekly, weekly. They don't think there's anything wrong about it. You know, a little bit of fornication. What's that?
Remember, we're supposed to be in the state of grace, which means if we have mortal sins, we are to confess them. We're supposed to be fasting for an hour. We're supposed to be properly prepared which means properly attired. And what we the gestures, how we behave in church. Do we believe we're in the presence of Jesus Christ, physically present in the Eucharist, or don't we?
Let's not straddle. Straddling offense is no fun if you've ever tried it. Above all, in a concrete way, the genuflection. Now some people can't make it. Some of us can make it very easy when we're 14.
And at 74, we find it a little difficult. And at 94, a little worse and more difficult. I'm what I'm saying that when we come into a church, when we go and find the tabernacle with the light burning, many instances, that's the only indication of the real presence. Do something physically to express your belief. And what you do, make it meaningful, not just a thing you go through without thought.
When you bend your knee, that's a tremendous act of faith. Don't minimize it. It's a tremendous witness. It's a tremendous testimony. It does wonders for your own faith to make these physical gestures, to prepare to go to communion, to make it very special of a Sunday, to make it something that calls for special preparation, and at at least free that you should be innocent of mortal sin and fasting.
So try, as I said last Sunday, bring the sign of the cross to have a great thoughtfulness behind it. And when you come into the real presence, make a genuine affection to the best of your ability. I can remember when was a kid, many women, you know, did this courtesy business. But whatever you do, do it with thoughtfulness that you're bowing the knee in a physical way to express your belief, your conviction, your persuasion that Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, true man and true god, is really, completely, actually present in that consecrated host, in that consecrated wine. And the best we can say at the end is, my lord and my god, I believe, help thou, my unbelief.