By Father Knick and Sandie Knickerbocker
In the Catholic Church, the National Eucharistic Revival to renew faith in the real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist could not come at a better time. The present lack of faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is part of our entire culture’s failure to recognize reality present in the world around us, a failure to recognize the objective reality outside our own minds. The result is that we think we have the freedom to create our own reality.
This failure to recognize and believe in the reality outside our own minds has developed over several centuries in our western culture. We can trace it as far back as late medieval nominalist philosophy, but a useful point of departure in understanding this cultural aberration is the philosophy of the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). He decided that the only thing he could not doubt was the fact that he was a thinking being. He famously said, “I think; therefore I am.” In other words, the only thing he could know was the certainty of the existence of his own subjectivity
The popular development of this Cartesian philosophy has led to a denial of objective reality, objective truth, a common reality that all human beings can know. We think we are free to create a world according to our own thought. However, when there is no common objective reality, the desires of an individual person direct a person’s thinking. When our desires control our thinking, we can’t deal with the complexities of human life, and we retreat into simplistic ideologies to attempt to force our own desires on other people. This means we are ready to condemn what we think are the sins of others (past and present) and judge ourselves as righteous. We can embrace an ideology that says a baby in the womb of his or her mother is not a living human being, that two men or two women can live together in a sexual relationship and call it marriage, that we are free to decide whether we want to be male or female, and the list goes on. The result is the destruction of the family, which is the bedrock of all cultures.
What about the real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist? In our culture each person is free to decide “what the Eucharist means for me.” We can take it or leave it. We don’t realize what we are treating in such a cavalier fashion. Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). At the Last Supper, Jesus said, “This is my Body which will be given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” He then took the chalice of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Lk 22:19–20). And in a previous teaching, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (Jn 6:35). “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have not life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (Jn 6:53-54). What happens if we decide that Jesus is not really present in the Eucharist and take it anyway? St. Paul warns us, “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27).
In her discernment of the development of doctrine, what does the Catholic Church teach that will help us understand the reality of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist? In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church teaches that “The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ … For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself” (no. 1324). It is the Eucharist that guides our thinking. Quoting St. Irenaeus (c. 130-202), the Catechism says, “’Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking” (no. 1327). In other words, it is the objectively real presence of Christ in the Eucharist that guides the way we think, not our own desires.
Moreover, in discerning “how” Christ can be present in the Eucharist, the church teaches the doctrine of transubstantiation. This doctrine was developed in the Middle Ages when people in the west still understood that our minds are meant to discover the truth in objective reality. They understood that all things in the objective world outside our own minds are composed of an outer nature (called “accidents”) and an inner nature (called “substance”). Our minds can perceive both the outer and inner natures. In the celebration of the Eucharist, at the consecration of the bread and wine the outer nature of the bread and wine remain the same, but the inner nature is “transubstantiated” and becomes the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. In the sixteenth century the Council of Trent confirmed the truth of this teaching (CCC no. 1376).
However, there is something else that can help us understand the objectively real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians the Apostle encourages the Christians in Philippi to “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves.” He then quotes what is probably one of the earliest Christian hymns that speaks of how it is that the infinite, eternally existent Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, could become a human being with a human body and soul united to his divine substance in the Incarnation. The Apostle writes: “Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:5-11, RSVCE). In other words, it is by his perfect humility — his perfect self-forgetfulness for love of us — that he became a human being.
What does this tell us about the presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist? The same Son of God who is capable of perfect self-forgetfulness for love of us in the Incarnation and his atoning death said at the Last Supper of the bread and wine, “this is my Body, this is my Blood.” At every Mass the perfect humility of Jesus allows him to enter the bread and wine which become his Body and Blood. This is the presence of Jesus himself in the Eucharist that guides all our thinking, not our own desires.
In our popular version of Cartesian philosophy, it is our pride that makes us think that we can make whatever we desire to be reality. If we want to know that the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ are really present in the Eucharist, we must ask him to give us his own humility. When we do that, our lives will be transformed just as the bread and wine are transubstantiated in the Mass. This gives us a completely new outlook on life. It allows us to glimpse the glory of Jesus Christ — his love, truth, and beauty — in every person, because every person is made in the image of God and has the freedom to surrender to the perfect humility of Christ and be a bearer of his glory, as St. Paul says, to be “transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).
In our American history there was a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the 18th century in what historians call the First Great Awakening. In the early 19th century there was a Second Great Awakening. These were Protestant evangelical movements. Now is the time in America for a Third Great Awakening, one led by the Catholic Church, one that will transform American culture, as the church proclaims the real presence of Jesus Christ — his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity — in the Holy Eucharist.