Dear Friends -- November 10

This will be my last article about what one pastor at a recent meeting called, “One of the great crises in the Catholic Church in the western world.” No, he wasn’t referring to the abuse crisis (which of course was a sinful action on the part of so many clergy that harmed so many people), but he was referring to a lack of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He has a Catholic school in his parish and, in order for parents to get reduced tuition, he meets individually with them and asks them about their commitment to the Eucharistic Lord. One set of baptized Roman Catholic parents actually said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that all they wanted for their child was “to go to a private school.” They had no intention of going to Mass on Sunday.

Two weeks ago, I suggested that with the advent of science and technology during the Enlightenment (16th-18th centuries), a sacramental worldview was gradually dismantled in the West, replaced with a ”modern” (as opposed to a medieval) worldview. The sole arbiter of truth and/or reality was reduced to that which could be discerned through science. No longer could the Western World tolerate a sacramental method, whereby signs and symbols actually bring out the reality they signified. This so-called enlightened period also championed the idea that the individual (and not the community) was the chief architect of what was real and/or meaningful (i.e. full of meaning for me only).

Please, don’t get me wrong—The modern world brought wonderful changes and advances that you and I enjoy today. My point is that the awe and wonder of the world is no longer conveyed primarily through signs. As a result, many Christians sadly and simply do not need (and many do not believe in) a Eucharistic Presence. Such a marvelous and wonderful, dare I say, awesome gift like the Eucharist is just too hard to believe. “Jesus is really present in bread and wine? Come on now! The bread and wine are just signs that we use to remember what Jesus did. It is we who really become the Body of Christ in the world today.” Again, please don’t get me wrong. We do believe that we are the Body of Christ in our world today. But we believe this primarily because we eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ.
Our celebration of the Eucharist (our Sunday Mass) is an ancient form of ritual prayer that has survived hundreds of years. Okay, we turned the altars around in the 1960s, ditched much of the medieval Latin, and allowed our music to touch us in deeply personal ways. But the one thing that we have never lost is a fundamental sacramental view of reality: Simple signs (not science, technology, or a digitalized microchip), like bread and wine can become the Real Presence of our Lord and God. If we would stop to consider the vast awesomeness, the wonder, the very power of the universe itself, we would realize that any enlightened technological advance is itself a result not of me and my knowledge, but a result of the very gift of a God who transcends my human frailty. In the face of such a vast transcendence, I should get on my knees and admit that I am not the center (or the ground or the cause) of my own existence.

In the Gospel of John, our friend Thomas couldn’t believe without rational proof. When he was finally invited into the Real Presence of Christ, he simply said, “My Lord and my God.” As Roman Catholics, we must do the same. We have to submit to a power, a joy, a transcendent truth that has broken through the universe and invites us, through signs and symbols, bread and wine, to behold the real Truth, so that we can find our Way to Life itself. Jesus alone is that Way, the Truth, and the Life ( John 14:6). And Jesus gave us himself using simple signs: Take and eat. This IS my body. Such simple signs disclose a power, a vastness, a transcendence to which I must submit—and then to which I must respond, “My Lord and My God.” My friends, this is the Good News.

Please share it. Others (many of whom are our own Catholic friends) need to hear it...again.