Real Presence

A friend recounted a story to me that took place at a very prestigious university in the Midwest. Apparently he had a professor who was interviewing new faculty members for a position teaching English literature. One very eager candidate came in, and at one point in the interview he was asked, “And Shakespeare?” And the candidate answered, “Let me assure you, I take my Shakespeare very seriously!” And at that moment it was decided that this particular candidate would never be hired! Of course you take your Shakespeare very seriously! You’re an English literature professor!

I recalled this incident one Sunday after I had preached on the Eucharist. A lady took some exception to what I had said and came up to me very suspiciously saying, “Father, you do believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, don’t you?” And I answered her, “Ma’am, let me assure you: I take the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist very seriously!”

That being said, I also think that we may not be able to fully appreciate the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist species themselves (that is, in the bread and the wine), unless we appreciate the real presence of Christ everywhere else, especially every other way that the Church teaches Christ is present during the celebration of the Mass. It may be that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species may be better believed in than Christ’s presence in these other ways. In one of the later instructions of Vatican II––interestingly enough the one written specifically on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery––the Church goes even further to point out that when we speak of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist we are not talking about it in any kind of exclusive sense as if the other kinds of presence were not real.

Very early on in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (#7) four ways in which Christ is present in the liturgy are mentioned. We start with a quote from St. Augustine who taught that “when anybody baptizes it is Christ who baptizes.” The Church draws from that simple statement that, first of all, Christ is present in the priest and/or minister of the sacrament. So no matter––lucky for us––whether the minister is worthy or not the sacrament happens, Christ is present. We call it ex opere operato––simply from the work having been worked. We also learn from that that Christ is present in the sacraments themselves, and so, when we speak of the Eucharistic liturgy, specifically in the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine transubstantiated.

But most importantly for our purposes, we teach that Christ is present in the Word when it is proclaimed, and really present. The reform of Vatican II was especially at great pains to point out once again the centrality of the Sacred Scripture and its connection to all the sacraments, especially to the Eucharist. If you will notice, part of the reform not only of the Eucharistic liturgy but of all the sacraments of the church was to ensure that when any sacrament is celebrated, there would be a Scripture reading. Even when someone comes to confess in the sacrament of reconciliation there is meant to be a Scripture passage read first. (It isn’t always practiced, mind you, for practical and pastoral reasons, but that does not nullify the point!) Even when we bring communion to shut-ins, recall the formula for sending an extra-ordinary minister out from Mass: “read the Scriptures to them.”

Christ is present in the Word because “when holy scriptures are read in the Church (Sacrosanctum Concilium says) it is Christ himself who speaks.”

The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerates the Body of the Lord, in so far as she never ceases, particularly in the Sacred Liturgy, to partake of the Bread of Life and to offer it to the faithful from the one table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ.

The one Table! This is why we speak of breaking open the scriptures as we would a loaf of bread. The Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs and Occasions has this beautiful line recalling the disciples on the road to Emmaus: As once you did for your disciples, now open the scriptures for us and break the bread. And Saint Jerome wrote

I think that the Gospel is the body of Christ and that the Holy Scriptures are his doctrine. When the Lord speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood certainly this can mean the mystery of the Eucharist. However, his true body and blood are also the Word of the Scriptures and its doctrine.

The great liturgist, scripture scholar and musician Lucien Deiss loves to say how we should emphasize the “real presence of Christ” in the Word when it is proclaimed. Hence, of course, the reverence we pay it, why we enthrone it on the altar (mind you, almost nothing else ever gets laid on the altar outside of the bread and wine themselves). This is why we stand for the proclamation of the Gospel in which for us Christ is supereminently present, and greet the Gospel book with a procession and incense. Fr Deiss in one place dreams of an ambo that is at once “majestic and simple. . . (a) true monstrance for the Word of God.”

a more biblical church

Part of the renewal desired by Vatican II was to transform our church into a more biblical church. It is notable that every session of the Second Vatican Council opened with the Gospel book being enshrined on the altar. And when Pope Paul VI died there was an open Gospel book laid at his head by his casket as he lay in state in St Peter’s. We had gone through centuries in our history when Catholics were not encouraged if not downright discouraged from reading the Sacred Scriptures. Now the church asked in SC 51 that the treasures of the Bible be opened more fully to the faithful. Out of that wish came our new lectionary, which has in turn become the model for the universal lectionary for many other communions as well. We could even think of it as the Catholic Bible; even though not every book of either testaments are represented, there is a marvelous selection of that which the church considers the most important passages form Scripture. More importantly, this may be the only Scripture that people ever hear, let alone read. As a matter of fact, for some Catholics this may be the first and/or only experience they ever have with the Bible, right here at Mass. St Antony the Great, the father of monks, heard the passage from Matthew to “sell all you have and give it to the poor and come and follow me” read at Mass on just one occasion, and did it, and changed the world. That’s how important this reading of Scripture is at Mass.

In a sense we could say that the Mass is the birthplace of Scripture. Most of the books in the Bible were written to be read at liturgical gatherings. So this is what we call primary theology going on here, and immediate encounter with Jesus present in the Word proclaimed, the very environment where God speaks to the chosen.

I heard someone marvelously describe the situation like this. It’s as if we have a new eco-system around the liturgy since Vatican II. Perhaps before the Council the eco-system included things like 40 hours devotion, stations of the cross, the rosary––mind you, not to say that any of those are invalid now, but they were bred by the state and ambience of Tridentine liturgical spirituality. The liturgy that did not include much participation on the part of the assembly, so practices grew up in and out of the Mass in which ordinary folks could take part. Now the novus ordo demands and presumes a new ecosystem. What this author suggested is that the novus ordo was in the process still of developing its own eco-system, its own set devotions that flow in and out of the liturgy. (Mind you, this word devotions is not a pejorative term: technically speaking, anything outside of the seven sacraments and the Liturgy of the Hours is considered a devotion. The main concern is that all devotions, all practices outside of the Eucharist find in the Eucharist their source and summit, that all things flow from the Eucharist and flow back to it.)

What might this new eco-system of the novus ordo look like? Well, certainly now the Liturgy of the Hours itself or some kind of prayer like it is much more encouraged for lay people than it once was, as a part of their regular preparation for and prolongation of the Eucharist. For many some type of silent prayer and meditation has become part and parcel of preparation for and extension of the Eucharistic liturgy, which may or may not include being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. But most importantly for our purposes, Scripture study and some kind of involvement with and immersion in the Scriptures compose part of that new eco-system that is developing naturally and is being encouraged to develop. The popularity of magazines such as Magnificat or Daily Word show how people are interested in preparing for the Eucharist by knowing what readings are coming ahead or taking them back home and reflecting on them throughout the week. Some parishes even have what is called communal lectio divina, where they will gather once a week and break open the Word that is to be proclaimed on the following Sunday and start their reflection on it beforehand. I am always edified (and slightly terrified) when someone comes up to me and says, “When I read those readings at home I was wondering how you were going to handle that one!” This is to be praised and encouraged, anything to get people to take that Word into their home and into their hearts, to have a living encounter with it. Here we have much to learn from lectionary based catechesis, and the beautiful rites we get to witness each week as the catchumens are dismissed to go and reflect on the Word week after week before they are brought into full communion; the Word as preparation for full communion.

I don’t believe that we can emphasize enough then the Lectionary is our Bible. Just as the collection of responsorial psalms that we sing and proclaim each week and each day can be considered the “people’s psalter,” so the lectionary is, practically speaking, the “people’s Bible.” And so our responsibility to focus on it is heightened, even if simply to show the connection between the passage read and the rest of Scripture, let alone to emphasize it as a living Word that speaks to us today.

Nehemiah 8: they understood the words

This emphasis also carries over to the homily, that is not only considered an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word, but is considered to be an extension of the proclamation of the Scriptures, an actualization and a translation. Probably the archetype for what a homily should be is Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, opening the scroll, reading from the prophet Isaiah and saying, “Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” My other favorite example comes from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Book of Nehemiah, chapter 8:

When the seventh month came —the people of Israel being settled in their towns — all the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had given to Israel. Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose; and beside him stood [the Levites] on his right hand; and . . . on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground. . . . the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

After years of exile Ezra is reading the covenant in a language that the people no longer understand, and the Levites are translating it into their common language and explaining to them what this means. And the people are wild with joy. Sometimes after a good homily I have this feeling deep down inside of me like surprise and a little dread and I want to say, “Why didn’t anybody ever tell us this before?” as if I had just understood the Gospel for the first time. That’s what I imagine happening here. And in this case and the people yell out “Amen, Amen!” and they bow and prostrate themselves on the ground. Because they understood the words.

response

But the thing about the Word is that it always demands a response. The Word is God saying to us, “Come! Believe! I love you! It’s all yours!” The Word is the record of God’s intervention in human history by God’s own choice, a re-telling over and over again of the marvels that God has done for us out of sheer gratuity, prodigality, love flowing forth. And it always demands a response.

In the monastic tradition especially we are trained to think of the four levels of meaning in Scripture that comes to us from the desert fathers and especially from the writing of Guigo the Carthusian. So every scriptural passage has four levels of meaning: first of all the historical meaning (which is quite often where fundamentalists will end in their understanding), what actually took place, in context. Secondly every scripture has an allegorical meaning––so Jerusalem symbolizes not just Jerusalem itself but the embodiment of peace, the reign of God on earth. Then even more subtly, scripture has a tropological or a moral meaning, that spurs to some kind of personal action. Most homilies will center around the first two; good homilies go at least to that third level and really annoy us, and urge us on to some kind of conversion. This level of moral action points already to the final words of the Eucharist, the most important of which is “Go!” The Mass is ended! Love one another as I have loved you! Mass is ended. Go and feed the poor!

So from here on out the music and everything else should reflect this moral meaning as well. This certainly turns the heat up on planning and preparing, because at this point our focus changes to spurring us on to some kind of response to the Word, especially the songs at communion––which in the best of the tradition is meant to be a re-iteration of the Gospel, the “Gospel communion.” And the sending forth song I like to think of as “marching orders.” We are not touching on this quite enough, but just as everything that precedes the proclamation of the Scripture should point toward it and whet the appetite for it, so everything that comes after the proclamation can be seen as a response to it. I know I’m jumping ahead here, but you see how the Gospel is already tied into our going forth, the thread that ties the whole celebration together.

I love to end my homily by saying, “This is our faith (hopefully I have spoken it well!). Let us stand and profess it! ‘We believe in God . . . !’” Our first response, having heard the Word, is to decided whether we really want to buy into it or not. (I realize for most of the liturgies that we are speaking about you do not have the creed professed, but I bring that up to illustrate the point.) Now that you know what this is going to entail, are you willing to say publicly that you believe?

And the second response is the Prayers of the Faithful, the General Intercessions. Immediately we begin to look outside of our own walls and away from our own concerns to the greater world and, in response to the Word and informed by that Word, call to mind how we and our world are in need to yet be conformed to that Word, to be healed by that Word––as a church, as a nation, as a world community, as a local community. This Word, and our understanding it more deeply, already immediately begins to shape how we view the world and how we pray for it. If we hear about loving our enemies, we immediately start praying for our enemies! If we hear about the dangers of loving riches more than God we immediately begin to pray for all of us who are caught up in materialism and greed! How does this message effect how we pray for the world, our church leaders, the poor, the sick, the dying and deceased, for our own needs?

praise

But the greatest response comes next. The best homilies go on to a fourth level, what we call the eschatological level. Adolf Adam describes this as the mystagogical level. Mystagogical teachings of course are the teachings about the inner meaning of the mysteries that accompanied newly baptized after Easter, so that the initiates lives would be shaped by them. This is a tradition that was revitalized again after the Council. How vital this also proves to be for the ordinary parishioner as well, and for young people who are only beginning to know their faith. What difference does this make? How does this effect me? And most importantly, what does all this have to do with what we are doing here with the bread and the wine?

It’s that fourth level that leads us into the mystery of the Eucharist, and tells us to go to the Table of the Sacrament. It’s that fourth level that gives some reason for what we are doing around the Table at all. We’re going there because we have understood the words. What else could we do? Our greatest response to having heard the words is that we head to the altar, that we lay our lives on the altar. SC says that the two liturgies, of the Word and of the Eucharist, “are so closely joined that they constitute a single act of worship.” While we are listening to the Word, especially while we are elucidating the Word, we already have one eye on the altar.

We read in the book of Exodus chapter 24, how Moses read all the ordinances of the covenant to the people, and they ratify it by doing what? Building an altar and sacrificing young bulls saying, “All that the Lord has commanded we will do. We agree to this covenant!” Their response to the Word of the Lord offering itself to them in love is to lay their best on the altar. And so in this story we have already mentioned from Nehemiah, after the Temple has been rebuilt, Ezra the scribe has brought forth the book the law of Moses that had been lost and has read it aloud to the assembled faithful for the first time in years, and the people yell out “Amen, Amen!” and they bow and prostrate themselves on the ground; and Ezra says to them “Do not be sad, do not weep! Eat rich food and drink sweet drink (and allot portions for those who have nothing!) and celebrate!” And they do so, Nehemiah says, “because they understood the words that had been expounded to them.” They do so “because they understood the words.” The response to the Word of God offering itself to them in love was to offer thanks and praise, was to raise the cup and call on God’s name. Their sacrifice was praise. For me it’s always been best summed up in Psalm 116: “What return can I make to the Lord for all the good he has done for me? The only thing I can do is take this cup into my hands and call on your name.”

So we hear the Good News, of how have been and are loved; and what can we do in response? The only thing we can do is praise. And Psalm 50 says: “I don’t need the flesh of bulls, I don’t need the blood of goats¬¬––those who offer praise as a sacrifice honor me.” The only thing we can do is say thank you. That’s the primary sacrifice we offer here. This is why we call it our sacrifice of praise. Praise is our sacrifice, and we offer it with the cup in our hands as Jesus himself did on the night before he died. The Word will not return empty. God’s Word demands a response and that response is either to walk out the door or come and eat. There is a beauty about the layout of the Mass, with its flow from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Over and over again Vatican II teaches how important it is to remember how intimately the Word is tied to the sacraments, and specifically to the Eucharist with which “it forms one single act,” the one Table. In a church built such as ours in Big Sur, where we actually celebrate the Liturgy of the Word in one place and then process to around the altar in another space, you can get a sense of it in the very choreography of moving from one space to the other, that we are responding to the Word be going to the altar.

the assembled faithful

That brings us to the fourth way in which we are taught that Christ is present in the Eucharist––in the assembled faithful. Christ is present in the gathering of the assembly: “when two or three are together in my name there am I in their midst (Mt 18:20).” There’s a little element in the Liturgy that easily gets overlooked. It’s so important that the bread and wine be presented by someone from the assembly, not to just be there on the altar beforehand. Why? Because the bread and wine are symbols of us. This is the bread of our lives, the wine of our gladness; the bread of our pains, the wine of our bitterness. Individually and communally––as the many grains of wheat are ground and made one, as the many grapes are crushed and made into wine. Here’s where the real play on words comes for me. The Church teaches that we have to be in right disposition to really be able to benefit from the power of the Eucharist. And for me “right disposition” means that before the bread and wine become the real presence of Jesus, they have to be the real presence of me. Because we’ve “understood the words” we have to really put our lives on the altar; “because we’ve understood the words” we have to really jump into that bread and into that cup; “because we’ve understood the words” we have to really choose to be in that bread and wine as they are lifted up so that we are lifted up and changed into Christ as they are. That’s why we pray in the Eucharist prayers things like, “Accept us together with your Son.” Like Jesus we become the sacrifice of praise. Before it’s the real presence of Christ it’s meant to be the real presence of us so that we may be changed into what we receive. That’s a tall order, because now we will have to do what Jesus did, and act as Jesus did––because we have understood the words.