THE SECOND PERSON
OF THE HOLY TRINITY
 

 

JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH

"She will give birth to a son,
and you are to give Him the name JESUS,
because He will save his people from their sins."
All this took place to fulfil what
the LORD had said through the prophet:
"The virgin will be with child
and will give birth to a son,
and they will call Him IMMANUEL" -
which means, "God with us.""
(Matthew 1:21-23)
 

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• Light of Life - Dwight Longenecker
• The Man of All Times - M.M.P. message no. 445.
• God with Us - M.M.P. message no. 585.
• Jesus Christ is the Only Saviour - M.M.P. message no. 596.
• The Real Presence - Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J.
• The Value of the Mass
• Prayers

       "The young people were ushered into the darkened cathedral at the end of a day-long youth festival. After the giggling died down they sat for what seemed ages in the vast darkness. Then suddenly the sound system trembled with peals of thunder as strobe lights lit up the darkness like lightning.
 

        After the dark silence descended again there was the sound of crashing waves and roaring wind. Once again the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed. Then after anoter dark time of still-ness someone far away at the east end of the church lit a match.

The light flared in the darkness and moved upward as the great pascal candle was lit. As the single light glimmered in the vast darkness a lone voice read the story of Elijah in the cave. He witnessed the earthquake, wind and fire, but God wasn't there. It was in the darkness he heard a still small voice of calm coming like a small light.

The creation story tells how darkness covered the face of the earth, and God spoke the first word of creation which was, 'Let there be Light'. Literalists mock because the sun, moon and stars were created later, but the point of God creating light without the bearers of physical light is to show that his eternal light of life exists before and after the physical sources of light.
 

        From Genesis onward light and darkness provide powerful symbols of good and evil, but also represent the presence or absence of God's eternal life. When Jacob dreamed of angels ascending and descending a great stairway to heaven the strongest image was of wonderful light in the midst of his personal darkness.

For the psalmist God wraps himself in light, and walks in the path of light. It is the Lord who turns the darkness into light, and it is he who is the psalmist's light and salvation.

Later on when Jonah experienced the total darkness of the great fish's belly it was the still small voice of God, which provided the light in the darkness. When Jeremiah was thrown into the darkness of the well, and Daniel into the darkness of the lion's den, the abiding presence of God provided the strength and light of confidence they needed. The other prophets sing of God's light as they look forward to the coming of the promised one. According to Isaiah at his coming the people who walked in darkness will see a great light. He calls the people to arise and shine for their light has come. And Ezekiel sees the Messiah as one who comes in brilliant light.
 

        That same word of light which was spoken at the dawn of creation became flesh in place and time through Jesus Christ. St John's famous words claim that 'In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God'. He goes on to say, 'That word was the light of the world, the light that enlightens every man'.

Simeon, the old man in the temple, recognized that light in the infant Jesus when he declared him to be, 'The light that enlightens the Gentiles, and the glory of the people of Israel'. John the Baptist's father also recognized the eternal light of Christ when he prophesied, 'The dayspring from on high shall burst upon us'.

Jesus gathered up all these prophecies and fulfilled them when he proclaimed himself the light of the world. He also fulfilled the prophecies in his actions each time he enabled a blind person to see.

St Paul says Christ has made his light to shine in our hearts and St Peter writes, 'he has called us out of darkness into his own marvellous light'.

Finally, St John completes the symbol of Christ as the light of creation when he sees his vision of heaven. In heaven there is no need of sun or moon because just as Christ was the light at the beginning of creation, so he is the light of the eternal city of God.
 

        Living in a city, with constant light from street lamps and cars, we often don't get the chance to experience enough total darkness to appreciate the stars. It was only when we went as a family to a fireworks celebration, and the dark days were closing in, that the children began to see the stars shining clearly in the night sky.

These points of light shining in the darkness have always provided mankind with a source of awe and wonder. With no other guide ancient people looked to the stars for a way to foretell the future and ensure good fortune.

Modern astrology is simply a superstitious belief which ignores Christ. For as Christ fulfilled the Old Testament so he fulfils every religion - even astrology. The wise men followed a star to find the one who fulfilled their astrological yearnings.
 

        The stars, moon and sun are the physical sources of light in God's universe. They remind us daily that the invisible light needs physical channels.

As they do, they are constant reminders of Christ - the eternal light of God who still needed a physical channel to bear that light to a darkened world.

So St Paul tells the Corinthians that we are like simple clay lanterns - we bear this eternal light in the earthen vessels of our bodies. Elsewhere, he encourages the Philippians to be pure and blameless, so that they may shine out like stars in a wicked and depraved generation. This is the message of the sun's rising and setting each day. This is the silent witness of the moon and every star. That each created thing should bear the mark and stamp of the creator. This is our witness, too, that in our failing human lives we still shine with the image of God and so bring his light to a darkened world."
 
 

        "WHEN POPE PAUL VI PUBLISHED his now historic Encyclical Mysterium Fidei on the Real Presence, he reminded especially us priests, that there is a crisis of faith regarding the Eucharist and that Catholics had better awaken to the fact. Otherwise they are liable to be swept off their feet by subtle theology and their faith in the Eucharist will be weakened if not destroyed by current assaults on this cardinal mystery of Catholic Christianity.

Somewhere near the centre of the theological controversy about which the Pope warned us is precisely the question that no Catholic should raise, namely, "Is the Holy Eucharist Presence or Reality, or is it, as the Church teaches us, Presence and Reality?"

There is more at stake here than meets the eye. My purpose will be to defend the following thesis: that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ, who is in the Blessed Sacrament both as Reality and as Presence. He is in the Eucharist as Reality because the Eucharist is Jesus Christ. He is in the Eucharist as Presence because through the Eucharist He affects us and we are in contact with Him-depending on our faith and devotion to the Saviour living really in our midst.
 
 

        There have been before modern times two major crises of faith in the Real Presence in Catholic history. The first crisis occurred in the early Middle Ages when theological speculators, mainly in France, raised doubts about the reality of the

Blessed Sacrament. The first crisis reached a peak in the person of one Berengarius of Tours who died in 1088 A.D. Berengarius denied the possibility of substantial change in the elements of bread and wine and refused to admit that the body of Christ exists corporeally on the altar. His argument was that Christ cannot be brought down from heaven before the Last Judgement. He held that Christ's body, which exists only in heaven, is effec-tive for humanity through its sacramental counterpart or type and that Christ therefore is not really in the Eucharist except as he saId ideally. Pope Gregory VII ordered Berengarius to subscribe to a profession of faith that has become the cornerstone of Catholic Eucharistic piety. It was the Church's first definitive statement of what had always been believed but not always so clearly understood. It is a declaration of faith in the Eucharist as unquestionable and objective and unqualified Reality.

I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration there is present the true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin and offered up for the salvation of the world, hung on the cross and now sits at the right hand of the Father, and that there is present the true blood of Christ which flowed from His side. They are present not only by means of a sign and of the efficacy of the sacrament, but also in the very reality and truth of their nature and substance.

Words could not be clearer. If reality means actuality, and if actuality means objectivity, then the Catholic faith believes that the Christ who is in the Eucharist is the Christ of history, the one who was conceived at Nazareth, born at Bethlehem, died and rose from the dead at Jerusalem, and is now seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. It is the Christ who will call us when we pass out of time into eternity. It is the Christ who will appear at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead. It is the Christ who is the Omega of the universe and the goal of human destiny.

Five centuries after Berengarius arose the second crisis of faith in the Eucharist at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Again, much the same objections were raised and theories disseminated as in the Berengarian controversy. And once again the Church countered at the Council of Trent to revindicate the Reality of the Christ who is in the Blessed Sacrament.
 

         "The holy council teaches," declared Trent, "and openly and straightforwardly professes that in the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially contained under the perceptible species of bread and wine."

But then Trent added, with characteristic vigor, that this is the plain meaning of Christ's words when at the Last Supper He said, "This is My body. This is the chalice of My blood." Consequently the faithful were told "it is an infamy that contentious evil men should distort these words into fanciful, imaginary figures of speech that deny the truth about the body and blood of Christ, contrary to the universal understanding of the Church."

The Reality of Christ in the Eucharist therefore is no figure of speech. It is no fanciful rhetoric. It is, in the clearest words that can be expressed, the Incarnation extended into space and time. It is literally the Emmanuel made flesh-the God-man who is here and now living in our midst.
 
 

        Four centuries after the Council of Trent the Church is now in another crisis of Eucharistic faith and specifically of faith in the Real Presence.

Palpable evidence of such a crisis is seen in the practical disappearance in not a few dioceses of the Forty Hours Devotion; the corresponding disappearance of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament; the complete revision of constitutions of once flourishing contemplative institutes that specialized in worship of the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar; the widespread neglect of showing any of the customary signs of reverence to Christ's Real Presence in the tabernacle; the removal of the tabernacle in churches to some obscure and unobtrusive place where the Real Presence is isolated from even possible devotion by the faithful; the mounting literature in still nominally Catholic circles that seldom touches on the Real Presence or that explains it in a way congenial to Protestants who do not believe in Christ's corporeal presence in the Eucharist, but totally incompatible with the historic faith of Catholicism; the dissemination of religious education textbooks, teacher's manuals, and study guides that may make an apologetic mention of the physical presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament but leave a distinct impression that this presence is peripheral to Catholic faith and practice and is certainly not a cardinal mystery of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

Although seldom adverted to, pan of the same crisis about the Real Presence is the contemporary desacramentalization of the Catholic priesthood. Priests are said to be essentially preachers of the word or ministers of the Gospel or organizers of Christian communities, or spokesmen of the poor or defenders of the oppressed or social leaders or political catalysts or academic scholars or theological appraisers of the faith of believers.
 

        So they are. But is that all? And is that the primary purpose of the Catholic priesthood? No. The primary meaning of the priesthood is its relationship to the Eucharist-as Reality, as Sacrament and Sacrifice. And among these three primarily as Reality, made possible by priestly consecration. Once again as in previous ages the Church's magisterium has reaffirmed the Real Presence but in accents and with nuances that were not called for in previous times. Pope Paul VI in Mysterium Fidei was concerned about those who in spoken and written word "spread abroad opinions which disturb the faithful and fill their minds with no little confusion about matters of faith." Among these opinions was and is the theory that so redefines the meaning of the Eucharistic Presence as to obscure, if not deny, the fact of the Eucharistic Reality. It is as though someone said "I believe in the Eucharistic Presence but not as Reality, or as Reality which is only presence and not objective actuality."
 
 

        This brings us to the second dimension of our subject: the Eucharist as Presence.

The moment we hear the word "Presence" we think of a personal relationship between two or more people. We are present to someone or someone is present to us when we are aware of them and they of us; when we have them on our minds and hearts, as they think of us and sense a kinship and affection for us.

We are not exactly present to stones and trees nor they to us. So that presence implies rational beings.

Presence, as such, also transcends space and time. St. Paul or St. Augustine may be present to me although they are long since dead and although they are not physically where I am physically. They can be present to me mentally, volitionally, or as we say spiritually.

She can be in New York and he in San Francisco. Yet as soon (and as often) as he thinks of her with love, she is present to him. And whenever she does the same he is present to her, reaching over the distance of miles and irrespective of the fact that neither of them is where the other is in body. No matter-they are with each other in spirit.

Presence therefore does not deny physical reality, because two people can be both near to each other in body and intimately united in spirit. But neither does presence require nearness in body. It rather stresses intimacy of mind and heart.

Herein lies at once the dignity and danger of some current theories about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. There are those who laudably emphasize the subjective aspect of Christ's presence but at the expense of the objective reality.

Let me not be misunderstood. There is great need, even crucial need, to talk about and act upon the awareness of Christ in the Eucharist and to raise our sentiments of love toward Him. But this cannot be at the expense of ignoring or transmitting the prior fact that Christ is actually in the Eucharist, that in the words of the Church's solemn teaching He is "contained under the perceptible species of bread and wine." What was bread and wine after the words of consecration is no longer bread and wine but a living, physical, bodily in a word, the real-Jesus Christ.

We might then say that the Eucharistic Presence of Christ is at once a reality and a relationship. It is a reality because Christ really is in the Eucharist.

So that the Real Presence of Christ postulates on faith the real absence of bread and wine, He is now where before the consecration were bread and wine. They are gone and He is there. What before was real bread and wine is now only the external properties of bread and wine. He is here in the Eucharist truly present. They are no longer present but only their species or, as we say, appearances.

Transubstantiation is a fact of faith and all the twisted criticism of the Church's doctrine as being Hellenistic or Aristotelian is learned naivete. For the soul that believes, this is no Hellenism or philosophical terminology. It is the expression of truth. In Greek equivalents the words of institution institute a meta-ousiosis. The ousia or being of bread and wine become the ousia or being of what constitutes Jesus Christ body, blood, soul and divinity. In a word, in the Eucharist is present the totus Ch ristus us just as truly as He was present on earth in Palestine and as He is now in heaven. It is the total Christ in the fullness of what makes Christ Christ with no objective difference between who He was then (in the first century on earth) and who He is now (in the twentieth century on earth). Jesus Christ is [in New York] as He is also everywhere where a duly ordained priest has changed bread and wine into the body and blood of the Savior.
 
 

        Having said all of this, however, and how it needs resaying in today's confused Catholic world, we are not finished yet. As so often happens, error arises among men because they have been neglecting the truth. The hydra of Communism is partly God's visitation for the neglect by Christians of their practice of communal love.

So, too, with the Eucharist. Too many Catholics including priests had taken the Real Presence for granted. They complacently assumed that Christ is in the Eucharist and they proceeded to leave Him there. Empty churches, empty chapels, seldom a worshiper before the tabernacle and seldom a Eucharistic thought among millions of believers who would be offended if told they were ignoring the greatest Reality in the universe right in their midst.

These are not the words of mysticism or of poetry. They are the language of faith. What to do? What we need today, in the present crisis regarding the Eucharist, is another Francis of Assisi raised by God to remind the world of his day of what a priest is and what his words of consecration can produce in this valley of tears. Francis, as we know, was never ordained to the priesthood. But he had an extraordinary reverence for priests because he saw them as the divinely enabled consecrators of the Holy Eucharist.

In his last will and testament, Fran-cis wrote what we today in our sophisticated age of agnosticism need to hear and listen to. "God inspires me," he said, "with such great faith in priests who live according to the laws of the holy Church of Rome, because of their dignity, that if they persecuted me, I should still be ready to turn to them for aid. I do this because in this world I cannot see the most high Son of God with my own eyes, except for His most holy Body and Blood which they alone administer to others."

Francis concluded on a superlative tone that was not customary with him. "Above everything else" that is, more important than anything else he could urge upon his followers "above everything else, I want this most holy Sacrament to be honoured and venerated and reserved in places that are richly ornamented." This is the simple Poverello whose name has become synonymous with total poverty, even to destitution in imitation of his poor Master. But it is also the mystic seer who saw more clearly than most of his contemporaries who it was who dwells among us in the Blessed Sacrament. It is, in Francis's words, "the most high Son of God" in human form who is always here in Reality, but He is not always present to us in spirit. We do not always honour and venerate Him reserved in the Eucharist in places which are richly ornamented, not so-much in silver and gold as ornamented in the acts of faith, hope and love that reach out to Jesus who is constantly reaching out to us. That is why He is here; that we might also be where He is, united with Him in spirit as He has united Himself to us in body-as a prelude to that union where the Eucharist will be unveiled and where vision will replace what faith now tells us is true, because truth became incarnate to teach us how much God loves the sons and daughters of the human family."
 
 

        "RECENTLY I have come across a leaflet (with an imprimatur by the Archbishop of Sydney) giving 18 reasons for the tremendous value of Holy Mass. For the benefit of all those who adhere to the Roman Catholic faith under the sole guidance of the Pope and his hierarchy, I am quoting the reasons here under:
 

• 1. At the hour of death the Masses you have heard will be your greatest consolation.

• 2. Every Mass will go with you to judgement and plead for pardon.

• 3. At every Mass you can diminish the temporal punishment due to your sins more or less according to your fervour.

• 4. Assisting devoutly at Mass. you render to (he Sacred Humanity of Our Lord the greatest homage.

• 5. He supplies for many of your negligences and omissions.

• 6. He forgives you all the venial sins which you are determined to avoid.

• 7. He forgives you all your "unknown" sins which you never confessed.

• 8. The power of Satan over you is diminished.

• 9. You afford the souls in Purgatory the greatest possible relief.

• 10. One Mass heard during your life will be of more benefit to you than many heard for you after your death.

• 11. You are preserved from many dangers and misfortunes, which would otherwise have befallen you.

• 12. You shorten your Purgatory by every Mass.

• 13. Every Mass wins for you a higher degree of glory in Heaven.

• 14. You receive the priest's blessing, which Our Lord ratifies in Heaven.

• 15. You kneel amidst a multitude of holy angels, who are present at the adorable Sacrifice. with reverential awe.

• 16. You are blessed in your temporal goods and affairs.

• 17. When we hear Mass and offer the Holy Sacrifice in honour of any particular saint or angel, thanking God for favours He bestowed on him; we afford Him a great degree of honour, joy and happiness, and draw His special love and protection on us.

• 18. Every time we assist at Mass we should, besides our other intentions, offer it in honour of the saint of the day."

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