Idiosyncratic Eucharistic Apologetics

Since the Church has recently celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, which concluded three years of Eucharistic Revival in the American Church, and the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was set on a particular day within the month of June, the whole of which is also dedicated to Sacred Heart, it seems a fitting time to offer some thoughts on the greatest gift of God’s love for us: the gift of himself, whom we receive in the Holy Eucharist. There are seven aspects of the theology of the Eucharist to which I want to call attention: the way in which the concept of Transubstantiation aligns with human experience elsewhere in life; the place of the Eucharist within physical reality and the sense of touch; the parallels of marriage and the Eucharist; the relationship of the Eucharist to what is variously called justification, sanctification, or divinization; the way in which the Eucharist brings about the unity of the Church; the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist; and the way in which this sacrificial aspect illuminates the traditional teaching of Concomitance.

Transubstantiation

In order to get into the question of Transubstantiation, it is helpful to first understand why one would believe that Jesus meant us to believe in his real Eucharistic presence at all, instead of understanding "This is my body" and "This is my blood" in a way that more resembles how we usually interpret his statements such as "I am the true vine" or "I am the gate."  The most persuading case I have heard for this is based on the reaction of Our Lord to those who were offended and departed from him when he publically brought up eating his flesh and drinking his blood in John chapter six. Instead of showing horror or shock at their departure, or rushing to tell those who remained to stay because the others had misunderstood, he instead redoubled what he had been saying, and asked those who remain whether they also would leave. If he had meant it merely as a vivid word-picture of our complete need to depend on him, it seems more likely that he would have made this clear, at least to those personally closest to him, as he did on other occasions in his ministry, instead of going full speed ahead with the startling message.

Having made the case that Jesus intended us to believe in the Real Presence, we can turn to Transubstantiation directly. This concept has been dismissed by some as a superfluous importation of Greek philosophy into Christian theology, but to dismiss it in this way is to deprive oneself of a potent explanatory tool. It is, after all, difficult to describe how something that retains the physical traits of bread and wine could be considered the Body and Blood of Our Lord in any realistic sense. With that being said, how does the distinction of substance and accidents offer any clarity on the matter? Following the suggestion of the Anglican bishop William Wantland I believe this can be made apparent by considering the case of a dollar bill. The substance -- the "ultimate reality," as he puts it -- of the dollar bill is the value, or purchasing power, of the money, and the accidents -- the physical properties which anchor it in time and space -- are the paper out of which the bill is made. Likewise, the ultimate reality of the Eucharistic food and drink is Jesus, and the accidents (that is, the temporospatial anchors) are bread and wine.

The Eucharist and the Sense of Touch

Several years ago, I read a book called The Social Animal, written by the columnist and political commentator David Brooks. There are two lines from the book that stand out most sharply in my memory. The first is when he recounts a story of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose son once cried out into the night to his mother, “I’m not here. Touch me, Mother, so I may be here.”

This is helpful for imagining why the Lord chose to give us a physical means of grace such as the Eucharist. I have written at some length before about how it makes sense that since we are not merely spiritual beings, the Lord uses more than mere spiritual means to reach out to us. This story can illustrate the truth of that – the importance of physical things in human life – but it also implies another aspect of why physical means of grace are suitable. What I am referring to is that because of our fallen state, our physical and spiritual aspects tend toward dis-integration – falling out of harmony – from each other. This is seen in the entropy of aging, and ultimately in the separation of body and soul at death. However, the Lord, in his generosity, “touches us so that we may be here” – he becomes present to us in the Eucharist so that we may be present to ourselves and each other. By giving us himself using a physical means of grace, he re-integrates our physical and spiritual selves by giving us a food that will prepare us for life beyond death, beyond the temporary separation of body and soul.

It is a small step from this to understanding how it makes sense that the Lord gives us himself not just using a physical means of grace, but specifically a physical means of grace that happens to be food and drink. In our physical bodies, we rely on external sources to sustain our life – food and drink in particular. Consequently, the fact that our spiritual nourishment in the Eucharist comes to us in the form of food serves as a sign that we depend on something beyond ourselves for the life of our souls.

The Eucharist and Marriage

As I said before, there was a second line from David Brooks’ book that endures vividly in my memory. Brooks envisions a married couple being able to say to each other, “Love you? I am you.” Upon first reading those words, they immediately struck me as having a Eucharistic significance. That may seem to be an odd mental link to make, but perhaps it becomes more understandable by recalling that the Church is known, in Scripture and tradition, as the bride of Christ.

If the Church is the bride of Christ, of what does this marriage consist? Human marriages consist of a relationship between the man and woman that includes the total giving of self – body and soul – and the gracious, complete reception of that gift. Likewise, in the Eucharist, Jesus gives himself – body, blood, soul, and divinity – to us, his Church. There even is a striking physical parallel: in marriage, the husband is physically received into the body of the wife, and in the Eucharist, Christ is received under the appearances of physical things – bread and wine – into the human bodies of the members of his Church. In other words, the Eucharist is the consummation of the marriage of Christ and the Church.

This illuminates the line I just quoted from David Brooks, because just as a couple becomes bonded into what scripture calls “one flesh” in marriage, likewise through reception of the Eucharist, we the Church are made one flesh with Jesus – transformed into his likeness, such that when our souls are judged, the Lord can look on us and see himself, and say, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). Jesus himself is the blessed of his Father, and is the rightful Lord of the Kingdom, so the fact that he extends these things to the Church indicates that what he is saying is a variation of, “Love you? I am you.”

The Eucharist and Our Transformation

There is another lens through which to look at how the Church becomes one flesh with Our Lord. Namely, that of the proverb, “you are what you eat.” Not only is the Church traditionally called the bride of Christ, we are also called the body of Christ. As is well known, the Eucharist is the body of Christ, and yet, so is the Church. This is not merely a figure of speech used in two different contexts. This is an interconnected reality…two sides of the same coin; we are the body of Christ because we eat the body of Christ. As St. Augustine has it, “We become what we receive.” And so, once again, it becomes clear that when the marriage of Christ and the Church is consummated in the Eucharist, the Lord can look on us and say, “Love you? I am you.”

The Eucharist and the Unity of the Church

There is a bit more to be said about the interconnection of the Eucharistic and Ecclesial meanings of the body of Christ. The Anglican bishop Daniel Martins has proposed an interpretation of the word "remembrance" -- which shows up in some translations of Jesus’ words of institution of the Eucharist -- that places this word in the context of its root word “remember,” which is an antonym for “dismember;” dismembering indicates tearing a body apart, and re-membering could refer to the putting back together of the body. Thus, every time the Eucharist – the body of Christ – is celebrated, the church, which is also the body of Christ, is re-membered; we who are individually parts of that body are put back together in union with the rest of the members of Christ’s body across space (that is, worldwide) and time (that is, including those who have gone before us). 

This is a richer understanding of remembrance than mere mental recollection, and yet these are not wholly separate meanings of the word, because even mental remembrance involves mentally reconstructing – putting back together – the reality of something that has already occurred. Thus, we do not have to merely guess at which meaning is consistent with the intention of our Lord in speaking it; both are part of the same broader meaning, but in the context of everything that Scripture and the teaching of the Church throughout history tell us, we can see that the former interpretation of the word gets at a greater fullness of the truth.

The Eucharist and Sacrifice

Another side of the multifaceted reality of the Eucharist is that it is, in some way, a sacrifice. I would submit to everyone’s consideration that the way in which the Eucharist and marriage are related is helpful for understanding this. As was mentioned before, marriage is meant to be a mutual gift, in which both spouses offer their whole selves to each other. In that sense, the giving is from both people. However, in a different sense, marriage consists of a unique role of the man as giver and the woman as recipient. Likewise, in the Eucharist, Jesus extends his sacrifice of himself for us on the cross of Calvary in a way that allows us to become beneficiaries of that gift even these many years later. In that way, he is uniquely the giver, and we are the recipients of his gift. However, Jesus’ gift of himself on the cross was also a sacrifice of love to God the Father, because his generosity brought glory to his Father. Likewise when we address God the Father in the Eucharistic prayer, and – quite literally – lift up Jesus to him, we are offering Jesus to him as the best gift we can give, for he is the greatest pride we can have of our human race. 

Anything of merit that we can do as the Lord’s children is united to our Eucharistic offering, because these good things are, at the deepest level, the work of our Lord Jesus in us, his ecclesial body. Thus, when we offer his Eucharistic body to the Father, we are offering all that is good in ourselves, because we are good to the extent that we are like Jesus, who is human life lived at the fullest. Furthermore, if we allow ourselves to be part of Jesus’s offering of himself, we can share the outcome that his gift of himself had – namely the resurrection from the Dead and the Ascension into the presence of God.

All of this makes sense in light of the etymology of the word Eucharist. In a broad sense, it means thanksgiving, as is commonly noted, but the word breaks down further into morphemes that mean “good” and “gift.” The Eucharist is a good gift of God to us, but it is also our “good gift” to him, and our way of saying to him “thank you,” and thus affirming the goodness of his gift.

Sacrifice and Concomitance

This understanding of how the Eucharist is an ongoing participation in Jesus’ sacrifice – his total gift of himself – makes it clearer why it is fitting that the Church teaches Concomitance, that is, that in receiving Jesus under even just one or the other kind in Holy Communion (the appearance of bread or the appearance of wine), we receive the whole Jesus – body, blood, soul, and divinity. This is because it would seem discordant with the truth that God is perfect love if he held back anything in his gift of himself. Defenses of Concomitance tend to have to do with stating that it reflects the truth that God is indivisible, but this becomes more resonant if we realize that it is because he is perfect, pure love itself, that he is indivisible. In this context, it is not hard to imagine that he would willingly, lovingly give his whole self, even in the smallest fragment or drop of one kind in Holy Communion.

 
Conclusion

St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote brilliantly of the Eucharist both in poetry and in scholarly texts, recognized that even his fine work was like straw in comparison to the reality of the glory of God. Even more so, all the words of explanation written here are as nothing in comparison to the true Word, the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ, whom we meet in the Eucharist. There is another, earlier Thomas that comes to mind at this time also – St. Thomas the Apostle, on whose Feast I am writing these words. Ultimately, the best I can say of Eucharist is to repeat the words of this Apostle when he beheld the scars on the Lord’s resurrected body: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).