By DON FIER
Part 4
As we continued our consideration of the Holy Eucharist as a sacramental sacrifice last week, we saw that this most august “Sacrament of sacraments” is not only a sacrificial memorial (making present) of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross on Calvary, but “is also the sacrifice of the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], n. 1368).
As summarized concisely by the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “in the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, their suffering, their prayers, their work, are united to those of Christ [the Head]” (n. 281).
In its treatment of this dogmatic teaching, the Catechism makes an unmistakable connection to the Church’s doctrine on the Communion of Saints (the Church Militant on earth, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven).
“In as much as it is a sacrifice,” explains the Compendium, “the Eucharist is likewise offered for all the faithful, living and dead, in reparation for the sins of all and to obtain spiritual and temporal benefits from God. The Church in heaven is also united to the offering of Christ” (ibid.).
In a manner of speaking, it can accurately be said that each time Holy Mass is offered, the whole Church is “at the foot of the cross with Mary, united with the offering and intercession of Christ” (CCC, n. 1370).
Having considered the Eucharist as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the Father and as a sacrificial memorial of Christ and the Church, the Catechism now focuses on the dogma of the Real Presence. No doctrine in the Church is more critically important to the Catholic faith than that we firmly believe that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is really, truly, and substantially present in what is simply and accurately called the Blessed Sacrament.
Yet it is a doctrine that is in crisis, for as a statistic cited in the opening article of this series indicated (from a 2008 survey by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate), only 57 percent of self-identified Catholic adults believe that Jesus is truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
Although it is true that survey results are usually suspect because they depend so much on the wording of questions and the choices to be selected from, it is not unreasonable to assume many Catholics in the pew on Sunday do not fully understand this doctrine.
In fact, during the course of the Second Vatican Council, Blessed Paul VI felt compelled to publish his 1965 encyclical Mysterium Fidei (MF) on the Holy Eucharist because of confusing and erroneous ideas circulating among the faithful concerning the Real Presence.
“Among those who deal with this Most Holy Mystery in written or spoken word,” observed the Holy Father, “there are some who, with reference . . . to the dogma of transubstantiation, or to devotion to the Eucharist, spread abroad opinions which disturb the faithful and fill their minds with no little confusion about matters of the faith” (MF, n. 9).
He was concerned that the great hopes of the council for fruitful liturgical renewal would be frustrated by the seed of false opinions already sown.
What is meant by the term transubstantiation? It refers to the miraculous change that occurs at Holy Mass when the celebrating priest pronounces the words of consecration, first over the bread and then over the wine.
As defined by Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, in his Modern Catholic Dictionary (MCD), it is “the complete change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood by a validly ordained priest during the consecration at Mass, so that only the accidents of bread and wine remain” (p. 544).
In other words, the substance of the bread and then the wine is truly changed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ and only the appearance (accidents) of bread and wine remain.
To come to a better understanding of this doctrine, it is helpful, even necessary, to grasp what is meant by the terms substance and accidents. In philosophy, substance refers to the essence of a thing, to the inner reality of what something is. Accidents, on the other hand, refer to changeable aspects of a thing that do not belong directly to its essence, many of which are perceptible to the sense faculties (e.g., color, texture, taste, height, weight, etc.). It answers the question of how a thing is. Accidents cannot exist in themselves, but only in a substance.
In our everyday experience, it is quite common for the accidents of a thing to change while its essence or substance remains intact. For example, a person with brown hair could dye his hair another color, gain or lose weight, grow taller, etc., but he remains substantially the same.
In the case of a substantial change, however, the change in substance is usually accompanied by a change in accidents. A classic example that is often cited is a log that is burned — it is changed into another kind of substance (ashes), which is accompanied by a change in appearance.
In the Mass, however, a substantial conversion takes place where the bread and wine offered on the altar really and substantially become the Body and Blood of Christ even though the accidents of bread and wine — how the Sacred Species looks, feels, and tastes — remain unchanged.
When the priest repeats the words first uttered by our Lord at the Last Supper, “This is My Body. . . . This is the chalice of My Blood,” a marvelous conversion takes place. It is a conversion that cannot be scientifically verified, but must be believed as a mystery of faith based solely on the words of Christ and the infallibly proclaimed magisterial teaching of the Church on the sense of these words and how they are to be interpreted.
It is a unique conversion that has no direct parallel in the natural world; it takes place through the divine omnipotence of God.
At the same time, the conversion that takes place during Mass — although above reason — is in no way contrary to reason. As St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan and early Church father, wrote in the fourth century, “Could not Christ’s word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature” (De myst. 9, 50; as cited in CCC, n. 1375).
The 16th-century Council of Trent, in response to the so-called Protestant Reformation, reaffirmed the Church’s infallible teaching on transubstantiation:
“Because Christ, our Redeemer, declared that which He offered under the species of bread to be truly His own body, therefore it has always been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy Synod now declares it anew, that, by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called Transubstantiation” (Session 13, chapter 4).
Two false teachings that seek to undermine the doctrine of the Real Presence, both of which were condemned by Pope Paul VI in Mysterium Fidei, are transignification and transfinalization. The theory of transignification is the heretical view of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist that claims only “the meaning or significance of the bread and wine is changed by the words of consecration” (MCD, p. 545).
The closely related view of transfinalization, on the other hand, holds that only “the purpose or finality of the bread and wine is changed by the words of consecration. They are said to serve a new function, as sacred elements that arouse the faith of the people in the mystery of Christ’s redemptive love” (MCD, pp. 544-545).
Rationalism
Blessed Paul VI identified the root cause of these errors that has infected contemporary society in country after country as the “virus of rationalism.” In essence, it is the claim that human reason is the final arbiter of truth. In other words, if man’s limited human intellect cannot comprehend what is revealed by God, it is not accepted (cf. MF, n. 14).
In His infinite goodness, God has occasionally worked great eucharistic miracles which serve to strengthen or intensify what we hold by faith. A powerful example is described in Fr. Hardon’s Basic Catholic Catechism Course. Since the eighth century in a Franciscan church in Lanciano, Italy, the Flesh of Christ in a consecrated Host and the Blood of Christ in a chalice which appear to the senses have been preserved.
“Scientific examination of both has shown that the flesh conserved for over 1,300 years is the heart flesh of a man and the blood also conserved for over 1,300 years is identical with the blood conserved on the Shroud of Turin” (p. 139). Another similar miracle occurred in Santarem, Portugal, in the mid-13th century.
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
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