“Faith is not maintained automatically. It is not a ‘finished business’ that we can simply take for granted. The life of faith has to be constantly renewed.” – Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
“‘Faith seeks understanding. … The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood.’ In the words of St. Augustine, ‘I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe.’” – Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 158
We see above that faith is constantly growing (and shrinking) in us.
In this fourth article on the Eucharist, recall St. Thomas saying faith, resting upon divine authority, is the key for believing/accepting what is referred to as Real Presence.
Now, circle back to the Pew Research Center poll results published on Aug. 3, 2019, where the headline reads, “Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that the Eucharist is body, blood of Christ.”
The only conclusion that can be reached as to why two-thirds of Catholics disagree with the Church that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ is that they lack faith.
Now, you can imagine how supercharged that is, telling someone that they lack faith.
What to do? The key is found in CCC 143, which says, in part, “By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer.”
The God part is easy. We read in CCC 27, “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself.”
For the human part, let’s look at the intellect first and then the will (next article).
“Many of his disciples, when they heard it (eating flesh and drinking blood), said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” (John 6:60)
Set aside the (many) number of times “this is my body; this is my blood” appears in the Holy Bible, or that it wasn’t enough to slaughter the Passover lamb, you had to eat it or any number of covenant making or renewal rituals, etc. This approaches the intellect via authority (God). This is the least satisfactory way of coming to knowledge and understanding. But it is God, and that should be enough.
I think, though, that we need to be sympathetic to those “lacking faith” today. Consider St. John’s Gospel. St. John doesn’t repeat the synoptic Last Supper narrative. Why? One likely reason is no need to repeat the synoptic tradition of the other known Gospels. What he does give is “The Bread of Life discourse,” which is not only specific, but also graphic in emphasizing Real Presence.
But what is likely lost on many is, of all the books of the Holy Bible, the Gospel of John is chronologically the last one written, sometime around the year 100. It is not unreasonable that people in the late first century were starting to have “difficulties” with “Real Presence.”
What about the Church Fathers? Whether you wish to call it “defense,” “apologetics” or “reinforcement of belief,” the early Church Fathers of St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Justin Martyr, to St. Irenaeus along with many others wrote about Real Presence. Why? Probably because it was “hard.” So, if you don’t talk about something, especially the “hard stuff,” people are going to fall away from the truth to their own (easy) beliefs.
Note in later years, the Church councils were not about Real Presence but difficulties with the Person of Jesus Christ (which they also wrote about).
It was basically in the 11th century when “controversies” over Real Presence started to really crop up and spread. I don’t have the space to give a complete regurgitation of history (others have done that), but we should not be unsympathetic to people who wanted to know more or have a greater understanding of Real Presence.
In an ever-increasing effort to explain Real Presence, enter transubstantiation. Many attribute this to St. Thomas; however, the term predates him by more than 100 years. This thought was developed fully by him, and the Council of Trent formalized its use. This is akin to the development of understanding and language in which we use the word “consubstantial” regarding the Person of Jesus Christ.
God does help us. I want to end this column with the icing on the cake (intellectually speaking). There have been four approved Eucharistic miracles in the 21st century alone. One example from the Magis Center (Father Robert Spitzer) website, “In 2013, the research concluded (in 2006 at Tixtla, Mexico) that: ‘The reddish substance analyzed corresponds to blood in which there are hemoglobin and DNA of human origin. … The blood type is AB, similar to the one found in the Host of Lanciano and in the Holy Shroud of Turin.’”
Faith in the Real Presence is not blind or a leap or even unreasonable.
