“THE MYSTERIES”—THE EUCHARIST (part II)

Homily given by Fr. Dennis Koliński, SJC

St. Peter’s Church, Volo

13 April 2008

In the fourth century, St. Ambrose gave a series of discourses to the newly baptized on the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist, “The Mysteries,” as early Christians referred to them. Following Ambrose’s lead, I began last Sunday with the first in a series of my own post-Easter homilies on “The Mysteries,” and more specifically on the greatest of the Mysteries, the Most Holy Eucharist.

In his discourse on “The Mysteries” St. Ambrose said that the Eucharist “is not what nature made, but what the blessing consecrated, and the power of blessing is greater than that of nature, because by blessing nature itself is changed.”[i] This “blessing”, by which “nature itself is changed,” we call today the consecration, and the change it affects we call “transubstantiation.” This is the term officially enshrined by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century to denote this dogma of the substantial change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ during the Mass. It is a term, which every Catholic should know and understand.

Last Sunday, I mentioned, that in order to understand the doctrine of transubstantiation, we have to look to Aristotle, who told us that all things that exist have what he called substance and accidents. The substance of a thing is what it really is, the reality of the thing that exists in and of itself. The “accidents,” are things, we could say, that are accidental to the existence of a given substance. The accidents define the substance. Man, for instance, is a substance. But a man’s size, age, appearance, knowledge, hair color and so forth, do not exist in and of themselves, but only as accidental qualities that help define a specific man.

Therefore, when we speak of the Eucharist, we must first recognize that bread and wine also have both substance and accidents. The substance of bread is bread and the substance of wine is wine, whereas its accidents are taste, color, aroma, texture, etc. Yet when the priest pronounces the words of consecration over the bread and wine, the substance changes while the accidents remain. Although it may still look and taste like bread and wine, its substance, what it really is, is no longer bread and wine, but rather Christ, whole and entire, Body and Blood, soul and divinity. This is the mystery.

We think that we understand the Eucharist fairly well but it isn’t until we delve into its depths that we begin to see really how inadequate our mind is to truly grasp this fathomless mystery. In the normal course of reality, the substance of a thing is always expressed through its accidents. In other words, the accidents of bread, its outward qualities, express the substance of bread. In transubstantiation, the substance changes but the outward qualities of bread and wine, which remain, don’t express the qualities of the new substance, Christ the person. Thus, the more we explore the Eucharist, the greater it becomes a mystery to be grasped by faith alone.

Perhaps, those of you, who attended Mass during this past week noticed in the gospel readings from St. John how Jesus was trying to prepare His followers for the Eucharist. He told them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger.”[ii] “I am the living bread that came down from heaven … and the bread that I will give is my Flesh.”[iii] When the Jews asked, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”[iv] Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.”[v]

We understand now that Jesus was talking about the Eucharist, but this graphic statement about eating flesh and drinking blood was just too much for many of His disciples, so they left Him. They didn’t know about the mystery of the transubstantiation. They didn’t know about Greek philosophy and Aristotle. They didn’t know anything about substance and accidents. So, they thought Jesus was talking about really eating His flesh. And it is a mystery of the faith so incomprehensible, that it has also caused difficulties for many people since that time. In fact, there are Protestants today, who still think that Catholics are cannibals. But it is precisely because it is a mystery that we must try to understand the Eucharist through the eyes of faith rather than through the eyes of the body.

One of the best explanations of the Eucharist can be found in Thomas Aquinas’ great work, Summa Theologica. His systematic examination of various properties of the Eucharist doesn’t help us pull back the veil from the mystery itself, but by applying Aristotle’s principles of substance and accidents, he helps us understand, just a little bit better, the manner in which the Real Presence exists within the reality of our world.

First of all, he sets the context by stating what we already know. “In the Holy Eucharist, Christ is present whole and entire, body and blood, soul and divinity, under the appearances or accidentals of bread and wine.” Then, he begins to explain for us ways in which Christ is and is not present in the Eucharist.