Lesson 17: The Eucharist (Part 1) BY FATHER ROBERT ALTIER

We have come to what is perhaps the most important of all the lessons because it builds and fulfills everything we have talked about so far. The focus of this lesson is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the Lord, and when we consider it from that perspective, this is absolutely central. When we talked about Jesus, we talked about all the objective things regarding Who He is and His Person, but now we can be very subjective because Our Lord is truly present among us in the Blessed Sacrament. That is what we have the privilege of being able to cover in this lesson.

When we talk about the Eucharist, we have to consider it in three different ways: the Real Presence, the sacrament, and the sacrifice. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word eucharistein, which means “to give thanks.” Eucharist literally is thanksgiving. When it says in Scripture that Jesus took the bread and He gave thanks, that is eucharist; that is the word which is there. Remember that the Last Supper was the Passover meal, and there is a part of that meal which the Jewish people call the todah. Todah is the Hebrew word for “thanksgiving” or “thank you.” It was in that context that Our Lord consecrated the bread and wine and changed it into His own self. So you see the symbolism of what is there.

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier

Lesson 17: The Eucharist (Part 1)

(Class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Our Father.]

If you think about the fact that this was at the Passover meal, it puts it all in context for us. The Jewish law said that if somebody could not celebrate the Passover on its actual day then they could celebrate it early. Knowing that He would not be able to celebrate the Passover completely on the proper day (which would be the sabbath, on Saturday), Jesus celebrated early with His apostles. On Thursday evening, He and His apostles went to the Upper Room to celebrate the Passover feast. The Passover was the event that took place in ancient Egypt at the time when the people of Israel were enslaved to the Egyptians, and after nine of the plagues, the very last plague was the death of the firstborn of the Egyptians. But God told them that they had to take a lamb, a male lamb without blemish, and sacrifice the lamb at the evening twilight. Then they had to take the blood of the lamb and sprinkle it upon the doorposts and the lintel of the door, and the angel of death would pass over the houses where they had done that. So that is what happened. From that point on, the Hebrew people had to offer their firstborn son to God. They had to redeem the firstborn because of the death of the firstborn of the Egyptians.

Well, have you ever thought about the passage in Saint John’s Gospel where Jesus is walking along and Saint John the Baptist points out Our Lord to his disciples (who happened to be Andrew and John), and says, Behold, the Lamb of God? We are so accustomed to the language that maybe we have not stopped to think about it. But imagine standing there with Saint John the Baptist and having him point somebody out and say, “Look, there’s the Lamb of God!” What a dumb thing to say. Why did he not say, “Behold, the Son of God,” or, “Behold, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity,” or, “Behold, God made man”? Rather he said, Behold, the Lamb of God. Why? It is because he was pointing out exactly Who Jesus was – He was the sacrificial lamb.

There is a passage in Saint Luke’s Gospel and the English translations that you look at will say something to the effect of “When it came time for His deliverance…” or “When it came time for His passing from this world to the next, Jesus turned His face and set off towards Jerusalem.” The word that is used in Saint Luke’s Gospel is exodus. “When it came time for His exodus…” The translation is not a bad translation; they just should not have translated it at all. They should have left it alone because Saint Luke is trying to tell us something. This is hearkening back to the Exodus. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the Passover Lamb.

If you remember even further back to when Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac, Isaac is carrying the word upon his shoulders and says to his father, Here is the wood and here is the fire, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice? The wording of Abraham’s answer is extremely important. It says, God will provide Himself a sacrifice. God will provide Himself a lamb for the sacrifice! It does not say that God Himself will provide a lamb for the sacrifice; it says God will provide Himself a lamb for the sacrifice. And so when they went up the mountain, which was Mount Moriah, the place where Jerusalem is and the place where Jesus was crucified, there they found a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. That is what Abraham sacrificed instead of Isaac because God did not want human sacrifice. But God sent His Son into the world to die.

Jesus is the only person born into this world for the purpose of dying. Parents have babies for the sake of having babies and raising them up to be saints, and every parent knows that eventually that child will die someday. But you do not have a baby for the sake of that baby dying. Yet that is what Our Lady did; she had a Child solely for the sake of that Child coming into this world to die so that we could live. He is the Passover Lamb. He is a male without blemish and He was sacrificed.

Interestingly, if you look at Saint John’s Gospel there is a different timing that is there. Saint John uses the lunar calendar instead of the solar calendar; therefore, he has the sacrifice of Jesus occurring at the exact same time that the lambs would be sacrificed for the Passover the next day. So at the time the Passover lambs are being sacrificed in the temple, that is when Jesus is being sacrificed. The priests had to sacrifice all of the lambs within a certain period of time. They would sing the five Hillell psalms three times and all of the lambs had to be sacrificed within the time period of the singing of those psalms. Imagine all of the priests gathered there singing these psalms. Imagine the noise of the lambs as they are being sacrificed. Jesus would have been able to hear all of that from where He was, which was not too terribly far away, only approximately a mile away. Remember that back then there were no cars or truck or machines or factories, so everything was quiet. With no other noise going on, it would not have been a problem for Jesus to hear. It is also an interesting point to note when you think about it that the high priests were there at the Crucifixion. They should have been at the temple offering the sacrificial lambs, but instead they were at the Crucifixion offering the true sacrificial Lamb.

So what needs to happen with the sacrificial lamb? Well, we need to take his blood and sprinkle his blood upon the doorposts and the lintels, not of our houses but of our souls, in essence, in order to be saved, to be washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb. But the Jewish people had to do something more, because if you think about it, if they would have taken the blood and put it on the doorposts and lintels, but did not eat the lamb, what would have happened to their firstborn? It would have been dead. They were ordered to put the blood upon the doorposts and the lintels, and then they were to roast the lamb and eat its roasted flesh. If they did not eat the lamb, they would not be saved.

Scott Hahn has an interesting way of putting it. He says, “Now what if in that family they didn’t like lamb? What if they didn’t have mint jelly to cover it up? What if it wasn’t hot and it started to taste not so great, and so the kid says, ‘Mom, I don’t like lamb. Couldn’t we just get a lamb cookie cutter and roll out some bread and make lamb cookies? You can bake those, Mom, and then I’ll eat lamb cookies at the time you guys are eating the lamb.’ What if they had eaten lamb cookies instead of the lamb? What would have happened? Their firstborn would have died.”

Consequently, Jesus says, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in you. Not lamb cookies, not little wafers of bread that remind us of Who Jesus is, but we must eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood or we have no life in us. Those are the words right out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They are the Word of God. It is not an option. There are some who want to say, “If you look a little further on, Jesus said, ‘I have spoken to you in symbolic terms.’ So you see that it was only a symbol.” If you look a little further on in John 6, you can ask yourself just how symbolic it was, because when it came time for His apostles to walk away, He did not stop them. Remember that all the people grumbled against Him and walked away, saying, “How can this be? This is hard to listen to; who can endure it?” And they left. If you read the Gospels, and you do not even have to read them carefully to get this point, the apostles did not get it. They did not understand all of His parables, so what would He do every time? He would take them aside and explain the parable to them. This time there was no explaining. Instead, He looked at His apostles and said, “Do you want to leave Me too? This is what it requires: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life, or you can leave.” That is the option Our Lord gives: Do you want to leave? Peter says, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Where else are we going to go? He is the word of eternal life. He is the Word of God made man, and He has told us what we have to do.

I always find it interesting because in that passage we have the word “unless” – Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood… But then we have the non-Catholics saying it is merely symbolic: “It was symbolic language; He didn’t really mean it.” But ask them what it says in John 3 about baptism. It says: Unless you are born again by water and the Holy Spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Was that symbolic language? “No, no, no. That means you have to be baptized. That’s not symbolic, but the Eucharist is.” According to the non-Catholics, you can pick and choose what you want to believe, I guess. No, you cannot. It is the exact same word. “Unless” means it is required. It is not an option for us. We must eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood.

Now Our Lord in His goodness also knew that we would not be able to deal with this if it was cannibalism. That was against the law of God, and He was not going to ask us to commit cannibalism, so He had to do this in a way that we would be able to receive Him. Besides that, if it were His physical body that we were going to receive, it would have been gone a long time ago. Take a bite out of Our Lord’s arm and it is not going to last long. It would be gross and it would be against divine law, so He is not asking that of us. Instead He gives Himself to us in a way which is far, far greater, because in the Eucharist you receive the entire Person of Jesus Christ – His body, His blood, His soul, and His divinity. You receive Jesus sacramentally, and so you receive the fullness of His Person. It is the substance of the Lord. Substance is the underlying substructure, that spiritual substructure that makes a thing what it is. That which makes bread is changed into that which is the very substance of Jesus Christ, and the substance is the fullness of His being, so it is the entire Person of Christ that you receive. Every time you receive Holy Communion, you receive His entire Person.

For those of you who are married, you will certainly understand the principle very easily. When you are dating somebody (and hopefully you can still say this in your marriage, and even more now after many years of marriage), you should be able to look at that person whom you are so in love with and say, “I love you so much that what I wish I could do is find a way to make you really small and fit you inside of my heart, or make myself really tiny and go inside of your heart and just live there in a place where there is so much love.” That is exactly what Jesus did. Nothing is impossible for God. He knew exactly what we needed. He is so in love with us that He has given us a means by which we can actually receive His entire person into ourselves. That is what He has done in the Blessed Sacrament. It is the fullness of the Person of Jesus Christ Whom we receive into ourselves. That is the gift He has given us – His whole self!

Now it is not the physical presence of Christ that you receive; it is the sacramental Christ. It is the same Christ, but a different form. Rather than being physically present in the Eucharist, Jesus is sacramentally present; He is substantially present. It is the exact same substance of His person Who is present in the Eucharist as was present 2,000 years ago when He walked the earth, the same exact substance: His body, blood, soul, and divinity; His whole person. But it is there in a different form. He is there sacramentally, not physically. If He were there physically, it would actually look and taste like a piece of flesh.

There are some people who do not believe in the Real Presence, tragically, and so God in His mercy has given to those who are having difficulty in this area several opportunities to be able to know. There was one occasion in the latter half of the 13th century where a woman in Santarem, Portugal went to a fortune teller and wanted her palm read. The witch started reading her palm and told her that she would not finish until she brought back a consecrated host. So the woman went to Mass and received Holy Communion, and then took the Eucharist out of her mouth, wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and brought it home with the intention of bringing it to the witch. But, thanks be to God, her conscience caught up to her and she realized that she could not do so because that was Jesus. But she also knew that she was in the state of mortal sin and could not receive the Eucharist. Not sure what to do, she kept the host in the handkerchief and put it in a foot locker at the bottom of her bed with the idea that she would bring the host back to church, give it to the priest, and confess her sin. But then she forgot that the host was there. One night, as the woman was coming home late in the dark, she approached her house and noticed there was light streaming out of all the windows. Remember that this was in the 1200’s and there was no electricity back then. Terrified, she walked into the house and noticed that the light was coming from the footlocker at the bottom of her bed. When she opened the footlocker, there she found that the host she had taken from church had changed into a piece of human flesh. If you have the opportunity to go to Fatima, Portugal, this place is about halfway between Lisbon and Fatima. Most of the tours stop in Santarem and you can see the host that is there. We all know that human flesh, like all flesh, starts to rot out after about three days, if not sooner. This has been there now for over 700 years, and it is right there in the monstrance. You can go to that little church where it is and see it for yourself.

There is another occasion about the year 700 in Italy at a place called Lanciano. A priest was doubting the Real Presence of Jesus and he was going to leave the priesthood. One day while he was saying Mass, he said the words of consecration and right there in his fingers the piece of bread turned into a piece of flesh. You can go to Italy today and see it. That has been there since the 8th century and it still sits in a monstrance where you can adore it.

In those two occasions, Jesus is physically present. He is not sacramentally present; He is substantially present there. It is no longer a sacrament; it is now a physical presence of the Lord. Because scientists tend to be skeptics (which is not a bad thing, all things considered), the Church allows science to look at these things. And so they did all kinds of tests and found some rather interesting things. In both of these situations, which are in two different countries and about 500 years apart, they found that both are AB blood from a male who would have been around 33 years old and was from Palestine. They could tell this from the spores that were present in the blood. How they can do that, I do not know. I guess you can tell the difference between male and female flesh, but I do not know how you can tell the age; they have some way of being able to do that. As interesting as all of that is, the best part is that it is cardiac tissue. There is only one place in your body that has cardiac tissue, and that is your heart.

If you want to tell somebody how much you love them, you say something to the effect of “I give you my heart.” It means “I give you my whole being, my whole person, everything that I am.” That is what Our Lord has done for us. He has given us His heart, and He is asking in return that we would open our heart to receive Him and give our hearts back to Him. When you are in love with somebody and you say to them, “I’m going to give you my heart,” what would happen if they just said, “Oh, I don’t care; I don’t want it”? You would be devastated. Well, hat do we say to Jesus over and over again? “Who cares?”

We make it look as if this is no big deal. We walk away from Mass like it does not matter. Teenage kids say stupid things like, “I didn’t get anything out of it.” Adults say stupid things like, “I wasn’t being fed.” You received God! What do you mean you didn’t get anything out of it or you were not fed? That is Jesus Christ, true God and true man, really and truly and substantially and sacramentally present in the Eucharist. How can we say that we did not get anything out of it, if we received God? And how can anybody say that Mass is boring when you understand what is going on? There are only two reasons why a person would be bored: You either do not care or you do not get it. If you do not understand, all you have to do is learn. Then you can understand and get into it. The only other option is that you do not care.

There is absolutely nothing that is boring about Mass; the priest’s homily maybe, but beyond that nothing else is boring about it at all. It is the sacrifice of Christ. When you are at Mass, you are literally there at Calvary. You are there at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Imagine Saint John looking at Our Lady at the foot of the Cross and saying, “You know what, this is boring. I’m not getting anything out of it. Let’s go. Let’s do the Catholic thing and come about a quarter of the way into the Crucifixion and let’s leave before it’s over. It’s dull anyway and we don’t get anything out of it.” How do you think Our Lady would react? What do you think she would say if we told her that Mass is boring and we don’t get anything out of it? It is the sacrifice of the Lord. One other thing I have to ask you is this: For those who might not want to be at Mass, for those who might think Mass is dull and boring and do not get anything out of it, what do you think you are going to do for eternity? Heaven is the Mass. And if you think Mass is boring and you do not want to be there now, then what you are saying is “I don’t want to go to heaven because it’s going to be boring!” All that heaven is going to be is being at Mass.

Read the Book of Revelation; it is all there. Every single part of the Mass is there, not all in the same order that we have it today, but everything is all there. The Jewish people worshiped God according to a certain format based on the vision of Moses when he saw the worship in heaven. The heavens were opened and he saw the heavenly worship taking place and God said, “Make a temple based on what you have seen and worship in the same manner as you have seen.” What about the Christians? We cannot have the same Jewish worship because Jesus made very clear that He was going to start something entirely new. You do not take a new piece of cloth and sew it onto an old cloak. You do not put new wine into old wineskins. He was not just going to redo something that was Jewish; He was going to start something new, based upon Judaism, the fulfillment of Judaism to be sure, but something entirely new at the same time, the fulfillment of every promise that God had made.

And so there is Saint John, the beloved apostle, on the island of Patmos. It was the Lord’s Day, he tells us. In other words, he was the Bishop of Ephesus and he should have been saying Mass for his people, but he was in exile on the island of Patmos in a cave and could not say Mass. So God brought him the Mass. The heavens were opened and he saw the heavenly worship. He wrote it down, and that is the basis for what we do. It is all right there and it is to say, “Imitate what they’re doing in heaven.” That is what Mass is: It is heaven on earth. It is Jesus Christ truly present in His sacrifice, in His death and His resurrection. You have the angels worshiping and adoring Him, just as they are in heaven. We have the most powerful event in human history going on at the altar of God, and we think it is boring?

I have never heard anybody tell me that they thought the Book of Revelation was boring. That is the last thing they ever say about the Book of Revelation. It is the last thing we ought to say about Mass too, because the Mass is anything but boring if we understand it. People say, “Yeah, but it’s always the same thing over and over again.” It is the same thing for a reason, because if it were different every week when you came to Mass, like a vaudeville show, then you would have to pay attention to what was coming next. You would not be sure what the new surprise would be and what they would come up with to entertain you each week. That is not what Mass is about. The reason it is always the same is so that you do not get jarred out of your prayer, so that you can enter deeply underneath the words because you get to know them so well. You do not have to think about the words; you can focus on the mystery. You can focus on the reality that is happening at the depth of that sacrifice and you can be united with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. That is exactly what the Church says to do.

We hear these people all the time saying, “The Second Vatican Council said there has to be the active participation of the laity in the Mass.” That is what it says; however, the way we have interpreted it is not what it means. There are two Latin words that can be translated as “active.” There is activitas and actuosa. Activitas means “doing things, running around and being active about all kinds of things.” So what do we do today? We need more Communion distributors. We need lectors. We need ministers of hospitality. We need people to do this, that, and the other thing. Why? Because we need the active participation of the laity. Wrong. The word that is used is not activitas; the word that is used in the Second Vatican Council documents is actuosa, which is the activity of the heart. The people are to be actively involved in the sacrifice of the Mass. That means you are not supposed to show up for Mass and pray your Rosary. You are not supposed to show up for Mass and read good spiritual books. You are not supposed to show up for Mass and look at the stained glass windows. You are to show up for Mass and open your heart and enter into the mystery that is happening on the altar and be united with it. That is what the Church asks for – not more people doing more things, but more people praying. That is what it is about.

And if I may say as a side point, but I think a rather important one, the devil is very shrewd. It says in English “the active participation of the laity,” and it is not a wrong translation to say that, but who is going to volunteer? The devil knows who is going to volunteer. If there is somebody who has the opportunity to serve the Lord in a particular way, who is it going to be? The women of the parish, because the women want to be able to serve the Lord. Well, who are the ones who are the specialists at prayer? Women, and the devil knows that. If he can get the women running around doing all kinds of things, they are not praying and he is having a field day because the ones who are called most precisely to prayer are women. Both men and women are called to prayer, but women being relational, women operating from the heart, they are the masters of prayer. Instead of praying, now we have the women running around doing all kinds of things thinking they are doing what the Church asks for, to be actively participating in the liturgy, instead of actively participating in their hearts in what is going on at the altar.

The new Mass translations are not good, but one of the worst is in the Offertory Prayer where the priest turns to the people. In Latin, it says, Orate fratres ut meum at vestrum sacrificium – “Pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father.” Instead we say in English, “Pray that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God.” You might say, “What’s the difference? Who cares?” No, our sacrifice makes it sound like we are all doing the same thing. “Oh, yeah, this is our sacrifice. We’re going to offer some bread and wine to God, and that’s our sacrifice.” No, that is my sacrifice as the priest. I am offering the bread and wine to God on behalf of the people. What is your sacrifice? Your sacrifice is to be your sufferings, your struggles, your difficulties and problems. You are to unite them with the sacrifice of Jesus. Put them on the paten with the bread. Put them into the chalice with the wine. At the moment of consecration when the priest says those words that change bread and wine into the very Body and Blood of Christ, your sacrifices and sufferings are there with them and they actually are changed to become the very suffering of Jesus Christ.

You cannot separate suffering and sacrifice. But in the Eucharist there is no suffering, so where is the suffering? The Eucharist is the mystical re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ. It is a mystical sacrifice rather than a physical one, so where is the suffering? Two thousand years ago in the physical sacrifice of Christ, the suffering was in His physical body. Now we have the mystical sacrifice of Christ, so the suffering must be in the Mystical Body of Christ. That is us. We are to unite ourselves in that way – actively participating in the Mass – to bring all of these things to Mass with us and give them to Jesus. Think of the dignity that is yours. Your suffering becomes divine. Your suffering continues the suffering and the work of Jesus Christ. That is active participation in the Mass. That is not boring, and that is certainly not “getting nothing out of it.” You will get out of Mass as much as you put into it. If you understand what is going on and you unite yourself with the sacrifice of Christ, that is when you are really going to start understanding at a deeper level what is happening, and you are going to be able to enter more deeply and profoundly into the reality of that sacrifice and into the depths of that mystery. That is what He is inviting each and every one of us to. That is what He wants for us, and that is what He wants from us. He wants us to receive His entire Person into ourselves, and He wants us to give our entire person to Him. The two are one. We are members of Jesus Christ, so we share in the fullness of that sacrifice.

Going back to what we looked at when we talked about baptism, we said that in baptism we entered into the covenant, and we said that the covenant is a person, the Person of Jesus Christ. So if we are members of the covenant, we are members of Jesus Christ. And every covenant, we said, has to have a sign. What is the sign of the New Covenant? The Eucharist. Once again, far from being dull and boring and being completely separated from us, the Eucharist defines who we are, because we are members of the covenant, we are members of Jesus Christ. This is our own self-definition more precisely and perfectly defined than anything else we can say about ourselves. This is who we are at the depth of our being. You see the reason why the Church wants us to be actively participating in the Mass, not daydreaming about something else, not praying in a different form. As wonderful as the Rosary and all the other prayers are, do not say them at Mass because the Mass is there for its own sake and we have to keep it that way and enter into the Mass, enter into the mystery and enter into the sacrifice so that we are changed.

Saint Augustine said 1600 years ago that the Eucharist is different from any other food that we eat because every food we eat is changed into us, but in the Eucharist, we eat the Blessed Sacrament and we become what we eat. We are changed into Christ rather than Christ being changed into us. This is the celebration and our union with Christ. The two sacraments most closely aligned symbolically are the Eucharist and marriage. All the symbolism is identical – on two entirely different levels, of course – but all the symbolism is the same because the Church is the Bride of Christ and each one of us is called to be a bride of Christ. As a bride of Christ, how do we express that unity? Through the Eucharist, through the reception of the Blessed Sacrament. That is what we are called to, just as in a marriage a wife receives the gift of her husband and gives the gift of herself to him, and he receives the gift of his wife and gives the gift of himself to her. That is what is happening in the Eucharist. Jesus gives His entire self to us, and we receive Him into ourselves. We receive the entire Person of Jesus, and we are called to give ourselves in return. It is a gift both ways, giving and receiving. That is what we have in the Eucharist.

Going back to that point of the Last Supper, at the Last Supper we see Jesus with His apostles and He consecrates the Eucharist. We are told in Saint Mark’s Gospel that they sang a psalm after they had consumed the wine and then they went out. It does not mean a thing to us, does it? For a Jewish person, this would mean everything. It would be like a Catholic saying, “They had the readings, and then they had the homily. They did the Creed, and then they went home.” You would say, “Wait. They didn’t have the offertory and the Eucharistic Prayer? There was no Mass?” That is basically what Saint Mark is saying because there are four cups of wine that are supposed to be consumed at the Passover Supper. They consumed three, but not the fourth. Then Jesus went out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane means “olive press,” so it is the garden of the olive press. And what is happening to Him out in the Garden? He is getting squished, crushed under the weight of all our sins to the point that Saint Luke tells us blood was dripping from his pores, which is exactly what happens when an olive is squished. The oil comes out of the pores of the olive. Again, you see what is going on, all these things that God has set up so beautifully.

Then it comes time for the Crucifixion, and what does Jesus say on the Cross? I thirst. And they put the wine to His mouth. He drinks of the wine and says, It is consummated. It is finished. People keep saying, “What’s finished? What’s consummated? What does that mean? What’s He talking about?” The words “It is consummated” are the very last words of the Passover Supper. When they have consumed the fourth cup, they say, “It is consummated.” It is finished; the Passover is complete. That is exactly what Jesus was saying. What began at the Last supper on Thursday night ended at three o’clock on Friday afternoon. The Passover Supper did not end on Thursday because He did not drink the fourth cup. They sang the songs and went out. He did not finish the supper until He was on the Cross. Then He finished the Passover. That is the fulfillment: “It is complete.” The Passover had now been fulfilled by the Passover Lamb.

All this stuff is packed into these things, and there is so much more. In Saint John’s Gospel, we are told this little thing that most of us would say, “Why do you even make a point of it?” They stuck the sponge that they were going to soak in the wine on a hyssop reed. So what? Go back to the Book of Exodus and ask yourself: What did they put the blood on the doorposts and lintels with? Hyssop. There are all these little connections that you see. When you read the Scriptures, you have to pay attention to what is there. We tend to gloss over it and think, “Some little point, big deal.” No, it is a big deal. They are trying to tell you something. There are all these little pieces in there that we have to be able to recognize. When Jesus finally said, It is consummated, that is when He had completed His work. The Passover is now fulfilled. The angel of death passes over all of those who are washed clean in His Precious Blood and who eat the Passover Lamb, as He has required.

In case you wonder about any of these things, you can ask yourself a simple question: Why did Judas betray Our Lord? It is in the Gospel, twice in fact. In John 6, we are told about it in the context of the Eucharist. It is because he refused to believe in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus says, I have chosen twelve of you, but is not one of you a devil? Saint John makes it clear why Judas left. At what point did Judas betray Him? Since he had already rejected the Eucharist in his heart, Jesus said, The one who eats the morsel that I will dip into the dish. Then He dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas. Judas received Holy Communion and we are told that Satan entered his heart. Because he rejected the Lord, Satan entered his heart instead of Jesus entering his heart. Then Saint John tells us that he got up and left, and he has this little ending enigmatic phrase: and it was dark. It certainly was, not outside but inside; in the heart of Judas, it was dark.

Saint Paul tells us the same thing with regard to us. He says, Anyone who eats and drinks the bread and wine unworthily becomes guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ. It is in 1 Corinthians 11. Now I ask you, if it is just a piece of bread, is there any way you can eat it unworthily? Think about the sandwich you ate last. You can eat the sandwich in an undignified manner, but is the bread in it worthy of being eaten in a certain manner? Can you eat Wonder Bread in an unworthy way? Even if you did, could you become guilty of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ by eating a sandwich in an unworthy manner? No. The only way you can become guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ is if it is the Body and Blood of Christ that you are consuming in an unworthy way. And how do you do that unworthily? By trying to receive in the state of mortal sin. That is how we receive Him unworthily. It is right there in Scripture. These are things that the early Christians believed, and they died for it.

There are lots of stories about saints who have died for the Eucharist. There is Saint Tarcisius, a little boy who would take the Eucharist to the Christians who were in prison. They would not let the priests into the prison, but they figured that the guards would let a child in. One day his friends saw him and he was carrying the Blessed Sacrament. He had the host pinned up in his hand against himself next to his heart. They wanted to see what he had and he would not show them. Then they said, “Oh, we know what it is. It’s the Christian mysteries.” He would not open up, so they finally started throwing rocks and stones at him. The soldiers came and put him to death, and the soldiers could not move his hand even in death. After he died, the priest came, opened his hand, and took the Blessed Sacrament without a problem. But Tarcisius’ hand would not open for the soldiers or the pagans. That was in the earliest centuries.

People want to say that the Blessed Sacrament is a medieval invention of the Church, but Christians believed in the Real Presence from the very beginning. We are told in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles that they devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread, to the Eucharist. Where did the apostles learn Who Jesus was? He walked along with them on the road to Emmaus and told them all the Scriptures that pertain to Himself. What I would give to have been part of that conversation! To know all the Scriptures that pertain to Jesus and the insights He would have had, but they did not get it. Their hearts were burning within them, but they did not recognize Him. When did they finally recognize Him? In the breaking of the bread. Only in the Eucharist did they recognize Him. Not in the Scriptures, but in the Eucharist.

There is a horrifying story, but a beautiful one at the same time, of a little 16-year-old girl in Japan. When the Christians were being persecuted there, they had a horrifying torture that was called “the pit.” The pit was a large pit filled with human excrement. They would tie people to a pole by their feet and tie something over their head like a pillowcase, and they would cut their temples, not to kill them but so that they would not die from the blood pressure in their head. They would also tie one arm behind them and leave the other arm free. Then they would slowly put the person headfirst into this pit of human excrement, leave them there for about 30 seconds, and then pull them up. Again, they would put them back down, leave them there, and pull them up. This would go on all day long until the person would die. The one arm was left free so that if you wanted to deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament all you needed to do was wave your arm. This heroic little girl went up and down into that pit head first every day for three weeks because she refused to deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

That is what it means to some people, and that is what it should mean to us, not just going through the motions. Ask yourself: What would it be like if we did not have Mass? Pope John Paul II wrote about that in one of his books. He talks about when the Nazis came into Poland and killed the priests, and the few priests that remained went underground. Every Sunday, the people would gather in the church and take the priest’s vestments and lay them on the altar. There was no priest and there was no Eucharist. The only comment he made was that the sound of weeping could be heard in the church. They did not have the Lord. What is it going to take for us to get this turned around in our own hearts? This is God, truly present with us. We come in late and leave early, and we pay no attention to Him. That needs to change. We need to recognize Who is truly there. We need to unite ourselves with Him. This is so critically important today more than ever.

We have an opportunity in this diocese, beyond any other diocese in the whole world, because we have more Eucharistic Adoration in the Twin Cities than any other place in the world right now. It is really pretty astounding if you think about our diocese. And so there is a place not too far from wherever you happen to live in the Twin Cities where the Lord is present in the monstrance 24 hours a day, and you can go there and pray. If you are having trouble with the teaching on the Real Presence, I challenge you to go to one of these Eucharistic Adoration chapels and ask the Lord. You do not have to take my word for it; you can look it up in the Scriptures. But even if you do not want to believe that, go and ask. I can guarantee you that you will believe by the end of the time you are there. Not that that is going to happen every time; most of the time it is pretty quiet and dry, but when there is a need the Lord will meet it. If you are there in good faith, honestly seeking the Lord, He will let you know that He is there. There will be no doubt.

But we do not believe based on all the miracles. There are lots and lots of times when the host has started to bleed. When was the last time you bit into your sandwich and the bread started to bleed? It does not happen. There are many, many, many times when the host has bled all over the altar and the altar cloth was completely drenched in blood. There are times when the Blessed Sacrament inside of the tabernacle began to bleed, and the blood was coming out of the tabernacle, and so on. There are many occasions of that. We do not believe because of these few occasions where the host has turned into a piece of flesh. We do not believe because the host has bled. We do not believe because of all the extraordinary things we can talk about with the Eucharist. We believe because Jesus Christ said, This is My body. This is the cup of My blood. He did not say, “This is a symbol of My body.” He said, This is My body. This is My blood.

Remember, He is God. When He speaks, His word has power. Scripture says that He spoke and it came to be. That is how He created: He simply spoke. The centurion said, “You don’t need to come to my house. Just say the word and my servant will be healed.” And what is it that we say just before Holy Communion? The exact words of the centurion: Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. That is the actual translation of it (instead of saying “my servant,” we say “my soul”). “Only say the word…” It is His word, and that is why we believe. The voice of God is full of power, Psalm 29 says, and it is with that power that He could say to the man with the withered hand, Reach out your hand, and it was healed. It is His power that causes it, and that is why we believe.

[End of Lesson 17]

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