I only found out about this because it was on the front page of a
daily newspaper. On a recent Late
Late Show a guest referred to the Blessed Sacrament as ‘haunted bread’ and the ‘ghost of a two
thousand year old carpenter’.
There was a moment of hope when another guest did describe the Blessed
Sacrament as “the Body of Christ” but then she went on to state that it scared
her as it sounded like cannibalism.
It was also claimed that the Church does not want us to use critical
thinking. Considering that some of
the world’s greatest thinkers were Catholic theologians and philosophers and
that the Church founded many of the greatest universities of the Western world
e.g. Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Salamanca, etc., one can only call such
claims pernicious disinformation. I
spent eight years in Catholic colleges getting educated to be a priest and
never was I discouraged from thinking critically. Quite the opposite I was encouraged and thought how to think
and to think critically.
The whole conversation on the Late Late was jocular and irreverent
and the priest in Kerry who complained was right to do so. Such ignorance and disrespect are the
by-products of poor teaching both at Mass and in our schools. I don’t really understand why secular
people are worried about the Church’s role in education, since for the last
half century her failure in that area has lead to the decline in the Faith in
Ireland. Yet people must also take
responsibility for their own ignorance.
Never before in the history of the world have we had such easy access to
information even about our Faith.
If people do not know what the Church teaches on some matter it is
because they have not bothered to go and find out.
Part of our problem is the practice of having children receive Holy
Communion before Confirmation which has lead us to misunderstandings and a
failure to appreciate what being Catholic means. Another problem is that children today are told that Holy
Communion is ‘Holy Bread’.
Children’s minds can make great leaps of the imagination and put their
trust in the assurances of adults but they are often quite literal in their
thinking. To tell a child that the
Blessed Sacrament is ‘Holy Bread’ is risking a fatal misunderstanding. Apart from the failure of Catholic
educators and schools there is the failure of parents to appropriate,
understand and hand on their faith to their children – for too long have Irish Catholics
assumed that they could live on a minimum diet as regards their faith. The great English Cardinal Heenan in
the 60’s pointed out that Irish Catholics were largely ignorant of their Faith
and for too long have Catholic parents assumed that the schools would their do
their job for them and do it better.
What do we believe though?
We believe that Christ instituted the Church and the Sacraments for our
sanctification, our salvation. In
the Eucharist, the Mass, Christ, through the ministry of the priest, makes the
bread and wine into His Body and His Blood so that He is truly present here with
nothing lacking. God is all
self-gift and this is just as true in His Eucharistic Presence. At the words of consecration, when the
priest says “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood” Christ, truly God and
truly Man, is really and completely Present on the Altar. Nothing visibly changes but it is only
the outward appearances of bread and wine that remain. In Holy Communion we receive Christ
whole and entire, body and soul, humanity and Divinity, - He gives us His whole self not as a
ghost, not as an echo, not a ‘blessed’ or ‘holy bread’ but the Bread of Breads,
God Himself, whole and entire.
This is not something that one can grasp other than by faith. Only with the eyes of our faith can we
see this reality. The reality of
His Presence does not depend on our faith but our faith depends on Him.
At every Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present and it is
offered to the Father on our behalf.
On Calvary Christ made His eternal adoration of, worship of, perfect
obedience to and love for the
Father visible through His suffering and death on the Cross. He offered that eternal worship to the
Father on our behalf. Whatever is
sincerely united to that Sacrifice, however small, takes on the infinite value
of the Sacrifice of Christ. So it
is important that we bring our sacrifices, our cares and trials, indeed our
whole being, to Mass with us and unite them with the bread and the wine,
offering them to the Father with the Priest, the icon and minister of Christ.
We do not eat part of Christ in Holy Communion. Think what receive means: to receive is
to be the beneficiary of a gift but it can also mean to make welcome. We, each of us, receive all of Him or rather
He receives us, He makes us welcome in Himself. Christ does not benefit from us since He is all-sufficient
but He makes us welcome in Himself.
He has made us into Himself in Baptism and Confirmation and in Holy
Communion He confirms that welcome with a taste of Heaven, a taste accessible
not to the senses but to faith. We
can do this because in Baptism and Confirmation He has made us one with Himself. As one of the early Church Fathers said
“we receive what we will be”. In Holy Communion we receive what we
already are and what we are yet to be because we are already in union with
Christ, but in Heaven we will have a complete and perfect union. So the idea of
cannibalism is a gross misunderstanding – one cannot eat one’s true self.
Christ has not abandoned us.
His Resurrection and Ascension did not place Him at a distance from us
but, because of His power working through the Sacraments, we now have a real,
supernatural link uniting our nature with His in heaven. It is said that we all have one foot in
the grave but in truth all the Baptised have one foot in Heaven. Out task is lift the other and plant it
beside the first. It is through
our Communion with Christ that we receive the power, the grace to do this. If you want to love more, to love
better, draw close to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, receive Him in a proper
manner, worship Him and attend to Him and He will give you all the graces you
need and more.
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