The ardent devotion of Filipino Catholics to the Child Jesus (Santo Niño), the Black Nazarene, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints cannot be underestimated. In fact, we go to great lengths to give praise or thanks for many an answered prayer or to seek divine intercession for the myriad problems we face every day.
The entire world has seen how Filipinos express this almost fanatical devotion to the Nazarene. For instance, every year except this one – because the government banned large crowds – thousands gather barefoot during Holy Week in Quiapo (a district of Manila) with their children in tow, risking life and limb just to touch or get a glimpse of Christ’s miraculous image.
Marian devotion is equally alive and vibrant, as evidenced by the long processions of devotees to Our Lady of Manaoag, or Our Lady of La Naval, or Our Lady of Peñafrancia on their feast days, or pilgrimages to Our Lady of Good Voyage in Antipolo City.
Not Substitutes for the Mass
These external manifestations are all very good and pleasing to God, however, the problem is that most of us have forgotten that these are not substitutes for attending Mass and receiving Communion. A million recitations of the Rosary, or a million novenas and processions cannot equal the devoted attendance at one Mass.
On many occasions, this writer has observed that most devotees would leave the church as soon as the novena to the Mother of Perpetual Help, St. Jude, or the Sacred Heart is finished, even if they know full well that a Mass will be celebrated thereafter.
On a certain Wednesday in a parish church where I usually hear Mass, a full orchestra accompanied the singing of the hymns in a novena, but as soon as it was over, the members of the choir and the devotees left the church one after the other. What a tragedy!
A Daily Miracle
According to our teaching, the Holy Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving”, is the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. Under the appearances of bread and wine, the Lord Jesus is contained, offered, and received. It is a miracle taking place in all the Masses said every hour of every day throughout the world!
Priests are vested with the power to change bread and wine into the sacred Body and Blood of Christ with these words at the consecration: “This is My body…this is the cup of My blood….”, Catholics are taught that the term transubstantiation refers to the conversion of the host and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood. The Eucharist retains the appearance of bread and wine while the inner substance is changed. Yes, it is a mystery, one that is based on Christ’s promises experienced only through faith.
Christ gives us His own Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist for these reasons: to be offered as a sacrifice recalling the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and His great love for us. What a tragedy indeed if the faithful neglect or refuse to receive Christ in Holy Communion!
Christ’s Presence
How does Holy Communion benefit a Catholic? In a number of ways.
In receiving the Eucharist, we are given the certainty of Christ’s presence. Catholic author David Bennet says “the presence of Christ is not dependent on subjective belief on our part, or the moral worthiness of the priest. (God does the action, not a man.)” This means that even if a validly ordained priest is in a state of mortal sin, he still consecrates the Eucharist validly. Thus, the communicant who is properly disposed (that is, he or she is in a state of grace) receives the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ sacramentally.
As if to affirm this reality, the Council of Trent declared on Oct. 11, 1551 that “the Eucharist also strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life; and living charity wipes away venial sins…By the same charity that it enkindles in us, the Eucharist preserves us from future mortal sins,” it says.
Saving us From Sin
The Catechism of the Catholic Church also notes that the Eucharist separates us from sin. “The body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is ‘given up for us,’ and the blood we drink ‘shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins.’ For this reason, the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sin,” says the Catechism (CCC, 1393)
The Council of Trent further taught that Holy Communion is “an antidote by which we are freed from our daily venial sins and are preserved from grievous sins…” and that “it gives us a spiritual joy in the service of Christ, in defending His cause, in performing the duties of our state of life, and in making the sacrifices required of us in imitating the life of our Savior.”
It should be clarified, however, that the Mass should not be “used” if we want our mortal sins forgiven — we should first approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Confession.
The Eucharist, adds the Catechism (CCC, 1397), commits us to the poor. “To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren.” This is true even if we, who I assume are not dirt-poor, know that “only the poor understand the poor” (Mother Teresa).
The most Holy Eucharist is a blessing to us in every way!
7 thoughts on “The Power of the Eucharist”
The author is DEAD WRONG to state: “the Holy Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving”, is the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.”
Well yes, that is what it means TODAY, but that is not what it meant back then!
The word “Eucharist” (i.e., thanksgiving) originally referred to prayers of gratitude (otherwise known as “sacrifices of thanksgiving”) along with the actual sacrificial tithe offerings of the early church (Psalm 116:17; Phil 4:18, Heb 13:15-16). These tithes included the first-fruits of the harvest; bread, wine, milk, cheese, oil, olives, grapes and anything else that could be used for those in need. Once this collection was complete, portions of it were taken for the Lord’s Supper, or fellowship meal. Right or wrong, the fellowship meal, or the “Lord’s Supper”, eventually faded away, and the term began to be associated with bread and wine alone. This is wrong, by definition. The Lord’s Supper refers to the total complex of events in a normal common meal setting, not just the tokens of bread and wine as the author of this article is trying to prove.
However, bread and wine were indeed the dominating features to serve as a simple memorial of the cross-work of Christ; not that his work on the cross is actually made present again in real space and time as the RCC teaches.
A few brief examples prove the Catholic Eucharist of today is NOT the Eucharist of antiquity:
1) “The prayers and giving of thanks, when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God”. (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 117).
This fact instantly defeats the Catholic claim of historical continuity, for it could not have been written if it was believed, as it is today, that the greatest sacrifice the church has to offer is Christ’s body and blood disguised as bread and wine, better known as the Eucharist. Rather, the Eucharist was originally known as the TITHE of bread and wine and other things, for the good of others, period, case closed. Nowhere are we told to re-offer the sacrifice of Christ in years gone by in the form of bread and wine, but instead, to offer the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5, which amount to “offering your BODIES a living sacrifice”, and this, says the Catholic Bible, is your true “spiritual worship” , not the Mass (Romans 12:1, NAB edition).
2) That Cyprian understood the Eucharist to be the TITHE offering is evidenced by the fact that the anointing of the newly baptised is performed with oil from the TITHE offering known as the Eucharist (Epistle 69, 2).
3) An early Christian writing explicitly states that the “Eucharist of the oblation” is to be “brought to the bishop for the entertainment of strangers” (Didascalia, 9). Again, the eucharist oblation (i.e., the TITHE offerings of gratitude from the first fruits of the harvest) later became an abominable liturgical novelty; namely, an invisible UNBLOODY sacrifice of the actual BLOODY sacrifice on the cross, “reinacted in wonderful fashion” (Mysterium Fidei, 27).
4) A Roman Catholic Professor of Dogmatics and Liturgical Sciences confirms that a formal epiclesis (i.e., the eucharistic prayer by which the priest invokes the Holy Spirit to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ) is “not verifiable” and that the “institution narrative” (i.e., where Christ is quoted as saying “This is my body, This is my blood”) “did not find its way into the Eucharistic prayer until the 4th century…a view held by all liturgists”.
5) The Roman Catholic Encyclopedia admits that “during the first three centuries there was a common liturgy”, but then asks, “why and when was the Roman liturgy changed from what we see in Justin to that of Gregory the 1st? …We must conclude that at Rome the Eucharistic prayer was fundamentally changed and recast at some uncertain period between the fourth and the sixth centuries…[and] admit that between the years 400 and 500 a great transformation was made in the Roman canon”.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09790b.htm
In view of this glaring shift in practice, there is simply no way the modern Eucharist, which is considered a PROPITIATORY sacrifice, could possibly be the same Eucharist of the first three centuries, which was a TITHE offering….and NOT the “mass” as the author falsely reports. All the best theologians, liturgists, canon lawyers, historians and everyone from the Pope down to the pauper in the pew cannot prove otherwise. It was only at the end of the 4th century that a liturgical shift occurred and one may rightly argue that the apostasy of Paul’s inspired foresight had now arrived (2 Thess 2:3). What were once eucharistic TITHE sacrifices offered to man (which God required) emerged as something else entirely which he did not require. Eventually, the Eucharist evolved into the absurd notion of his “real presence” despite the fact that he told us his “real presence” was going away numerous times and promising the Holy Spirit in his physical absence! Yet the idea of his actual, physical body parts remaining on Earth, prevailed. It was now perceived that his entire physique, right down to the bones and sinews, was hidden away in the transubstantiated bread and wine. That being so, they supposed he could now be offered repeatedly down through time, thus turning what was once a simple tithe or thank offering into an exact replica of what was originally offered 2,000 years ago, an idea utterly foreign to the Scriptures and the apostolic church.
Now for 100 reasons why Transubstantiation is unsubstantiated, request it at…
eucharistangel@gmail.com
Christopher: Another way to put it is that we do sin actions because we are separated from God. The separation that happened in the Garden caused our human weakness where we do the things that we don’t want to do, and we don’t do the things that we should (see Romans 7:14 thru 8:2). This is called the law of sin that we are all born with.
There is a separate purpose for each sacrament; and each sacrament presupposes faith (V2’s Sacrosanctum Concilium 59).
We need to be in the state of grace before we participate in the Eucharist. I was never taught that the Eucharist puts us in the state of grace. This implies that the Spirit of Christ needs to be within us before communion because God’s sanctifying grace flows into us through the Spirit of Christ; otherwise, we are not in the state of grace.
The Old Testament mentions “repent” once every 46 pages, but this changes to once every 8 pages in the New Testament. God is always ready with love and forgiveness, but it is us who hide from it. During reconciliation, we close our black umbrella and receive God’s grace.
The blood of Christ was shed for many (not all) for the forgiveness of sins. Matthew 26:28
If confession is troublesome, do like me:
Drive 60 miles to a sparsely populated town, wear a big hat and sunglasses, and use a Buzz Lightyear voice.
I find the teaching on the Eucharist confusing. If the Eucharist cleanses us from past sins, why bother to go to confession. Maybe confession is less popular because of this teaching.
We are actually cleansed from sin and preserved from future sin when the Spirit of Christ is within us (see John 6:63). This is prior to the Eucharist. The sacraments associated with this are Baptism and Confirmation.
“When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden”. Genesis 3:8
We always separate ourselves from God when we sin.
What did God do?
“The Lord God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them.”
He taught us about sacrifice and forgiveness. All sacraments bring us closer to God.
Yes, it is confusing because it’s not true. No miracle takes place at Mass…AT ALL.
For 100 reasons why Transubstantiation is unsubstantiated, request it at…
eucharistangel@gmail.com
On a certain Wednesday in a parish church where I usually hear Mass, a full orchestra accompanied the singing of the hymns in a novena, but as soon as it was over, the members of the choir and the devotees left the church one after the other. What a tragedy!
The most incredible choir I heard was a Filipino one somewhere in Virginia. Happy to say they all stayed. And afterward, I went to the choirmaster and asked for a copy of the one piece. I’d never heard it before. He graciously gave it to me.
I can not describe how much I miss Communion. At present, there’s a raw emptiness in me.
Thanks for a wonderful piece.