What If…

When the priest says, “Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you,” he is not only repeating the words of Christ, but he is also re-presenting that sacred event hidden in eternity in Persona Christi. (1)

What if the Eucharist is Jesus Christ!

What if He is there, complete in His divinity and in His humanity, in the wafer, in the cracker, in the consecrated Host!

What if during the Liturgy of the Eucharist it is our Lord Himself  who changes the bread and wine into His body and blood!

What if  Holy Communion is literally placing Divinity into our body and soul!

What if eternity finds its way upon every altar in the world during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!

Then, it is true that every Mass brings Jesus to the Altar, firstly in the person of the priest, and secondly, in the consecrated Host in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in Holy Communion.

Then every Mass is a miracle, and every time I attend Mass, I am witnessing a miracle!

And every Mass is a miracle with thousands of miracles happening every day throughout the world during the consecration upon the altar.

When the consecration takes place and the hands of Jesus, through the priest, touch the sacred host and chalice, and His voice, through the priest, pronounces the words, “This is my body…, This is my blood..,” is it possible that the gates of Heaven are momentarily open, the invisible and the visible, Heaven and earth, eternity and time, momentarily embrace and see each other face to face ?

When Jesus is present (in persona Christi), when heaven touches earth, and the bread and wine become the body and blood of our Lord, and if we are there without faith staring at the altar in unbelief, are we not like the pharisees who witnessed miracles, denied those miracles, and denied Christ?

Do we see the miracle of the Mass? Do we  hear the miracle? Do we  acknowledge the miracle? If we look and listen, and deny the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we are like the pharisees who saw and heard Jesus give sight to the blind, mobility to the crippled, and life to the dead, yet they did not see, they did not hear, they did not believe. Instead, they turned away from Christ and denied His miracles!

If I am a Catholic receiving Holy Communion and not believing that the bread and wine have been changed into the body and blood of our Lord, am I not insulting my Lord, mocking Him, betraying Him and myself, and jeopardizing my salvation?

The  Pew Research Center Survey  conducted in 2019 found that most self-described Catholics don’t believe in transubstantiation.(2)  In fact, nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) said that they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. (3) And in a subsequent survey, the Cara Study in 2022,  37% of Catholics likewise denied the truth of the Eucharist.(4)

In some Protestant churches they have a ceremony that presents bread and wine as bread and wine “in remembrance” of the Last Supper, as a special meal, the last meal that they, Jesus and His Apostles, shared together, and believing that this was the intent of Christ when He said, “Take this, all of you… and do this in remembrance of me.”  Perhaps some Protestants even consider this “last meal” sacred because our Lord blessed the bread and wine and shared it with those He was close to, and they shared a meal, not a miracle.

Has this Protestant mentality found its way into some Catholic churches (and upon some of our sacred altars)? Has catechesis in some parishes failed to make a distinction between “a holy meal” and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? Or worse, has catechesis intentionally not made a distinction?

If transubstantiation  does not take place, then Jesus’ statement that , “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” (5)  must be  a metaphor, an allegory, or a poetic spin. And if transubstantiation does not take place, then there is no reason to have priests-anyone could “perform” the Mass, and it follows that without the sacrament of Holy Orders Apostolic succession would be unnecessary. I wonder, without the Real Presence of Christ would we even have a Catholic Church?

Why is this miracle, the miracle of the Mass, so difficult to accept ? The Incarnation, the Glorious Resurrection of Christ,, and a multitude of other miracles created by our Lord and Savior are accepted without question by Protestants and Catholics alike.(6) Yet, most  Protestants, 69% of Catholics from the Pew Study, 2019, and 37% of Catholics surveyed in the CARA Study, 2022, deny the reality and the fact of transubstantiation.!

The real question is, “what do we see, hear, and experience when we go to Mass? Do we witness and participate in the miracle of the Mass, or do we sit in unbelief and only see a ceremony “in remembrance of…”?           

 END NOTES

(1) 

1. In the person of Christ, for more explanation see Mediater Dei, Encyclical written by Pope Pius X11, Nov. 20, 1847. Paragraphs 68-69.

2.The august sacrifice of the altar, then, is no mere empty commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, but a true and proper act of sacrifice, whereby the High Priest by an unbloody immolation offers Himself a most acceptable victim to the Eternal Father, as He did upon the cross. “It is one and the same victim; the same person now offers it by the ministry of His priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner of offering alone being different.”[59]

3. The priest is the same, Jesus Christ, whose sacred Person His minister represents. Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is made like to the High Priest and possesses the power of performing actions in virtue of Christ’s very person.[60] Wherefore in his priestly activity he in a certain manner “lends his tongue, and gives his hand” to Christ.[61]

(2) Transubstantiation: “ The complete change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood by a validly ordained priest during the consecration at Mass so that only the accidents of bread and wine remain.  (The Catholic Dictionary , by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.,  p. 508).

(3) The Pew Study, 2019

(4) The Cara Study, 2022.

About six-in-ten (63%) of the most observant Catholics — those who attend Mass at least once a week — accept the church’s teaching about transubstantiation. Still, even among this most observant group of Catholics, roughly one-third (37%) don’t believe that the Communion bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ (including 23% who don’t know the church’s teaching and 14% who know the church’s teaching but don’t believe it). And among Catholics who do not attend Mass weekly, large majorities say they believe the bread and wine are symbolic and do not actually become the body and blood of Jesus.

(5) John 6: 54

(6) This concept of accepting one kind of miracle and transferring this acceptance to another miracle was the topic of discussion in my theology class, taught by Fr. John A. Hardon S.J., St. John’s University, New York, 1982.