Month: June 2019

True Presence

In recent years one hears more and more frequently the expression the True Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The use of the term raises questions, no doubt unintentionally, about the nature of Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

As the doctrinal texts below show, the Church is very careful in her use of language with respect to the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist. Words can say something true, but still be an inadequate expression of the whole truth. That is the case here. True Presence says something accurate, but it is an inadequate term because it doesn’t distinguish the manner in which Christ is present. Christ has a true presence in the Holy Eucharist, but also in His mystical Body, in His Scriptures, in his minister the priest, in the can in the state of grace. However, only in the Blessed Sacrament does His presence pertain to the ontological or metaphysical order, the order of real being.

This is why the Church uses the term Real Presence to uniquely distinguish His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament from His presence in other contexts. Catholics should therefore use the expression canonized by ecclesiastical usage and which alone adequately expresses the truth about the unique manner of Christ’s Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

Finally, the Church does speak of Christ’s true body and true blood (e.g. Council of Trent, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist). In such cases, however, the use of the term body as the reality modified by true makes it clearly a metaphysical reference. True Presence lacks such clarity.

Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947):

For by the “transubstantiation” of bread into the body of Christ and of wine into His blood, His body and blood are both really present …

Pope Pius XII, Humani generis (1950):

Some even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism, whereby the consecrated species would be merely efficacious signs of the spiritual presence of Christ and of His intimate union with the faithful members of His Mystical Body.

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

In the holy Gospel, the nativity of St. John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Christ, is described by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, not only for our instruction, but also that we may rejoice in the Lord our God. In the mountains of Judaea, at Hebron, eight miles from Jerusalem, lived Zachary and Elizabeth. They were just people, and lived in accordance with the commandments of God, but had no children, although they had prayed for them many years. The great age which they had attained, naturally gave them no longer any hope of issue. But still they continued their prayer. One day, when Zachary, who was a priest, offered incense in the Temple at Jerusalem, he saw at the right side of the altar, an angel, whose appearance filled the pious old man with fear and trembling. The angel, however, said to him: ” Fear not, Zachary, for thy prayer is heard. Elizabeth, thy wife, shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. He shall bring thee joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice in his nativity. He shall be great before the Lord and shall drink no strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb. He shall convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God: and he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias: that he may turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom of the just, to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people.”  Continue reading →

ON THE ENDS FOR WHICH MASS IS OFFERED

“Do this for a commemoration of me.”–LUKE xxii. 19.

The Sacrifice of the Mass, my beloved brethren, is offered up for four great ends:

1. To give fitting, or, in other words, infinite praise and honor to Almighty God. (a) The natural law, written in the heart of man, directs that every inferior should pay homage to his superior; and, futhermore, that this homage should be always in proportion to the rank and dignity of the superior. Now, this being the case, we should pay to Almighty God, as the Supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe, as our first Beginning and our last End, infinite praise, infinite honor. Anything short of the infinite would not be sufficient, nor would it be adequately worthy of His acceptance. But, since all our human offerings, all our human acts, are, like ourselves, finite, how can we offer any infinite gift to our good and merciful God?

If all the creatures of this world, no matter how rich, or beautiful, or delightful they might be in themselves, were brought to the feet of Almighty God, and laid there as an offering, they would not be worthy His acceptance; for there is nothing worthy of God’s acceptance except God Himself. Jesus Christ, then, seeing this great want on the part of man, has, in a marvellous excess of divine love, supplied it by offering Himself, a God of infinite worth, to His Eternal Father in the Sacrifice of the Mass. In that Holy Sacrifice, dear Christians, we can give infinite praise and honor to God, by uniting ourselves to the offering made to Him on our altars by the consecrated hands of His priest. Nay, more, by every Mass that we offer, or get the priest to offer for us, by every Mass at which we assist, we can co-operate in the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ in our behalf; for, thereby discharging our first and chief duty to God, we acknowledge our total dependence on Him, and return Him fitting praise and honor. The accumulated worship of the Saints and Angels in Paradise, of the Archangels, the Seraphim, the Thrones, the Dominations, and the Powers, is unspeakingly grand and pleasing to Almighty God; but it is, as it were, nothing in comparison with the praise and honor given to Him by a single Mass celebrated by a poor, obscure priest in some hidden corner of this lower world. For the praise of all those celestial beings, great though it be, is only finite, whereas the praise given by a Mass is infinite! Continue reading →

Miraculous First Communion of Blessed Imelda Lambertini

As spring approached, the sisters, who perhaps thought that they had succeeded in diverting Imelda’s “childish fancy” to go to Communion with the grown-ups, were a bit startled when she begged them insistently again, shortly before the feast of the Ascension, to receive her First Holy Communion. When the chaplain was consulted, he agreed with the sisters and responded with no hesitation that Imelda was much too young. On the Vigil of the Ascension Imelda was in her place in the chapel, quietly praying as the sisters received Communion. Then our Lord did a little “insisting” of His own. After Holy Mass, as one of the nuns was clearing the altar, she heard a noise and looked up to the choir to see Imelda, a glowing light shining above her head, with the Sacred Host suspended in the light. The chaplain was called at once, and he understood that Our Lord Himself was making his desire known. “But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such.” Matt xix:14. Hence the priest administered Imelda her First Holy Communion.

INSTRUCTION FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

Second Sunday after Pentecost

(Wherever the solemn celebration of Corpus Christi is observed on the Sunday, one high Mass is celebrated as on the feast itself, with commemoration and last Gospel of the second Sunday. After this Mass the procession takes place.)

For the feast of Corpus Christi, the Church has chosen the Thursday between the Sunday on which she speaks of God’s mercy towards men and the consequent duty of fraternal charity among Christians (First Sunday after Pentecost), and this Sunday when she resumes the same thread of thought (Epistle) and presents the Kingdom of Heaven in the form of the Parable of the Supper (Gospel). (This Mass was in existence, composed of its present parts before Corpus Christi was instituted.)

Nothing could be more appropriate to the Blessed Eucharist, as the banquet where all souls are united by love to Christ their Spouse and to all the members of His mystical body; no time could have been chosen better than when the history of Samuel is being read in the breviary; Samuel who was consecrated to God from his earliest childhood to dwell near the Ark of the Lord and to become priest in the sanctuary of the Most High.

In the liturgy for this season we see how this young child, offered to God by his mother, served the Lord in the Temple with a pure heart and nurtured himself on God’s truth.

“In those days,” the breviary tells us, “the word of the Lord was precious … there was no manifest vision”; for Heli was at the same time proud and weak; and his two sons Ophni and Phinees were faithless to God and slack in His service. Yet at that very moment the Lord revealed Himself to the child Samuel, for as our Lord tells us, He reveals Himself to “little ones”, and hides Himself from the proud.

“It is to the humble,” says St. Gregory, “that the secrets of the divine plan have been revealed, and that is why Samuel was called as a child.” (Commentary on Kings.) God foretold to Samuel the punishment which would fall on Heli and his house, and as a matter of fact soon after, the Ark was taken by the Philistines, Heli’s two sons were killed and Heli himself died. Moreover almighty God had withheld his revelations from the high priest, because he and his sons made too little of heavenly joys, symbolized by “the great supper” spoken of in to-day’s Gospel, and were more attached to the delights of the body than of the soul.

Applying to them a passage from St. Gregory in to-day’s homily we may say that they “had reached a state in which they had lost all appetite for interior joys, for the very reason that they had held aloof from them and had long lost the habit of relishing them. Since they were not willing to enjoy interiorly the sweetness offered them, they loved the hunger that came upon them from without.”

Heli’s sons had in fact been taking the meats offered to God and eating them themselves and Heli, their father had let them go their own way. It was in divine consolations alone that Samuel, who had always lived with Heli in the Temple, found his delight. The food of which he partook was that supplied by God Himself, When He told him His secrets in contemplation and prayer. “The child slept, which means,” says St. Gregory, “that his soul was at rest without care for earthly things.” The saint explains in his commentary on to-day’s Gospel that “the joys of the body which kindle in us beforehand an ardent desire for their possession, soon bring disgust upon him who tastes them, by the very fact of his satiating himself with them, while on the contrary, spiritual joys arouse contempt before they are possessed, but stir up desire for them when once they have been obtained; so that he who has tasted them is the hungrier, the more he is fed.”

And this explains how souls who find all their delight in the pleasures of this world refuse to share in the banquet of the Christian Faith, wherein the church nourishes all with the teaching of the Gospel. “Taste and see,” continues St. Gregory, “that the Lord is sweet. By these words the Psalmist expressly tells us: You do not know His sweetness if you do not taste it, but touch the food of life with the palate of your heart, that experiencing His graciousness you may be able to love Him.

“Man lost these delights when he sinned in paradise, out of which he came when he had closed his lips to the food of eternal sweetness. It follows from this that having been born in the pains of this exile, we reach such a state of disgust with our life here below, that we no longer know what we ought to desire.” (Matins).

But by the grace of the Holy Ghost, “we have passed from death unto life”, (Epistle), so that, like humble little Samuel, we, the weak, the poor and the lame of the Gospel should seek our joys near our Lord’s tabernacle and in intimate communion with Him. We must avoid pride and earthly things that we may be instructed in the fear and love of Gods Holy Name (Collect), and thus constantly directed by Him “our life on earth may more and more be likened to that of heaven,” that “it may be vouchsafed to us who have received the sacred gifts, that the more often we assist at the celebration of these divine mysteries, the more surely they may avail to the salvation of our souls” (Postcommunion).

Factus est Dominus protector meus, et eduxit me in latitudinem: salvum me fecit, quoniam voluit me. * Diligam te, Domine, virtus mea : Dominus firmamentum meum, et refugium meum, et liberator meus.

The Lord became my protector, and He brought me forth into a large place: He saved me, because He was well pleased with me. * I will love Thee, O Lord my strength: the Lord is my firmament, and my refuge, and my deliverer.

(Psalm 17:19-20,2 from the introit of Mass)

Sancti nominis tui, Domine, timorem pariter et amorem fac nos habere perpetuum: quia numquam tua gubernatione destituis, quos in soliditate tuae dilectionis instituis.

Grant, O Lord, that we may have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name; for Thou never failest to direct and govern by Thy grace, those whom Thou bringest up in the steadfastness of Thy love.
(Collect)

Second Collect of Corpus Christi: Deus qui nobis.

Continuation of the holy Gospel according to St. Luke.
At that time, Jesus spoke to the Pharisees this parable : A certain man made a great supper, and invited many. And he sent his servant, at the hour of supper, to say to them that were invited, that they should come, for now all things are ready. And they began all at once to make excuse. The first said to him, I have bought a farm, and must needs go out, and see it, I pray thee hold me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to try them; I pray thee hold me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And the servant returning, told these things to his lord. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant: Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the feeble, and the blind and the lame. And the servant said : Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said to the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. But I say unto you, that none of these men that were invited shall taste of my supper.
(St Luke 14:16-24)