The Miracle of Holy Communion and Corpus Christi

HE COMES TO US AS FOOD

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a huge sign painted on the side of a building facing the railway line between Redfern Station and Central in inner Sydney. Tens of thousands saw it daily on their way to work. I read it almost every day for my first two years at University. I cannot remember the product being advertised, but the sign said: ‘WHAT YOU EAT AND DRINK TODAY WALKS AND TALKS TOMORROW.’

It always made me smile and think of S. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in Northern Africa in the 4th century. Some friends and I had begun to study him. It was he who said that as we eat the Body of Christ in Holy Communion, we become the Body of Christ in the world. We also know that as he gave Holy Communion to his people, Augustine would actually say to them, ‘Eat what you are, and become what you eat’! 

The solemnity of Corpus Christi celebrates in a special way the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. With the vast majority of mainstream Christians down through the ages we affirm our belief that he comes to us supernaturally as FOOD so as to share his life with us, to deepen our union with him and with one another, to strengthen us for our lives here in this world, and to sustain us on our journey to heaven. He comes as Food to nourish and transform us.

SUCH REALISTIC LANGUAGE

‘But it’s just symbolic’ is what some Christians still say, and they criticise what they sometimes call 'that high church catholic nonsense'!

Well, the extraordinary realism of S. Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 11, also in the Gospel narratives of the institution of the Eucharist, and in John 6 where Jesus feeds the five thousand and then explains that he himself is the ‘Bread of Life’ seems to be very clear. So clear that one of my predecessors here at All Saints  Benhilton, Father Marcus Donovan, Vicar from 1945 to 1961, could write:

‘In the Holy Sacrament Jesus conceals Himself under the veils of bread and wine. He is as truly present as in Bethlehem or in Galilee. Outwardly the “veils” are all we can see, but after the Consecration they become the Body and Blood of Christ. He chose the most ordinary things ("elements” as they are called) in which to give us this treasure. In Holy Communion we receive the life of Christ, and so we must regard the Most Holy Sacrament with the utmost reverence. It is the greatest of all Sacraments, for while they give us grace, Holy Communion gives us the Author of grace Himself.’ (in Faith and Practice SPCK, 1950

Is this really the faith of the Church? Well, if we have any doubts about that, we can turn to those generations of the early Church nearest to the apostles for an indication of how the New Testament’s language about Holy Communion was understood in their day.

IGNATIUS

Writing between 80 AD and 110 AD, - most likely while the Apostle John is still alive - S. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, calls the bread of Holy Communion, 

‘the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his graciousness, raised from the dead.’ (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 6)

JUSTIN MARTYR

S. Justin Martyr says the same kind of thing a little later on - around 150 AD: 

‘We do not consume the Eucharistic bread and wine as if it were ordinary food and drink, for we have been taught that as Jesus Christ our Saviour became a man of flesh and blood by the power of the Word of God, so also the food that our flesh and blood assimilates for its nourishment becomes the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus by the power of his own words contained in the Eucharistic prayer.’ (First Apology)

IRENAEUS

And then,  in 189 A.D., S. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons writes: 

‘If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood?’ (Against Heresies 4:33–32)

He also writes: 

‘He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receives the Word of God and becomes the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life - flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is in fact a member of him?’ (ibid., 5:2). 

A MIRACLE

The realism of this language is startling. It comes from a time when the successors of the Apostles were defending the Gospel and the Faith, which is all about the coming of God into real human life and joining himself to it (and to the creation of which human life is part) in order to redeem, renew and transfigure it. And who were they arguing with? You guessed it . . . the SPIRITUALISERS who couldn’t conceive that ‘the flesh’ could be saved. So - did these early Christian leaders expect to be taken ‘literally’ in their language about Holy Communion? You bet they did!

Since the dying and rising of Jesus, his followers have gathered at the altar Sunday by Sunday (and where possible more often than that!) in order to receive him in what is the most precious, sacred, awesome, life-giving encounter possible this side of heaven.

'O come, let us adore Him - Christ the Lord.'

From Dr Pusey's sermon "Miracles of Prayer"

It is not unusual in conversation among those interested in the 19th century catholic revival for Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) to be compared unfavourably with Newman and others of his contemporaries, even to hear him dismissed with faint praise (in a way that Newman never is) for being a crusty scholar with a gloomy, grim, sad, over-penitential spirituality. 

To be sure, Dr Pusey was a very great theologian and Biblical scholar. And throughout his long life he did endure more than his fair share of personal disappointments and real tragedies, one or two of which would have crushed a weaker man. Clearly each of these left its mark on him. Yet it is precisely they which make his sermons and spiritual writings all the more valuable and impossible to dismiss as trite or untested by experience. Pusey's inner life was not untouched by his struggles and disappointments, and the spiritual habit of muttering of the penitential psalms under his breath was certainly one aspect of his walk with God. But it was one part of a complex whole. His sermons, reflections, letters, meditations and prayers show him to have been a man who, like St Paul, both plumbed the depths and scaled the heights of human life and spiritual reality.

So much of what Pusey wrote and preached is characterised by simplicity, practicality and spiritual depth. Father John Hunwicke spoke for many when he said in his blog a few years ago that Pusey was “one of the very greatest Catholic teachers and spiritual directors of the modern period.” 

Today I share a real gem with you: these paragraphs from Pusey's sermon, "Miracles of Prayer" which he preached at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on Septuagesima Sunday, 1866. The entire sermon can be downloaded in pdf format HERE. I have also included four of my favourites from among Pusey's prayers.

Prayer is "the ascent of the soul to God;" it is the beginning of that blessed converse, which shall be the exhaustless fulness of eternal bliss; it is the continuance or renewal of union with God.

. . . Blessed dissatisfaction of man's craving soul; glorious restlessness, the token of its Divine birth, its Divine end; that nothing can satisfy it, except what is the bliss of its God, Infinite, Divine love.

Imperfect, faltering, unsatisfactory as are our prayers, their defects but shew the more the goodness of our God, who is never weary of those who are so soon wearied of him, who lets not fall a single earnest cry to him for himself. Not one prayer, from the yearning of the penitent ("would, God, for love of Thee, I had never offended Thee!"), to the love-enkindled longing of the Saint ("My God, and my All!)" but will have enlarged thy capacity for the infinite love of God, and will have drawn down to thee the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost, who is Love Infinite, the Bond of the love of the Father and the Son.

It will guard thee from all evil in the perilous passage through this world; it will sanctify to thee all thy joys; it will be to thee a calm above nature in all thy sorrows; it will give a supernatural value to all thy acts; it will heal all thine infirmities; it will illumine all thy knowledge; and, when thy flesh and thy heart shall fail, thy last prayer upon earth in the Name of Jesus shall melt into thy first Halleluiah in heaven, where, too, doubtless prayer shall never cease, but the soul shall endlessly desire of God, what God shall unintermittingly supply, more and yet more of the exhaustless, ever-filling fulness of Divine Beauty and Wisdom and Love, yea of himself who is Love. 

GROWING IN HIS LOVE

Good Jesu, 

fountain of love: 

fill me with thy love, 

absorb me into thy love,

compass me with thy love, 

that I may see all things in the light of thy love, 

receive all things as tokens of thy love, 

speak of all things 

in words breathing of thy love, 

win through thy love others to thy love; 

be kindled, day by day, 

with a new glow of thy love, 

until I be fitted 

to enter into thine everlasting love, 

to adore thy love and love to adore thee, 

my God and my all. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

A PRAYER FOR THE WEARY

Let me not seek out of thee 

what I can find only in thee, O Lord: 

peace and rest and joy and bliss, 

which abide only in thine abiding joy. 

Lift up my soul above the weary round of harassing thoughts 

to thy eternal Presence. 

Lift up my soul 

to the pure, bright, serene, radiant atmosphere of thy Presence,

that there I may breathe freely, 

there repose in thy love, 

there be at rest from myself, 

and from all things that weary me; 

and thence return, 

arrayed with thy peace, 

to do and bear what shall please thee. Amen.

LEAD US, LORD

Teach us, O Father, 

how to ask thee each moment silently for thy help. 

If we fail, 

teach us at once to ask thee to forgive us.

If we are disquieted, 

enable us, by thy grace, quickly to turn to thee. 

May nothing come between us and thee. 

May we will, do, and say, 

just what thou, our loving and tender Father, 

wiliest us to will, do, and say. 

Work thy holy will in us, and through us, this day. 

Protect us, guide us, bless us within and without, 

that we may do something this day for love of thee ; 

something which shall please thee ; 

and that we may this evening be nearer to thee, 

though we see it not nor know it. 

Lead us, Lord, in a strait way unto thyself, 

and keep us in thy grace unto the end; 

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SOARING INTO GOD

O God, my God, 

give me a heart to thank thee; 

lift up my heart above myself, 

to thee and thine eternal throne;

let it not linger here 

among the toils and turmoils of this lower world; 

let it not be oppressed by any earth-born clouds 

of care or anxiety or fear or suspicion; 

but bind it wholly to thee and to thy love; 

give me eyes to see thy love in all things, 

and thy grace in all around me; 

make me to thank thee for thy love and thy grace 

to all and in all; 

give me wings of love, 

that I may soar up to thee, 

and cling to thee, and adore thee, 

and praise thee more and more, 

until I be fitted to enter into the joys of thine everlasting love, 

everlastingly to love thee and thy grace, 

whereby thou didst make me such as thou couldest love, 

such as could love thee,
O God, my God. Amen.

To get you started in Advent . . .

OUR SOWING TIME

Our short lives on earth are sowing time. If there were no resurrection of the dead, everything we live on earth would come to nothing. How can we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally if all the joys and pains of our lives are in vain, vanishing in the earth with our mortal flesh and bones? Because God loves us unconditionally, from eternity to eternity, God cannot allow our bodies - the same as that in which Jesus, his Son and our savior, appeared to us - to be lost in final destruction.

No, life on earth is the time when the seeds of the risen body are planted. Paul says:  “What is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). This wonderful knowledge that nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.

The wonderful knowledge, that nothing we live in our body is lived in vain, holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.

- Henri Nouwen (Bread for the Journey, Harper SanFrancisco.)

ADVENT JOINS MEMORY AND HOPE

Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope… It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.

- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger 1986 (Pope Benedict XVI)  - Seek That Which Is Above (Ignatius Press)

THE GRAND MIRACLE

The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.

~ C.S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle”  - God in the Dock