The Eucharist as True Presence

What is the most important aspect of our faith; what is the essence of it? Our Catholic social teaching, our beautiful liturgies, our intellectual or spiritual tradition, or any other essential aspect of the faith are all potential answers. In posing this question, I believe I would get as many answers as we have readers – with many overlapping similarities, but all with different takes on what the core of the gospel message is.

Pope Benedict said there are three primary expressions of the church. The first is the Church worships God; second, the Church cares for the poor; and third, the Church evangelizes. He says, because they all support each other, if we emphasize one at the expense of another, everything falls apart. We go on to see in the Second Vatican Council documents that the Eucharist underpins everything in our faith. Vatican II says that the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life. It is time for us to go back to the basics and the roots of our faith. To the source of grace and height of worship, care for the poor, and the core of evangelization.

Just a few months ago, here in the United States, we kicked off a renewal of the Eucharist, a time of Eucharist revival. During this time, our bishops have called us to rediscover devotion to Jesus in the true presence of the Holy Eucharist. We started it here in the Diocese Of Gary with a Eucharistic procession on Corpus Christi Sunday. Throughout the year, we will see so many parishes, communities, and faithful renew their love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in so many different ways.

At St. John the Evangelist, we are taking this call from the bishops seriously. As we saw in a recent Pew study just a couple of years ago, 70% of Catholics don’t understand transubstantiation – that Jesus is truly present: Body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist. As a result, Fr. Sammie Maletta and I are in the midst of a four-week homily series titled, True Presence. The purpose is to have some intentional catechesis on the Eucharist as the source and summit of the faith. There are so many different ways in which we can approach the Blessed Sacrament and understand it more fully. For these four weeks, we’re looking at the Eucharist as unity, Eucharist as discipleship, Eucharist as forgiveness of sin, and Eucharist as thanksgiving. This may be an overused analogy, but it gets to the heart of the problem. It is impossible to love someone if we know nothing about them. We must have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which has its starting point with the Blessed Sacrament. We must know in order to love. 

I finish with the thought that I started with. There are so many beautiful expressions of living as disciples, as Christians in the world today – through our worship of God, through care for the poor, through teaching and instruction, and so many other ways. But I look no farther than the great saints and figures of our tradition on what it means to live with the Eucharist being the source and summit of the faith. St. Mother Teresa would tell her sisters that there is no way they can help the poor if they don’t first receive Jesus in the Eucharist and pray before him in the monstrance. Dorthy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was a daily communicant and realized that the strength she needed to continue her work came from the Eucharist. Great intellectuals such as St. Thomas Aquinas were said to break down crying before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament because they had such a personal and profound relationship with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Throughout this next year of Eucharistic revival, it is my prayer that each one of us will come to encounter Jesus in a more profound and personal way in the Blessed Sacrament, the source and summit of our faith!