The Presence of the Risen
Christ in the Eucharist

“Wait a minute, Father, what about the snake?”

    With that question a fourth-grader stopped me in mid-sentence during what I thought was a perfectly fine presentation on the Genesis story of Adam’s fall. I had just finished pointing out how no one wanted to take responsibility for the sin in the Garden of Eden. God asked Adam why he ate the apple. Adam blamed Eve, “It was the woman YOU put with me; she gave me the fruit and I ate it.” God then asked Eve. She blamed the snake, “The serpent tempted me and I ate it.” It was then that the bright-eyed, inquisitive nine-year-old interrupted me with a barrage of questions: “What about the snake? How come God stopped there? Why didn’t God ask the snake why he did it?”

   Well, I have to admit, he stumped me. It had never occurred to me to ask why God had not interrogated the snake. Yet, as I thought about his question and read over the whole creation account again, it became clear to me that the story intentionally omits a scene of God quizzing the serpent. That omission conveys a sense of mystery about evil. Just like the serpent in the garden, evil mysteriously appears, as if it is already and always present. Even though there is every indication that God created everything and called it “good,” there is still the unexplainable reality of evil in the world. Like a snake, evil slithers in and out of our lives.

    Our own life experience reveals the truth of this statement. All of a sudden, evil can erupt from the human heart with urges of hatred, greed, lust, and anger that seem to come out of nowhere and ambush us. What is worse is that, since evil is so pervasive, we are tempted to believe that evil is actually part of our human nature.

God’s Response to the Presence of Evil

    The entire story of our salvation in the Bible recounts God’s many attempts to undermine this temptation. God assures us that he is more present to us than evil will ever be. In the very first chapter of the Bible, we are told how fully God is present to us. We are created in his image. We are stamped with his likeness.

The Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

    It is important to keep all of this in mind when we talk about our belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. That presence must be understood as part of God’s original plan, which is for him to be so close to us that we actually share in his divine life and work of salvation. Our belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not a Catholic add-on to Christian faith. Nor do we proudly keep it because it distinguishes us from other disciples of Jesus. In fact, there is a growing number of Christians who do believe that Christ is present in the Eucharist.

    No, much more is at stake, not just for us, but for all of Christianity. What is at stake is the very center of Christian faith, which is a belief in a God “who has decided he would not be God if he cannot be with us,” as a respected theologian recently put it. When Catholics profess belief in the real presence of Christ, we do so to the benefit of all Christians, since it is a belief that anchors and most fully expresses that which is central to Christianity. That is why it is important for Catholics to understand and profess belief in the Eucharistic presence of Jesus. And that is why I invite you to deepen your own faith in the tradition which richly preserves that belief.

The Eucharistic Tradition

As a brief summary of that tradition, I point to two historical moments: the 16th century Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council of the last century.

Council of Trent

    What did the bishops say about the Eucharist at the Council of Trent? When describing the real presence of Christ, the bishops affirmed that Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the Eucharist. Each of these adverbs was chosen as a response to specific errors in faith that some Christians held about the Eucharist at that time.

Christ is Truly Present

    Some Christians held that the Eucharist was just a symbolic or ritualistic meal. For them the Eucharist was only an imitation of what Jesus did at the Last Supper. (Much like our modern re-enactments of the Revolutionary War on July 4 or children’s pageants at Christmas time.) The Catholic Church responded at Trent that this description is inadequate, for Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. This means that his presence is not merely a symbol of an otherwise absent reality.

Christ is Really Present

    Another erroneous belief some held at that time was that Christ’s presence depended on the personal faith, understanding, or feelings of those gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. But the bishops at Trent said that Christ’s presence is objective, not subjective. Christ is present because of what he does, not because of what we do or believe. As Cardinal Avery Dulles noted in a recent speech, “To receive the sacrament without faith is unprofitable, even sinful, but the lack of faith does not render the presence of Christ unreal.”

Christ is Substantially Present

    What the Church is saying is that even though the appearances or accidents of the Eucharist remain as bread and wine, the Eucharist is nothing other than Christ. The substance is Christ.

    We are familiar in our own experience with the difference between accidents and substance. A person whose appearance changes with age, illness or a disguise is substantially the same person. To use the philosophical language of the 16th century, the accidents change, but not the substance.

    Yet, our experience also tells us that whenever the substance of a thing changes, so do its accidents or its perceptible qualities. For instance, when we eat an apple, the apple is no longer an apple; that is, the substance changes and the appearances or accidents change as well.

“Transubstantiation”

    With the Eucharist we have a third kind of change, which in fact is not duplicated in our experience. In the Eucharist the substance changes (bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ), but the accidents (appearance of bread and wine) remain the same. This change of substance with accidents remaining the same is unique to the Eucharist. That, indeed, is a mystery beyond our regular way of knowing.

    Theologians struggled to find a word that would appropriately define this conversion of one substance to another. Some of them created a new word, “transubstantiation.” The bishops at Trent noted that this is an apt term for trying to understand the conversion of the elements of bread and wine.

    Moreover, it is not enough to say that we affirm that Jesus is substantially present because we believe that he is the one acting in the sacrament to bring it about. That is true for all of the sacraments. Jesus is the one who is present and who acts in all of the sacraments. When it comes to the Eucharist, we believe that what was once bread and wine is now the very body and blood of Christ. That is why we adore the Eucharist, but we do not adore the oil in confirmation, the water in baptism, and so on. In a word, what we believe takes place in the celebration of Mass is that the bread and wine cease to be what they were and their whole substance becomes the body and blood of Christ.

Second Vatican Council

    When the bishops gathered during the 1960s at the Vatican, they recognized that they had an opportunity to build on what was said at the Council of Trent four centuries earlier. When they took up the issue of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist in their Constitution on the Liturgy (CSL), they began by stressing that Christ as the Risen Lord is always present, always exercising his priestly ministry in the church. Then they recalled a phrase from the Council of Trent that had been long overlooked. What is special about the Eucharist, they noted, is that Christ, who is always exercising his priestly ministry, makes present in the Eucharist his victory and triumph over death in those who celebrate it (CSL 7).

Christ is Present to Us and Through Us

    What this really means is that Christ makes his sacrifice on Calvary present in the Eucharist to the point that he invites us to join our sacrifices with his for the salvation of the world. Pope Benedict XVI recently emphasized this more dynamic and active understanding of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist during his homily at the Eucharistic Congress in Bari, Italy. He reminded us that it is a mistake to think of Christ’s presence as static, or as individualistic, or as that which does not engage us to reach out to others: Christ is truly present among us in the Eucharist. His presence is not static. It is a dynamic presence that grasps us, to make us his own, to make us assimilate him. Christ draws us to him, he makes us come out of ourselves to make us all one with him. In this way he also integrates us in the communities of brothers and sisters, and communion with the Lord is always also communion with our brothers and sisters.

    By emphasizing how Christ engages us, the bishops of the Second Vatican Council wanted to give us a much richer understanding that Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the Eucharist. Thus, while it is true that the Eucharist is not merely a sign of an absent Christ, the symbolic value of bread and wine is important for understanding the Eucharist and its effects in us. “The visible signs used by the liturgy to signify invisible divine things have been chosen by Christ or the Church” (CSL 33).

    Christ did not arbitrarily choose bread and wine. He chose them to engage us and to reveal something new about the life he offers us. Bread and wine are natural symbols of dying and transformation to new life, as well as the unity of the Church fostered in the celebration of the Mass. An early Christian document, the Didache, captured this sense very well in words that are familiar to us in a song we often sing: As grains once scattered on the hillsides was in this broken bread made one, so from all lands Thy Church be gathered into thy kingdom by Thy Son.

    Similarly, while it is true that Christ’s presence does not depend on the subjective feelings or the faith of a given community or individual, it does not mean that one’s personal openness or the participation of the community is unimportant. On the contrary, because Christ is really, objectively present, those gathered must be receptive for the fruits of his real presence to be realized, both personally and by their participation as a community in the action of the Eucharist. For this reason, the bishops at the Second Vatican Council insisted on a renewal of the liturgy that would lead to the full, active and conscious participation of those present (CSL 14). They also emphasized the need of being properly disposed “to cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain” (CSL 11).

    Finally, when the bishops at the Second Vatican Council drew attention to how Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is real in that it transforms us, they gave us a richer understanding of his substantial presence. He transforms us precisely to make us partners with him in bringing about the salvation of the world (CSL 6).

St. Augustine’s Insight

    A thousand years before the Council of Trent, St. Augustine offered his insight into how we are changed in the Eucharist to have a share in the work of Christ: If you are the body and members of Christ, then what is laid on the Lord’s table is the sacrament (mysterium) of what you yourselves are – that you answer “Amen” and this answer is your testimony. Be a member of Christ’s body, so that your “Amen” may be authentic.

    With an eye to St. Augustine’s ancient expression of faith and to what was said at the Council of Trent, the bishops at the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this truth of our partnership with Christ. When we say that Christ is substantially present in the Eucharist, we are also referring to how he makes present in us his victory and triumph over death, won by him on the cross at Calvary. In the Eucharist we become partners in accomplishing Christ’s work of salvation for all humanity through our sacrifices in life and by our participation in the sacraments (CSL 6).

“So what about that snake?”

    One of the primordial temptations that haunts humanity is to believe that evil has overtaken us to the point that we are naturally evil. That temptation is very much alive in our time. The overwhelming and pervasive presence of evil dominates today’s headlines: terrorism, mass starvation, human trafficking, wars, and a callous disrespect for the value of human life in all of its stages.

    Yet, the unwavering witness of the Gospel of Christ is that there is a greater good which triumphs, for God is always with us. God’s continual and unfolding revelation of himself over the ages as the God who is ever present in human history reached its fulfillment in the coming of Christ. He is Emmanuel, a name that means God is with us. The Eucharist is the real, true and substantial witness to this belief. In the Eucharist, Emmanuel, our God who is ever with us, is so present that he gives us a share in his life and his work of saving the whole world.

    I urge you to reflect on the importance of our belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist in that light, but also from a broader perspective. As Catholics, we have the privilege and the duty to pass on our faith to our children and to be ready to share it with those who may not fully understand its importance for the integrity of the Christian message.

    Yet, much more is at stake than defending this truth as something that is specifically for Catholics or that defines us as Catholics. What is at stake is equally important to all disciples of Jesus. It is the truth that, no matter how mysterious and present evil appears to be, God is infinitely more present to us as the One who constantly presses in and pursues us with the invitation to share his life. Not only are we made in God’s image, but Christ continually enters into our lives to share the victory and triumph over death he won at Calvary so that we can become partners in the great work of his salvation.

    Now you know why God did not interrogate the snake. God’s full attention was on humanity. We were, and continue to be, the center of God’s attention. Nothing, not even the jarring and inexplicable mystery of evil in a creation that is good, will break God’s concentration or lessen his care for the creatures made in his image and likeness and destined to share in his divinity and become partners in the work of salvation.