Eucharistic Presence in Context
In the celebration of Mass the chief ways in which Christ is present in his church emerge clearly one after the other. First, he is present in the very assembly of the faithful, gathered together in his name; next, he is present in his word, with the reading and explanation of Scripture in the church; also in the person of the minister; finally, and above all in the eucharistic elements. In a way that is completely unique, the whole and entire Christ, God and man, is substantially and permanently present in the sacrament. Presence of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine “is called real, not to exclude the other kinds of presence as though they were not real, but because it is real par excellence.” (Eucharistiae Sacramentum #6)
What the document Eucharistiae Sacramentum tells us here is of great importance for understanding the nature and value of Christ’s Eucharistic presence. Too often, conservatives treat Eucharistic presence in isolation from Christ’s presence in the congregation, the presider, and the word of Sacred Scripture. Liberals, for their part, are too often guilty of flattening out Eucharistic meaning so that Christ’s presence in the elements of bread and wine becomes indistinguishable from the other presences highlighted here. Both groups, of course, seem to find justification for their approach in the above-quoted passage and others like it.
It is rare to find a treatment of such a passage that uses Christ’s presence in the Word, the presider, and the congregation to help us understand Eucharistic presence. Instead, we see the first half of the passage used to relativize the Eucharistic presence, or the second half of the passage used to absolutize it.
What these two approaches have in common is that they both treat Christ’s Eucharistic presence and his presence in the word, in the presider, and in the congregation as discrete “units” of presence. Christ’s presence in the elements of bread and wine is seen as being in some kind of competition with the other types of presence. An authentically Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, on the other hand, understands Christ’s Eucharistic presence as the consummation of Christ’s relationship with his church, a relationship that necessarily includes the other types of presence referenced above.
In an analogous fashion, the consummation of a marriage presumes and requires a whole array of presences to one another that are not the consummation itself. Couples can be more really present to one another in love-making when they have been present to one another in the day’s labors, in shared joys and sorrows, and by small tokens of physical intimacy throughout the day – all rooted, of course, in their solemn vows of fidelity to one another. This does not deprive the marital act of its unicity. It merely serves to highlight that lovemaking, like the Eucharist, only makes sense in its proper context.
And this is precisely the reason that one must be baptized, that one must be in right relationship with God and the community (i.e., not in mortal sin), and that one must hear the gospel proclaimed if one is to receive the Eucharist: because our relationship with Christ in the Eucharist only makes theological sense when understood as the consummation of a relationship that necessarily includes life in the (ordered) community gathered and formed by the Word of God.
Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is certainly unique, but it is not independent. It only exists within the broader context of Christ’s relationship with his body, the Church. In fact, to call the Eucharist “source and summit” is to insist that it must always be understood with reference to the other aspects of our liturgical celebrations and the faith as a whole.
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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Well explained.
Excellent! I would also stress the dynamic nature of the real presence, it is Christ present in the power of his paschal mystery. The meal event is transubstantiated into our participation in that paschal event, fully present.
Indeed, it is too often forgotten that “eucharist” is a verb.
Brett, I am not a theologian, but when you refer the the presence of Christ “in the elements of bread and wine” are you not articulating a distinctly Lutheran point of view? Our Catholic teaching of transsubstantiation teaches that bread and wine remain only as appearances, not as a substance or “element” does it not?
Dear Joe,
You wrote:
“The meal event is transubstantiated into our participation in that paschal event”
Do you mean “transubstantiated” in some metaphorical way? Otherwise I cannot see how an event which does not have substance can be transubstantiated. Please explain.
Hi Chris,
I have often encountered, in my reading, the term “elements” used in the same sense as “species.” It is in that sense that I use it here. I haven’t heard “element” used to mean “substance,” though it is entirely possible that some have used it this way. Terminology stumbles when it approaches the Eucharist.
Thanks for clarifying for me Brett, and I agree, terminology can be tricky when discussing the Eucharist.
I’ve never perceived the absolutizing of the Eucharistic presence that you describe. To my thinking, there’s one reason that it should be emphasized that you didn’t mention. That’s the difficulty of appreciating the Eucharistic presence.
We’ve all experienced God flowing through others. We can recognize that the Gospel readings are recounting stories from the life of Jesus. The priest takes on the role of leader and repeats the words of Jesus. Those are all tangible, sensible events. We don’t have that in the Blessed Sacrament. That sense of Christ’s presence has to be emphasized or else we’d miss it.
Related to this (I don’t know if this should count as another reason), the Eucharist is denied by many denominations. There are no denominations that deny God’s presence among his people, or His presence in the reading of Scripture. Some deny His relationship to the priest, but moreso in word than in deed. The teaching of the Real Presence is, however, under constant attack.
So that’s an additional consideration for you. Not only is the Eucharist the summit of our connection with God, but it is the most readily deniable and most frequently denied aspect of our connection with God.
Pinky,
I agree with the outline you provide. There is one further step, though, that I like to take into account. Precisely the dynamic you outline often leads to Catholic presentations of our Eucharist being more anti-Protestant than they are genuinely Catholic. This is the situation, in my view, that leads to so much popular confusion (both among Catholics and our Protestant brethren) about the Church’s actual teaching. In fact, any absolutizing that I have encountered is usually done in view of the fact that anything less than absolutizing is seen as quasi-Protestant. (One can note, parenthetically, that this is often a misrepresentation of Protestantism as well, which contains many strands that forcefully affirm Real Presence.)
For an example of this, one could look at James O’Connor’s endorsement of the first ‘Ego Berengarius’ in his The Hidden Manna. Catholic theology has always been nervous about Berengarius’ first oath, but O’Connor endorses it wholeheartedly because he is so afraid of the other end of the spectrum.
Perhaps I should clarify something. I know many are concerned about the confusion in Catholic circles that does not strongly enough emphasize Real Presence. I am concerned about that myself, but I am also concerned about manners of emphasizing Real Presence that misunderstand Church Teaching and so confuse a sacramental presence with a natural one. In fact, I think there is a correlation between these two confusions. If sacramental presence is understood as natural presence, then the purely symbolic option becomes much more amenable. What many Catholics deny by denying Real Presence is a natural presence that is contrary to Church Teaching in any case. Part of my goal for “contextualizing” Eucharistic Presence here is to continue fleshing out how to understand sacramental presence. That seems to me the hinge.
Wonderful post. Speaking for myself, when I ponder the fact that the Mass is an event, I am overwhelmed with wonder and gratitude toward Christ. He comes, He becomes present in the many ways you mentioned so He can unite Himself with us, so that we can encounter Him now. (Many saints (including St. Faustina) have spoken about Christ’s desire to unite Himself with us – what immense humility – a humility motivated by Love.) Psalm 8 asks: What is man that you are mindful of Him? And Christ answers with an event. Amazing!!!
I need to show this article to my Lutheran pastor, it sounds Lutheran.
““The meal event is transubstantiated into our participation in that paschal event”
Do you mean “transubstantiated” in some metaphorical way? Otherwise I cannot see how an event which does not have substance can be transubstantiated.”
First, the word “transubstantiation” is taught by the Church merely as a fitting word to name the eucharistic change. The word “substance” here is not defined at all, so it is hard to say that it is either literal or metaphorical. Blessed J. H. Newman made the point that since no one knows what “substance” means the doctrine is not particularly difficult to accept.
But I take the word substance to mean “being” or “reality” rather than “material thinghood” which seems to be the sense your questions presupposes. I think the meal-event, which includes the material reality of bread, has a higher ontological reality than the merely material. This total reality is transformed in its very being, totally and without remainder, into the reality of a participation in the Paschal Mystery, in which the Paschal Mystery, which includes the reality of the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, is fully present.
Harry,
I am glad to hear that. And not because I espouse a Lutheran over against than a Catholic understanding of the sacrament, but because I am of the view that if all Christians could hear the classical Catholic view clearly articulated on its own merits rather than as a form of identity politics or anti-Protestant polemic, we would be much closer to mutual understanding on the question. The rejection of transubstantiation at the Reformation by Luther and Calvin was a rejection of a bit of a caricature of the Catholic view – a caricature, unfortunately, that many Catholics actively promote precisely because it was rejected by Luther and Calvin! The new apologetics does not do much to promote the idea that Catholicism is more than anti-Protestantism. Many of our pop apologists act as if we (Catholics) were the protest movement.
After reading Luther on the Lord’s Supper, I am convinced there is plenty of room for agreement here. The fundamental difference seems to be that Luther was not able to read Aquinas on Aquinas’ own terms because nominalism had destroyed the concept of a metaphysics of participation. With that development, transubstantiation looks like the bread and wine are in competition with Christ’s body and blood. And, as Luther rightly noted, that is directly contrary to the logic of the Incarnation. Read in light of a metaphysics of participation whereby everything exists by participation in God’s being, I can’t see that Luther would have had any trouble at all with transubstantiation.
In fact, the Mass as sacrifice, something which bugged Luther much more than transubstantiation did, also gets much clearer when the metaphysical presupposition of participation is (re)introduced. Our sacrifice is not another sacrifice over against Christ’s sacrifice, but simply our participation (in our own time and place) in his ONE sacrifice.
As for the question of applying the term “transubstantiation” to the whole ACT of the Eucharist rather than just the ontological change in the eucharistic species of bread and wine, I would say the following: the term transubstantiation was developed precisely to safeguard the claim that something “real” happened to the bread and wine, so in the strictest sense it applies to them. However, there is the danger that focus on transubstantiation has isolated the bread and wine from the rest of the celebration, so that the final end of the sacrament – namely our transformation into Christ’s body and our participation in his perfect worship of the Father – is obscured. I think, therefore, that while it may be slightly “metaphorical” to extend the language of transubstantiation to the entire reality of the eucharistic celebration, it is entirely helpful. Given appropriate caveats that it is not precisely the same metaphysical claim, the highest authorities in the Church have been pretty happy with Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of transubstantiation du monde, which applies the term well beyond the confines of the Mass in order to express that the Eucharist changes us so that we might change the world. The Church has always insisted that the reason for a strong emphasis on Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist is that it provides the ground for our claim that we, the Church, are really the body of Christ in the world. When that connection is lost, transubstantiation can come awfully close to idolatry.
Brett – you wrote: “Catholicism is more than anti-Protestantism.” I say a very loud and emphatic AMEN brother!!!!
I often forget this (probably the danger of most converts who have engaged in apologetics debates!) and the reminder is greatly appreciated.
Henry,
Thank you. I think that much of the skew that appears in the new apologists stems from the fact that they are not so much educating others about Church teaching as reiterating for themselves the reasons that they stopped being Protestants. The vast majority are converts. Not only can this misrepresent the Catholic faith to the Church’s own, it also sets up unnecessary stumbling blocks on the path to Christian unity.