The Real Objective Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament

Dear N.:

How lovely to hear from you - it is wonderful to know you are participating with us in this lively and beneficial discussion! Thank you for your gracious note and your excellent questions. Eucharistic theology is, I think, by definition the attempt to define the indefinable and to explicate the inscrutable, so we are talking about great and supernatural mysteries of love that transcend human knowledge and human categories of understanding. Having said that, it is clear, I think again, from divine revelation that the Real Objective Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is an august mystery of the saving Gospel, a truth that we receive by faith although it surpasses our intellectual powers to grasp it. This is why Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Te Adore Devote uses the phrase 'sola fide' to describe how we must approach the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Mysteries - only by faith can we pierce the veil of the visible signs and see Our Lord present under the lowly forms of Bread and Wine. Please bear with me as I submit what I understand to be basic Catholic teaching on each of the questions posed.

1. Our Lord is present in the Blessed Sacrament, not only in figure, virtue, power, or sign, but truly in His Body and Blood, as well as His Divinity. The total and complete One Person of God the Son made Man, fully human and fully divine, is objectively present under the forms of the Blessed Sacrament as our heavenly sustenance. The Divine Thing signified in the Holy Eucharist is Our Lord Himself, in the fullness of His human nature. So the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. But the Body and Blood present in the Eucharist are present in their glorified and risen state, in the glory of the Resurrection, immortal, immutable, impassible, divinised. Our Lord's Body and Blood are not present in any carnal, gross, materialistic, or mortal state - the infamous Black Rubric was written to deny such a false understanding. So, in a true sense, the presence of Our Lord in the Holy Communion is 'bodily,' that is, the Body and Blood of Christ are the risen, ascended, glorified, deified human nature of the Saviour personally present in the Eucharist in a unique sacramental mode - mystically, supernaturally, heavenly. The Body contained in the Blessed Sacrament is defined by Saint Paul in I Corinthians 15 as a 'spiritual body,' a Body after Resurrection.

2 & 3. The Articles of Religion clearly express the truth that the Body and Blood of Christ are objectively present in the Holy Communion by a supernatural and ineffably mysterious manner: Article XXVIII affirms the Pauline teaching of I Corinthians 10 that the Eucharist is a partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. 'The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.' The Body of Christ is really contained in the Eucharist because the Body is really given, really taken, and really eaten. That is genuine objectivity. Article XXIX does not deny the Objective Real Presence, for its very title states that the wicked 'eat not the Body of Christ' - but the Body of Christ must be present for it to be eaten at all. The opposite is, of course, that the good or faithful DO 'eat the Body in the use of the Lord's Supper.' The teaching of Saint Augustine here is authoritative for us - the Augustine who says that the wicked are in no wise partakers of Christ is the same Augustine who elsewhere teaches that in the Eucharist 'we recognise in the Bread what was hung on the Cross and in the Cup what flowed from His side.' Augustine tells us what is contained in the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of our sins (Sermon 228). The Body of Christ is offered and served to the communicants (City of God 17). The Confessions of Saint Augustine record of the Eucharist that is the Body and Blood of Christ: 'I eat it and drink it and minister it to others' (10). Saint Augustine's sacramentology is complex but can be broken down neatly into three components - in his view a Sacrament is comprised of three things, the sacramentum, which is the outward visible sign, the res, which is the Thing signified or inner reality, and the virtus, which is the benefit or efficacy conveyed by the reality of the Sacrament. Given these categories and the contextual perspective of Augustine, it seems evident that when the Article says the wicked 'eat not the Body' and do not partake of Christ, it means the virtus of the Sacrament is received, not to the benefit, but rather to the condemnation, of the communicant. The wicked press with their teeth the sacramental sign of the Lord's Body: they receive the Sacrament and its integral Reality (which makes the Sacrament to be a Sacrament, for otherwise it would be but a bare ineffectual sign) but they do not receive the virtus, the efficacy, which only the faithful can receive. 'Any who receive the Sacrament of unity and do not hold the bond of peace do not receive the Sacrament for their benefit, but for a testimony against themselves (Sermon 272). Here Augustine echoes Saint Paul. 'Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord... For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's Body. (I Corinthians 11.26, 29). And so I would contend that if one understands Article XXIX according to Saint Augustine in his own context, it is possible to believe in the Real Objective Presence and to hold that the wicked do not partake of the essential virtue of Christ in the Eucharist. Let us recall the English Catechism when it says 'The Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.'

4. I would answer that wherever Our Lord Jesus Christ is present, there he is to be adored with that divine adoration which belongs to the divine nature alone. Even if Our Lord were present in the Eucharist virtually, that is, in His divine power and glory and not in his glorified human nature, it would still be possible to contend that the Eucharistic elements objectively and instrumentally transmit the presence of Christ, and thus Christ should be worshipped as present in the Eucharistic mystery during the time of the liturgy. Certainly that contention would be more of a theological stretch. The Church has rendered divine worship to Christ in the consecrated elements of the Blessed Sacrament from the earliest ages... within the format of the liturgy - here again the liturgical precedent goes before the theological outworking and explanation. Today in both the Western and Eastern Rites, Christ is adored in the Blessed Sacrament at the Mass or Divine Liturgy. Prayers are addressed to Him specifically as present in the Holy Mysteries. Ritual gestures of loving adoration are offered to the Lord present objectively in the Sacrament. The liturgical and doxological evidence for the practice is historically consistent, universal, and overwhelming. And so the consensus fidelium is yet again manifest in the liturgical matrix, lex orandi, lex credendi. To conclude I quote that saintly scholar and priest, James DeKoven:

'You may take away from us if you will every external ceremony; you may take away altars, and superaltars, lights and incense and vestments, and we will submit to you. But gentlemen, to adore Christ's Person in His Sacrament - that is the inalienable privilege of every Christian and Catholic heart. How we do it, the way we do it, the ceremonies with which we do it, are utterly, utterly indifferent. The thing itself is what we plead for.'