I was with my family recently and one of my in-law’s mothers asked me a question. She said, “Have you ever dumped a Bible study that you had?” And I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Did you ever get rid of a Bible study that you had?” And I said, “I don’t know, I don’t remember ever doing that.” And she said, “Well, we had this minister that [she lives at assisted living], came and visited us and after the first couple times he said he didn’t want to do a Bible study with us anymore.” And I said, “Well, I don’t know why, why do you think?” And she goes, “Well, he wasn’t Catholic. And we told him afterwards we were going to pray the rosary after every Bible study.” And he said, “The rosary?” And then they said, and even worse, we told him we were going to go to Mass on Sundays. And he said, “Mass, you believe in the Eucharist?” And after that they were done. And I said, “No, I, this never happened to me.”
Then my mother was telling me a story. We have wonderful neighbors who happen to be Protestant, but it’s a big part of the story. And they love my mother, all the kids, they’ve got five little kids, love my mother. Well, the mother wants to convert my mother because she’s really afraid that Dee hasn’t been saved. And so now if you know my mother, Dee, they have a better chance of converting me than they do converting her. So, she came over to the house and was trying to just say, “You know, Dee, I’m really worried about a lot of things that you’re involved in. And I want you to be saved.” My mother said, “I am saved, I’m Catholic.” And she goes, “Yeah, that’s the problem.”
A couple days later, one of the daughters was riding her bike down the street and didn’t look at her. And that was really weird because they always say Hi. And so, my mom said, “How are you doing?” And she kept riding by, wouldn’t look her, put her head the other way and came back and did it again. And my mother finally said, “Hey, what’s going on here? Are you OK?” And she goes to her, “You go to a very bad church. Your church has statues and you guys celebrate communion.” And my mother is the sweetest person, she just said, “Well, I think it’s a good church. You know, don’t worry about me.”
And it occurred to me that I was finding all this very strange. It kind of happened in numerous sequential times. Well, then I got a call from someone that wanted to present here and we’re talking about the Eucharist. He didn’t really believe in the Eucharist, so he said to me, “Father, when did you Catholics start believing in Communion?” And I just said, “From the very beginning, we believe that Jesus commissioned the apostles to celebrate the Eucharist.” I said, “It was really amazing, even Mary herself who bore Jesus in her womb, and had to watch him suffer and die in front of her, she got to receive him in communion. She got to receive his very body, blood, soul and divinity into herself in a deeper way than she ever could have been while he was on this earth.”
So, I was just reflecting on this gospel today. It’s probably one of my favorite Gospels where Jesus says, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life within you. But if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have everlasting life.” So, it’s important for us to realize what He wants to give to us.
There’s a wonderful convert. His name is John Henry Newman. And John Henry Newman was an educator, a very strong Protestant. After he converted, he had a great quote. He said, “To be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant.” To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. Why does he say this? Well, he had his conversion because he looked back and he read what all of the early church founders were writing. And as he read their writing, he came to realize that we believed in the Eucharist from the very beginning. Now, I don’t want to teach a whole history course right now, but I want to give you just a couple highlights from some of these early church fathers.
These are people that lived in the first century, in the decades after Jesus suffered, died, rose and ascended and sent his Holy Spirit. These are writings they came across even before the Bible was being compiled. It’s important for us to know that we are a belief, and we always have been, of Scripture and Tradition. Our Tradition helps interpret Scripture. There are so many passages in Scripture where you could take one line and every one of us could tell you a different meaning for that line. But somebody has to interpret Scripture, and that’s what our tradition has done all of these years.
This is from a document, it’s called the Didache, and it was written very early on. It was to describe what would happen during the mass. And it’s almost like the Roman missile that we have here. It was a description of how this mass was to be celebrated: It said, “On the Lord’s Day, the people gather together and break bread. They give thanks, having first confessed their sins so that the sacrifice may be pure, that’s the penitential act we do together. But let no one who quarrels with their companion join until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice might not be defiled. For this sacrifice is concerning the Lord, and every place and time is to offer pure sacrifice.”
In 70 A.D., this is Saint Ignatius of Antioch. Saint Ignatius was writing a letter. And he was talking about a group, they were called the Docetists. They didn’t believe in the full humanity of Christ. And so, he wrote a letter to them about this. He said they abstained from the Eucharist, so he’s using the word Eucharist, and prayer because they refused to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh and blood of our Savior Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins, and which the Father in His goodness raised up. So, in 70 A.D., he’s defending the real presence in the Eucharist, that it is the flesh and blood of our Lord. He said, “Only that Eucharist, which is under authority of the bishop or whoever he designates, is to be considered valid. Wherever the Bishop appears, there let the congregation be, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”
From the very beginning, we have the bishops holding on to the authority of the Eucharist. Saint Justin Martyr, who is also very early on in the year 150, he describes after the rite of baptism to the neophytes, those who are who are new in the faith. He describes the parts of the Mass that follow, which are the offertory, the Eucharistic prayer, and the distribution of Communion. He says, “The liturgy, of the Mass, is celebrated every Sunday where all the faithful gather.
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gathered together in one place. And in the memoirs of the apostles, which is the New Testament or the writings of the prophets, the Old Testament are read as long as time permits. And when the reader is finished, the presider and in a discourse instructs and imitates these good things. [That’s the homily] And they all stand together and offer prayers. And as we said before, when we have finished the prayer, bread and wine is brought forward. And the presider likewise offers prayers and Thanksgiving to the best of his ability. And the people assent saying, ‘Amen.’ And the distribution, the partaking of the Eucharized elements, are distributed to those of each.”
So there again we have the Eucharist, the very true Body and blood, soul and divinity, flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus. Saint Justin would say, “That no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things which we teach are true.” But sometimes we wonder, ‘Why can’t everyone receive the Eucharist?’ Well, from the very beginning, it was for those who really believe that what we’re celebrating here is true. Now the hope, the desire is that everyone, we want everyone to celebrate the Eucharist. But before we celebrate there’s the time of initiation where we come to believe in the Real Presence.
Saint Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, and Polycarp was a disciple of Saint John the Apostle. So, we’re talking just three generations. He said, “The Eucharist parallels our bodies. As the bread and wine are transformed by the word of God in the consecration to become the body and blood of Christ, so the bodies of the faithful who have been nourished by the Eucharist will be transformed to share in the glory of the Body of Christ.”
And then finally, the last one I want to mention is Saint Hillary. Saint Hillary was dealing with the Arian heresy, and he uses these words to describe what we’re celebrating here today. “Jesus himself declares from my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in Him. It is no longer permitted for us to raise doubts about the nature of the body and blood. For according to the statement of the Lord Himself, as well as our faith, this is indeed flesh and blood. And these things that we receive bring it about, that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.”
There is one more I want to mention, St. Ambrose. Saint Ambrose says, “The words the Lord Jesus become the words of the priest. When the priest speaks these words, they are no longer his but Jesus’. And when the moment comes for bringing the Most Holy Sacrament into being, the priest does not use his own words any longer, he uses the words of Christ. Therefore, it is Christ’s words that bring about this sacrament into being.”
So, to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. What that means is when we go to the history of our Church, we see that the Eucharist has been there from the very beginning. This gift is a gift for us, and it is something that does require faith. And we know some of the studies show that almost 2/3 of Catholics struggle with believing in the Real Presence. I just offer you at this mass, if you struggle just say ‘Lord help me. Help me to believe.’ And if you are someone that likes learning, go to Google and just type in early Church fathers and Eucharist and you can read about all of these writings that were there from the very beginning.
As we celebrate today’s Eucharist, our Lord wants to come to us. He wants so deeply to be with us in a way closer than he ever could have been while he was here on this earth. The whole reason God sent his only Son into the world was that we could see Jesus, we could hear Jesus, we could touch Jesus. And Jesus knew that He would suffer, and He would die, and He wanted a way to be with us until the end of time. And He found a way to make it happen. He found a way to come to us in the appearance of bread and wine, so that we can receive Him in the Eucharist and His flesh can become our flesh.
