I gave this talk to the catechists of northern Worcester County on 21 October 2023.
We have our work cut out for us.
And while many lament loudly the enormity and complexity of the work, I know that those who sit before me this morning are actually trying to do something about it.
Trying to help little children and those who wish to become Catholic to understand the Eucharistic mystery.
Trying to get families and the disaffected to go to Church.
Trying to invigorate whatever embers there might be into the flames of a burning faith.
But we have our work cut out for us. So, let’s just start with a couple of facts.
First, regarding the state of Eucharistic Practice
While the number of Catholics in the United States as a percentage of the population has, for the past fifty years, remained pretty consistent at around 25%, the percentage of Catholics who go to Mass has declined precipitously in recent years.
Just over 80% of Catholics in the United States attended Mass each Sunday in the 1950s. Today that figure seldom rises above 25%, and in many of our parishes is significantly lower.
While pandemic restrictions reduced weekly attendance to as low as 17%, the General Social Survey indicates that, by the end of 2021 “just fewer than a quarter are attending Mass weekly…”
Perhaps we can be heartened that more than 40% of Catholics attend Mass at least once a month, and two-thirds attend Mass at Christmas, Easter, and on Ash Wednesday. But why do fewer people go to Church today than in previous generations?
A major factor has been the general diminishment of confidence in institutions of any sort, but most notably in churches. Between 2010 and 2016, confidence in Churches dropped more significantly than any other institution, save the banks (due, presumably to the financial crisis of 2007-2008).
Other studies have suggested that our “elevator speech” about how the Church historically and currently helps to address social problems is becoming less effective. In the eight years between 2008 and 2016, the number of Catholics who believe that religious institutions contribute at least somewhat to social problems has fallen by 16%.
Only 25% of people think that most religious leaders care about others and 17% believe you can get fair and accurate information from them or that they handle our resources responsibly.4
This lack of confidence is reflected in an even more disturbing way in regard to Catholic clergy. Just 8% of U.S. Catholics say they are “very close” to their clergy, as opposed 25% of Protestants. Similarly, fewer Catholics than Protestants trust the guidance of their religious leaders. One answer, therefore, to why Catholics do not trust “the Church” is that they often do not view the clergy as trustworthy or capable of providing them with reliable guidance.
Second, a word on Eucharistic Belief
An equally important factor in the diminishment in Church attendance has been a lack of appreciation of what the Mass is all about.
Without a doubt, the single study which most influenced the USCCB to decision to initiate “a three-year grassroots revival of devotion and belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist” was the 2019 Pew Research Center poll which asserted that “just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their Church that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.”
Shortly thereafter, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) took the Pew poll to task for the wording of their questions, noting the different results CARA reported on a similar question in its 2011 poll.
In November of 2021, The Pillar commissioned its own “Survey on Religious Attitudes and Practices” with the marketing research firm Centiment. Asking people to respond to the question “I believe the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ,” they reported that approximately fifty percent of Catholics who attend Mass weekly replied in the affirmative.
Eucharistic practice and belief
The Eucharistic Revival embarked upon by our Bishops, therefore, has two purposes: to enhance Eucharistic practice and Eucharistic belief.
So let’s spend a few minutes reviewing just what this Eucharistic practice and belief is all about.
The Eucharist is nothing less than the gift of Christ himself, offered on the Cross for our salvation. For Christ Jesus, the giver and the gift, the priest and the sacrifice has left us the Sacrament of his own Body and Blood as an invitation and means to join our lives to his.
At the heart of every Mass are the Lord’s own words, spoken by the priest as he changes bread into the Body of Christ:
TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT,
FOR THIS IS MY BODY,
WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.
“He did this,” the Council fathers reminded us, “in order to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross down through the centuries until he should come again, and in order to entrust until then to the Church, his beloved Spouse, the memorial of his Death and
Resurrection: the sacrament of love, the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the Paschal Banquet “in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us.”
What, then, is the Mass? It is Christ’s Holy and Living Sacrifice, “an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ.” We are called to participate in the Mass by joining the sacrifices of our lives to his perfect sacrifice.
This means that the Mass is not our action, but Christ’s, who is “ever present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations.” Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said it best: “…God acts through Christ in the liturgy and we cannot act but
through him and with him.”
This presence of Christ in the Mass is manifested in four ways:
In the celebration of Mass the chief ways in which Christ is present in his Church gradually become clear. First he is present in the very assembly of the faithful, gathered together in his name; next he is present in his word, when the Scriptures are read in the Church and explained; then in the person of the minister; finally and above all, in the Eucharistic sacrament. In a way that is completely unique, the whole and entire Christ, God and man, is substantially and permanently present in the sacrament. This presence of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine “is called real, not to exclude other kinds of presence as if they were not real, but because it is real par excellence.”
Christ is Present in the Gathered Assembly
Jesus, who assured us that he is present where two or three are gathered in his name, (cf. Matthew 18:20) gathers a people made holy by Baptism to himself at Mass, a ministerial priesthood, to join the sacrifices of their lives to his perfect sacrifice. “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” he told his disciples,
“there are I am in their midst.” (Mark 18:20)
Christ is Present in the Scriptures Proclaimed
The introduction to the Lectionary for Mass is clear: “Christ is always present in his word, as he carries out the mystery of salvation, sanctifies humanity and offers the Father perfect worship.” This is why, at the end of each reading we acclaim
Christ’s presence as the Lector announces that what he has just read is “The Word of the Lord,” and the Deacon proclaims: “The Gospel of the Lord.”
Christ is Present in the Priest
The Roman Missal describes the role of the priest at Mass as “acting in the person of Christ.” For Christ “chooses men to become sharers in his sacred ministry…to renew in his name the sacrifice of human redemption” and “to strive to be conformed to the image of Christ himself and offer you a constant witness of faith and love [to God].”
But, in these years of Eucharistic Revival, we have we also embarked on an intensive reflection on the ultimate presence of Christ, described by the Council fathers as his presence par excellence: the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species.
Christ is Present in his Body and Blood, and Received in Holy Communion
The earliest testimony to the presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine comes from the Lord himself, who in every account of the Last Supper says explicitly “this is my Body…this is my Blood.” Likewise, the great Eucharistic
discourses he tells us that “he who eats my Body and drinks my Blood will live in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)
Similarly, Saint John’s relating of Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum reinforces our belief in Christ’s presence in the consecrated bread. As the crowds seek out Jesus following his multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, he tells
them that they have been looking for him because they saw signs and had their fill. But he tells them “do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:27)
Then he tells them about a bread which does not perish, the “true bread” which comes from the Father “and gives life to the world.” (John 6:33) Here he sets out the foundation of our eucharistic understanding. “I am the bread of life; whoever
comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:36)
In response, the crowds murmur and grumble. It is a hard saying. So he repeats it. “I am the bread of life (John 6:48)…the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh
for the life of the world.” (John 6:51) “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)
Immediately after this teaching, John reports, many of his disciples abandoned him and “returned to their former way of life,” (John 6:60) complaining that “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” (John 6:61)
Down through the centuries, men and women have often grappled with this hard saying. But the Lord’s words perdure, echoing down through the centuries: “This is my Body, this is my Blood.”
Just a few decades after the books of the New Testament were written down, Saint Ignatius of Antioch lamented that the Gnostics “do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.”
By the mid-eleventh century, the doctrine of “transubstantiation” was proclaimed as a dogma of the Church by the Fourth Lateran Council. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Council of Trent declared that:
Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.
This teaching is reiterated today in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.
Thus, at the heart of the Church’s tradition is a constant belief in “the substantial change of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, a reality which surpasses all human understanding.”
A Timeless Reality
For, the sacrifice of Calvary and the Heavenly Banquet which will take place at the end of time, are present on the Altar at Mass. We stand at the foot of the Cross and partake of Christ’s glory, for we are the blessed ones who are “called to the Supper
of the Lamb.”
Our Holy Communion is with Jesus in heaven, on earth, and in our hearts. The Mass is a participation in the heavenly banquet, a communion with the Church in heaven. As Pope John Paul II tells us in his encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, “in celebrating the sacrifice of the Lamb, we are united to the
heavenly ‘liturgy’ and become part of that great multitude which cries out: ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!’ (Revelation 7:10)
The Eucharist is truly a glimpse of heaven appearing on
earth. It is a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem which pierces the clouds of our history and lights up our journey.”
If we look all around us, we should be able to imagine what is really going on there, though unseen. Angels and Saints rejoicing and sharing in communion with Jesus. Look around you and you will see them: Grandmothers who have gone
before us in faith, ancestors who intercede for us from the place of the blessed. This Church, like every celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, is crowded with our invisible friends.
We get a glimpse of that at every Mass when the priest raises the consecrated Bread and Wine and declares: “Behold the Lamb of God...How Blessed are they who are called to the Supper of the Lamb!” Not just this supper, but the heavenly supper and the supper in the upper room…for in the Holy Eucharist all time and
space disappear and we are made one with Christ upon the cross and Christ in glory and Christ as he comes to us on the altar.
Participating in the Cross
Thus, as we pray in the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I), “we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion, the Resurrection from the dead, and the glorious Ascension into heaven of Christ,” offering nothing less than the pure, holy and spotless victim, “the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.”
In this regard, the Council Fathers recall a venerable prayer, which is prayed over the offerings at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday and which has been prayed in the Mass for over a millennia and a half. It asks that “we may
participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.”
That means that our memorial of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection is not a simple recollection or recreation of the Paschal Mystery. Rather, the Mass is a participation in the saving mysteries of our redemption.
For “the sacrifice of his Cross and its sacramental renewal in the Mass, which Christ the Lord instituted at the Last Supper and commanded his Apostles to do in
his memory, are one and the same, differing only in the manner of their offering; and as a result, that the Mass is at one and the same time a sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving, propitiation and satisfaction.”
Closing
The presence of Christ in the Eucharist, then, cannot be understood without an appreciation of the presence of Christ upon the Cross, the great Sacrifice of our Redemption.
Which brings me back to an old story, one I heard from the late, great Christiane Brusselmans. You may recall Dr. Brusselmans’ extraordinary work in promoting a catechumenal model of religious formation, most concretely expressed in the sacramental preparation series, We Celebrate the Eucharist and
We Celebrate Reconciliation.
The academic origins of her work are to be found in her doctoral dissertation at Catholic University, which bore the title Les Fonctions de Parrainage des Enfants aux Premiers Siecles de l’Eglise. The sponsorship at the heart of her research concerned not just the role of godparents, but the family itself as the domestic church responsible for the passing on of the faith from one generation to the next.
Dr. Brusselmans loved to tell stories of going from door to door in an urban Washington parish, seeking to actively engage parents in the sacramental preparation of their children, at task at which she was equally ingenious and ruthless.
If a parent were unwilling or unable to come to information sessions on the preparation of their child for First Holy Communion, she would ask permission to designate “a substitute parent,” since you cannot fulfill the promises you made when Johnny was baptized.”
And when even that effort would produce no result, she would dig deep into the big, floppy bag she dragged behind her everywhere and take out and wooden crucifix, hammer and nail and ask permission to hand a crucifix prominently on the dining room wall.
“That way, when I left,” she would proclaim, “Jesus would continue working on them."
Perhaps it is this kind of “down and dirty” kind of evangelization which is so desperately needed today, as evidenced by the success of the ‘Catechesis of the Good Shepherd’ and other eminently practical approaches to the sacramental formation of families in our parishes. For, as Saint Therese of Lisieux reminds us, authentic mystical experience is deeply grounded in the everyday experiences of peoples’ lives.
Sonnet get me wrong, there are, in your parishes and mine, folks whose lives God has set up to witness dramatic conversions as they ride to Damascus. But it is my experience, after more than a half century of ministry, that in most cases conversion begins with something as simple as sticking a Cross up on someone’s dining room wall, and trusting that the Lord will do the rest.
God bless you in the good work you have done and continue to do. My prayer for you and for all who work for Eucharistic revival in the Church is the one the Bishops prays for each deacon at his ordination: “May the Lord who has begun this good work in you, bring it to conclusion.”
Thank you.
