Corpus Christi

A clear understanding of the Eucharist is in crisis among American Catholics. In 2017, just before the pandemic, the Pew Research Center released a study of Catholics in our country. It found less than one-third of American Catholics believe in Transubstantiation, the Catholic teaching that Jesus Christ is truly present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. According to the survey, most Catholics claim their understanding of the Eucharist is more akin to the Protestant belief that the Eucharist is only a symbol of Christ’s presence. Some observers questioned the Pew survey’s results because of the phrasing of the questions. Still, a similar study conducted by CARA- the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate- at Georgetown University found only a slightly higher positive response when they asked similar questions using more Catholic terminology. 

Transubstantiation is the Church’s teaching that while unchanged in physical appearance, the element of the bread and wine offered at the Eucharist is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We base this Catholic belief on Jesus’ words of institution at the Last Supper reported in the gospels. It is even more explicit in John’s Gospel when during His Bread of Life Discourse, Jesus said:

"Amen, Amen, I say to you, 

unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, 

you do not have life within you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,

And I will raise him on the last day.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him."

Jesus Christ offers us His body and blood to fill us with grace to bring His presence into our world.

Face it, folks, there is no getting around it; most Catholics either reject or lack an understanding of and appreciation for Christ’s promise to be with us always whenever we celebrate the Eucharist in His memory. If most Catholics really believed Christ would make himself present at this altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist and then feed us with God’s grace to go forth as His disciples after we receive Communion, this church would be overflowing at every Mass every weekend. 

On any given weekend, only about one in three Catholics attend Mass despite the Third Commandment’s requirement that we keep the Lord’s Day holy by joining in worship with the community. Things have only gotten worse since the COVID pandemic. Churches were forced to close for several months at the pandemic’s height. Then when allowed to reopen, it was at a much more limited capacity. That lasted for almost a year. The size of congregations has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Maybe it became too easy to participate over our Livestream or a television Mass and receive a Spiritual Communion. Still, it is not the same as participating in person and receiving the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Please encourage your family and friends who attended Mass before the pandemic to return to church today. 

This lack of an appreciation for the Eucharist has caused the American bishops to act. Today we begin a three-year National Eucharist Revival with the theme, “My flesh for the life of the world.” According to the bishops, the revival’s mission is “To renew the Church by enkindling a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.” The bishops’ vision is “A movement of Catholics across the United States, healed, converted, formed, and unified by an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist-and sent out in mission 'for the life of the world'"

This year the revival’s emphasis is on diocesan-level activities and educational events. The USCCB has launched two websites and offers an online course on the Mystery of the Eucharist by Bishop Andrew Cozzens. The website has many other resources to deepen our understanding and appreciation for the Blessed Sacrament. Take the time to look them over. I’ll also be sending parishioners materials on the Eucharist using our Flocknotes email system. If you aren’t receiving our Flocknotes emails, I encourage you to sign up today. If you do receive Flocknotes, be sure to open them. Next year the revival’s emphasis will shift to the parish level with a social media campaign, and in 2024 plans are to hold a National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. With our prayers and cooperation, our understanding and appreciation for the Eucharistic will deepen and grow over the next three years.

Jesus promised to always be with us in a crisis, and Luke exhibits that in today’s gospel. Just before today’s story of the feeding of the five thousand, the apostles had returned from their first missionary journey. Jesus tried to take them off by themselves to a deserted place to rest and deprogram, but the crowds came looking for them. Luke tells us Jesus wasn’t exasperated with the people but rather preached to them and healed the sick until late in the day.

The apostles want Jesus to send the people away to get food and lodging, but Jesus suggests they feed the people themselves. They tell Jesus that they only have five loaves of bread and two fish. Were they to go into the villages themselves and buy food? Jesus encourages His disciples to get the people to sit down in groups of fifty. He blesses their food and tells the disciples to distribute it among the people. When all were satisfied, they had twelve baskets of leftovers.

This story is very symbolic of Luke’s understanding of Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist. In it, Jesus turns a crisis into an opportunity. He refuses to turn anyone in need away. Jesus takes a little, turns it into an abundance, and instructs His disciples to feed others. He will do the same today. I believe that Jesus will come in this crisis of Eucharist belief, turn our trivial efforts into a great revival that abundantly feeds all those who hunger for His Real Presence in their lives, and send us into the world to minister in Jesus’ name.  

I believe that will happen because it is what Jesus always does, and He has done it in the lives of the saints. He did it in the life of St. Elizabeth Seton, America’s first native saint. St. Elizabeth was born into a wealthy New York family and baptized as an Episcopalian. She married a man from a similar background- a merchant- and they began a family. Tragically, her husband became seriously ill, and they moved to Italy, hoping his health would improve. A family of Italian Catholic friends invited Elizabeth, her husband, and her family into their home. While staying with the family, Elizabeth was impressed with their devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and she began to develop a devotion of her own. Elizabeth’s husband died, and she and her children returned to New York. One Sunday, Elizabeth was attending church services in her Episcopal Church, but she felt her heart drawn to the tabernacle of the Catholic Church a block away and the Real Presence of Christ resting there. She decided to become a Catholic, and she put the presence of Christ alive in her soul to work, founding a religious congregation called the Daughters of Charity.  

The life of Blessed Carlo Acutes is an even more recent example of a saint’s devotion to Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. Blessed Carlo is a child of this 21st Century. He was baptized as an infant, but his parents weren’t very religious. His faith came from his Polish nanny, who would take him to visit the Blessed Sacrament in church when they went for a walk. The nanny was the one who shared a deep faith in the Eucharist with young Carlo. Carlo was a computer wiz and began compiling a website with information on Eucharistic miracles, both ancient and modern, at the age of ten. The site became a go-to source for information on the topic. By all accounts, Carlo lived a typical teenage life. His peers loved him because he had an innate ability to mediate conflicts among his schoolmates. Sadly, Carlo developed leukemia and died at the age of fourteen. His family says he embraced his suffering and death and said, the Eucharist is my highway to heaven. 

As we celebrate this Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, we ask ourselves what our devotion to the Eucharist is? Do we fully appreciate the presence of Jesus that comes to feed our souls when we receive Communion? Do we hunger for Christ so that we can take His presence into the world to distribute it to those we see in the disguise of the materially and spiritually poor? 

We can first evaluate our openness to Christ’s Real Presence by examining the presence of sin in our lives. If we are aware of grave or mortal sin in our hearts, we must celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation before receiving the Eucharist. Reception of the Eucharist can also strengthen our charity and wipe away venial sins while helping us avoid more severe ones.

To quote Pope Francis, the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. Francis adds that we must not forget our constant need for grace. Living a holy life is not something we can do by the force of our own wills, but only with God’s abundant grace shared through the Eucharist.

Even if we believe our sinfulness is limited to venial sins, we should celebrate Reconciliation every few months. With the regular examination of our consciences, we see more clearly how even what we consider minor sins can stand in the way of our bringing the presence of Christ to the world. 

We indeed live in a time of crisis for the faithful Catholic belief in Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist, but it isn’t a time for despair. Jesus is with us in our concern and is ready to feed our world’s hunger for God’s grace. This week resolve to do some small thing to help deepen your devotion to the Eucharist. Maybe you can start the practice of stopping into church for a few moments of prayer? Could you make attendance at daily Mass part of your routine at least once or twice a week, if not every day? Most of all, make plans to attend holy Mass every weekend and work to share the grace of God you receive with a spiritually hungry world. Join with all of the Church to turn our present crisis into a great opportunity helping to make the Kingdom of God grow strong today.