THE EUCHARIST IS OUR CORE FOR A REASON: God gives us what we need.

When you profess your faith as a Catholic, you take on the responsibility of handing down to those around you the Eucharist and its power. The Real Presence in the Eucharist is one of two self-sustaining gifts from God to help us grow in grace and favor before God and man. The other gift is The Sacrament of Reconciliation. Both are contained in The Lord’s Prayer we say each day. Both help us to remain on THE WAY, by seeking THE TRUTH, so that our life might be Christ in us as we march towards the parousia.

You might think that what we believe and practice about Christ in us (The Real Presence) is a fable made up in the Middle Ages. Not so! The origins of the Eucharist are steeped in levels of intelligent progression. (Evolution) These progressive actions come with their own paradigm shift that marks a progression in thinking about the covenant experience with God. Here are some of my observations as to how the chosen people in both the Old and New Testaments were present to God. God is always present to everyone, anytime.

• THE ABRAHAMIC SHIFT IN HOW TO CONTACT GOD. What is central in the story of Abraham and the story of sacrifice goes far beyond this one event. It is an archetype of how one person went against the trends and popular thinking of his age, that gods needed the sacrifice of a firstborn son or daughter to make them happy.
• Abraham is told by God not to sacrifice his son, Issac, on the phyric altar, but rather an unblemished lamb that would be a sign that the God of Abraham is not the gods that surrounded them at this time. Abraham got tired of people telling “My god can beat your god.” God is one, having anthropomorphic characteristics (speaks to us, is a real person and not an idol, and proposes a covenant relationship).
• Humans came up with the idea of God, but the real question is, “Why did they come up with what they did, and how it became so sophisticated over the ages? Where did all that God stuff originate? Why did the Abrahamic intelligent progression stress God as someone with whom they identify and who created us in God’s image and likeness? Why did the authors of the early Old Testament stick with a covenant agreement based on love and duty rather than fragmenting into formless and faceless idols?” Created by humans? Indeed! Inspired by God? Indubitably! Israel is God’s family.
• Abraham’s contract was a covenant between two persons. It fractured the paradigm of sacrificing children to appease the gods. It established a new approach to communicating with God, the sacrifice of an animal as a sign of this covenant relationship. This is the first step in the Incarnation, God communicates to humans through nature (burning bush, cloud of fire before the Israelites, manna in the desert, El Shaddai on the mountain tops, the victories of the Israelites over their enemies, the Ten Commands).
• Part of the solution to this movement from the sacrifice of humans to that of things, to that of mercy and not sacrifice, to the culmination of the Eucharistic process in the archetypal sacrifice of thanksgiving, fulfilling the Abramic and Mosaic covenants, with the actual divine nature and human nature, is The Christ Principle, that from which all reality flows and into which all reality finds its fulfillment– Omega.
• THE MOSIAC CONTRACT — The Israelites saw God as being on their side, so they carved out territories because they inherited this physical land. They hold that position even today. Moses and the contract with the people and God had its pinnacle with God giving his chosen principles of behaviors whereby they would be able to fulfill the covenant as God intended. It is significant that God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets which were at the core of what it means to be God’s chosen people. The wandering in the desert for forty years means it took them a long time to even begin to practice these behaviors so as to make a difference in their collective identity. The writings in the Old Testament by the Prophets and Kings are a history of how Israel moved in and out of knowing what was good or bad for them (as pointed out with the knowledge of the tree of good and evil).In the Old Testament God spoke to Moses and through the Prophets to tell people to keep the commands. These included not only the Ten Commands, which is the Core of what it means to be in covenant with God but also the prescriptions of the Law down through the ages. https://www.jewfaq.org/613_commandments Keeping the Law as prescribed by the Rabbis and Priests was, and continues to be an important way God is present to them. The burning bush is not just a symbol of God’s presence but a sign of the nexus between humans and what cannot be named or seen as is (to borrow a term from Harry Potter novels), As this prequel to the Eucharist, longing to see God face to face and to know that God’s name, moved in complexity towards sacrifice, first annotated by the movement of Abram to AbraHAM, from the crude but extremely attempt to make god happy by offering one of their own children. On the surface, horrific, but the attempt of the human condition at the time was to give the most precious possession to a god in exchange for that god being their friend. It is in this context that the Eucharist moved from human sacrifice in an attempt to make God happy, to that of Abraham, who broke that paradigm by initially offering his son (no coincidence) as a pledge of fidelity and to keep god’s anger abated. In Abram’s conscience, he waivered, and God spoke to him in his heart to sacrifice an animal on the altar rather than his son.
• THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE AND THE CONTRACT THROUGH THE EUCHARIST — Eucharist is Christ with us, not just the way we think of our mother or father who has passed before us in the Peace of Christ, but right now, body and blood, soul, and divinity with me. With the adoption by God, meaning God chose me, I did not choose God, I am a temple for the Holy Spirit, a receptacle for that real presence as I go out into my slide of the world. I do so, remember, with dual citizenship, being both a human being as my physical and mental being, but not raised to new life, one that completes the intended intelligent design that nature intended. I cannot ever be raised to be divine in my nature, nor was Mary, Mother of Jesus, but, through the power of the Holy Spirit we are raised to be what our nature intends, an adopted son or daughter of the Father and heir to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Christ Principle is the Eucharist, and in celebrating its most intense moment, through, with, and in Christ, together we go where no human dares approach, the presence of the living God, the Arc of the Tabernacle, to give glory and praise to the Father. This is all we humans can ever say to the awesome gift we received but none of us deserve, “Thank You, Father.” This gratitude is kept actualized against the slow erosion and corruption of mind and matter that is the world. Everything in this primetime has a beginning and an ending. Everything dies, everything that is except those whom Jesus has called friends and has continued to make his real presence real in their own lives by good works (Chater 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule,) and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. In the Eucharist, we proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes again in glory. I am the temple of the Holy Spirit when I realize it (belief) and then want more and more. This longing for the courts of the Lord is expressed by Lay Cistercians following The Cistercian Way of silence, solitude, work, and prayer in the context of community. Lay Cistercians are not monks, another expression of the real presence, but just ordinary people with families and all the requirements of being human (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs comes to mind) as we move on a path designed for us before there was matter and time, a WAY, that leads to the TRUTH, which in turn is the LIFE. It is my path but not my Way. It is my experience of reality as I move from my life to my death, but not my Truth. It is the movement from Alpha to Omega, ever picking up how to grow in Christ and slough off my old, sinful self (capacitas dei) that is the Life, the sign of contradiction in this world that answers the human heart in its quest to fulfill that restlessness until it rests in what nature intended, to be present with Jesus in Heaven without all the encumbrances of being human, yet ironically fulfilling humanity’s intelligent progression. Eucharist and how I take into myself the living presence of Christ into my very own sinful and unworthy body is what I carry each day, as a Eucharistic Minister carried our precious Lord to the sick, elderly, prisoners, and the physically challenged. When I receive Christ in the Eucharist, I become what I consume. The divine nature nurtures humanity lifting it to be a resurrected state where death becomes no sting, no barrier, no last thing you think of before nothingness. Being a temple of the Holy Spirit, I keep this real presence, which is not me, but with whom I find my purpose and the meaning of being human, in my personal Arc of the Covenant, the tabernacle that holds my Ten Commands, the Mannah (Eucharist), signified by the unquenchable candle that signified the presence of Christ in me. I respect other humans as having an Arc of the Covenant but know them by their fruits. For Catholics, that means I wear the sign of the cross on my forehead, in humility I stand before the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and approach the Father with Thanksgiving, sharing that body and blood with the priest, the community as did the Israelites in the Thanksgiving sacrifice of the unblemished Lamb. I am a Christ-bearer, a Christopher, an adopted son (daughter) of the Father, one who has all the human foibles and failings of my human nature but has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, one which I am privileged to attend as I can. As a penitential Lay Cistercian, I don’t want to ever forget that if I let my guard down even one time, Satan slips in the gap to separate me from my intentions to do good. When that does happen, Christ’s real presence in the Sacrament of Reconciliation restores me to spiritual wholeness again. How many times will Christ do this for us? Seventy times seven times. With Christ all things are made new, or as St. Benedict says, “That in all things, may God be glorified.” God has not abandoned Israel and the contract to be their God, nor has Christ, who fulfilled the covenant to include the whole world, abandoned that same contract. Matthew 22:38. Christ, the Real Presence, is with us in the Eucharist, at Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, but also in the Arc of the Covenant in my heart.
• The great contradiction is why Jesus would entrust his body and blood, both divinity and human, sinless and without blemish, to his followers, all of whom were sinful, imperfect, and prone to the temptations of the flesh, the mind, and heart? It does not make sense that Christ would entrust his Church to Peter, weak, prone to want attention from Christ as a YES man, and who betrayed him not once but three times (the significant three), who was unbelieving up until his death, despite the overshadowing by the Holy Spirit. For me, personally, Christ chose me specifically to carry his body and blood, giving me Eucharist (the forgiveness of sins), sustaining me through Eucharist and Reconciliation,
• POST RESURRECTION JIDDERS ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS– Here are the words of those who lived in the time after the resurrection and what they had to say about the real presence of Christ in their lives. Listen with the ear of your heart.
• Next time you think it inconvenient for you that God asks for your presence at Eucharist, think about the price that the early believers paid. You can’t make this stuff up. Read for yourself and make your own conclusions. You have reason for a reason. http://www.newadvent.org
  • The Martyrdom of Justin
  • The martyrdom of the holy martyrs Justin, Chariton, Charites, Pæon, and Liberianus, who suffered at Rome
  • Chapter 1. Examination of Justin by the Prefect
  • In the time of the lawless partisans of idolatry, wicked decrees were passed against the godly Christians in town and country, to force them to offer libations to vain idols; and accordingly, the holy men, having been apprehended, were brought before the prefect of Rome, Rusticus by name. And when they had been brought before his judgment seat, said to Justin, Obey the gods at once, and submit to the kings. Justin said, To obey the commandments of our Saviour Jesus Christ is worthy neither of blame nor of condemnation. Rusticus the prefect said, What kind of doctrines do you profess? Justin said, I have endeavored to learn all doctrines; but I have acquiesced at last in the true doctrines, those namely of the Christians, even though they do not please those who hold false opinions. Rusticus the prefect said, Are those the doctrines that please you, you utterly wretched man? Justin said, Yes, since I adhere to them with the right dogma. Rusticus the prefect said, What is the dogma? Justin said, That according to which we worship the God of the Christians, whom we reckon to be one from the beginning, the maker and fashioner of the whole creation, visible and invisible; and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who had also been preached beforehand by the prophets as about to be present with the race of men, the herald of salvation and teacher of good disciples. And I, being a man, think that what I can say is insignificant in comparison with His boundless divinity, acknowledging a certain prophetic power, since it was prophesied concerning Him of whom now I say that He is the Son of God. For I know that of old the prophets foretold His appearance among men.
  • Chapter 2. Examination of Justin continued
  • Rusticus the prefect said, Where do you assemble? Justin said, Where each one chooses and can: for do you fancy that we all meet in the very same place? Not so; because the God of the Christians is not circumscribed by place; but being invisible, fills heaven and earth, and everywhere is worshipped and glorified by the faithful. Rusticus the prefect said, Tell me where you assemble, or into what place do you collect your followers? Justin said, I live above one Martinus, at the Timiotinian Bath; and during the whole time (and I am now living in Rome for the second time) I am unaware of any other meeting than his. And if anyone wished to come to me, I communicated to him the doctrines of truth. Rusticus said, Are you not, then, a Christian? Justin said, Yes, I am a Christian.
  • Chapter 3. Examination of Chariton and others
  • Then said the prefect Rusticus to Chariton, Tell me further, Chariton, are you also a Christian? Chariton said I am a Christian by the command of God. Rusticus the prefect asked the woman Charito, What say you, Charito? Charito said I am a Christian by the grace of God. Rusticus said to Euelpistus, And what are you? Euelpistus, a servant of Cæsar, answered, I too am a Christian, having been freed by Christ; and by the grace of Christ, I partake of the same hope. Rusticus the prefect said to Hierax, And you, are you a Christian? Hierax said, Yes, I am a Christian, for I revere and worship the same God. Rusticus the prefect said, Did Justin make you Christians? Hierax said, I was a Christian and will be a Christian. And Pæon stood up and said, I too am a Christian. Rusticus the prefect said, Who taught you? Pæon said, From our parents, we received this good confession. Euelpistus said, I willingly heard the words of Justin. But from my parents also I learned to be a Christian. Rusticus the prefect said, Where are your parents? Euelpistus said, In Cappadocia. Rusticus says to Hierax, Where are your parents? And he answered, and said, Christ is our true father and faith in Him is our mother; and my earthly parents died; and I, when I was driven from Iconium in Phrygia, came here. Rusticus the prefect said to Liberianus, And what say you? Are you a Christian, and unwilling to worship [the gods]? Liberianus said, I too am a Christian, for I worship and reverence the only true God.
  • Chapter 4. Rusticus threatens the Christians with death
  • The prefect says to Justin, Hearken, you who are called learned, and think that you know true doctrines; if you are scourged and beheaded, do you believe you will ascend into heaven? Justin said I hope that, if I endure these things, I shall have His gifts. For I know that, to all who have thus lived, there abides the divine favor until the completion of the whole world. Rusticus the prefect said, Do you suppose, then, that you will ascend into heaven to receive some recompense? Justin said, I do not suppose it, but I know and am fully persuaded of it. Rusticus the prefect said, Let us, then, now come to the matter in hand, and which presses. Having come together, offer sacrifice with one accord to the gods. Justin said, No right-thinking person falls away from piety to impiety. Rusticus the prefect said, Unless you obey, you shall be mercilessly punished. Justin said, Through prayer, we can be saved on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, even when we have been punished because this shall become to us salvation and confidence at the more fearful and universal judgment-seat of our Lord and Saviour. Thus also said the other martyrs: Do what you will, for we are Christians, and do not sacrifice to idols.
  • Chapter 5. The sentence pronounced and executed
  • Rusticus the prefect pronounced the sentence, saying, Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the command of the emperor be scourged, and led away to suffer the punishment of decapitation, according to the laws. The holy martyrs having glorified God, and having gone forth to the accustomed place, were beheaded and perfected their testimony in the confession of the Saviour. And some of the faithful having secretly removed their bodies laid them in a suitable place, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ having wrought along with them, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
  • About this page
  • Source. Translated by Marcus Dods. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0133.htm&gt;.
• BUTLER’S LIVES OF THE SAINTS — A great resource. One of my top five resources for Catholic Heritage. The Catholic Faith you possess was purchased by the blood of Christ on the cross, but it is sustained by the blood of the martyrs and by those of us still having to endure the martyrdom of original sin each day. The Church is built on the blood of martyrs, but I sustain it through my martyrdom of the ordinary, each day seeking God where I am, as I am.
• https://sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/index.htm
• JUSTIN MARTYR AND AN EMERGING FORM— The New Covenant did not abandon the Abrahamic Contract, the Mosaic Contract, but fulfilled it through The Christ Principle. The Word is now made flesh and dwells among us. But how can Jesus do that, if He is at the right hand of the Father? Again, as the movement of those that believed in the resurrection of Christ progressed through the years after Christ’s Ascension to the Father, the covenant or contract between humans took a new turn, one that took its roots in the Last Supper, the most significant event that the Apostles experienced with Christ, one amplified by the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. They came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, Son of the Living God and that Christ was present to them in the Eucharist just as real as they remembered Him to be while on earth. Flush with the new power from the Holy Spirit, they not only knew that they knew as human beings (citizens of the world) but realized way down deep that they were indeed adopted sons (daughters) of the Father and their calling was to live their lives without fear of the Jews, without fear of proclaiming that Jesus was Messiah to all that they met. The Bible had not been written yet and their only prescriptions were to keep the commands that Jesus gave them. Do this in memory of me. They did what they remembered Christ doing with them, the Last Supper, the Passover from death to life, They remembered that Jesus told them he was the bread of life and that anyone who ate his flesh and drink his blood would have Him in their temple of the Holy Spirit.
• THE EUCHARIST IS CORE TO WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FULLY HUMAN-– I am not of divine nature and will never be. I am of human nature, lifted up from my animal nature by the power of God’s love. With God’s energy and power of the Holy Spirit, I can ask to be present to the energy that makes me move from my animality to my humanity, and from my humanity to that of an adopted son (daughter) of the Holy Spirit. My Lay Cistercian Way dictates that each day, I convert the love of the world and my false self to my true self as an adopted son (daughter). I am a spiritual ape, one who is not worthy to have been selected for adoption but one who is grateful in each moment for the love of God. The word “grateful” means “thanksgiving” and this is the word for Eucharist. Eucharist is a moment in time, when we approach the Father through, with, and in Christ, with the power of the Holy Spirit to say, “I believe, help my unbelief. Thanks, Father.” But, I take the Eucharist into my Arc of the Covenant each day “to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again in glory,” I don’t have the power to move to this last phase of my evolution, intelligent progression, but being in the presence of Christ through many Lay Cistercian practices and using the charisms, abandoning my reliance of the world and its allurements that all this is so much poppycock.
• At the core of those who gathered together was the Eucharist, the event we call today the Mass, but which contains all the elements in each age for us to renew the covenant with the real Christ. Only Faith makes this possible not belief. Faith is the power from God made flesh in me as I partake in the energy of God, one made possible because Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. It is only when I die to my humanity, my false self, can I rise to the fullness of that humanity as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father. In, with, and through Christ alone my adoption is continuously maintained against the onslaughts of original sin and the seductions that beg me to revert to my false self. Galatians 5. It is a daily challenge and the reason we have Eucharist as our core prayer is not without a purpose. I need food to maintain my physical body and likewise need the food of Heaven (the real presence of Christ newed in my arc of the covenant) to fight against every encroaching mist of the ruler of the world (the great accuser), the one who wants us to remain as only citizens of the earth and not move to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father, as our nature intended. It is only my individual YES or NO that allows me to counter the NO of Adam and Eve with the YES of Mary in response to being given the option to carry humanity’s ransom for many in her heart to being made flesh through the power of the Holy Spirit.
• I am the nexus between God and humans when I realize, as did the Apostles, that I am a unique temple of the Holy Spirit and that I alone can say YES or NO to the unfathomable depths of meaning to my human contained when Christ and I meet in the Eucharist or in Eucharist Adoration and just be in each other’s presence in love. My behaviors betray what is at my center. My center, one that I alone can select, is Philippians 2:5, “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” This is my mantra, the Lectio in my Lectio Divina, what I wake up with each day and close at night. I sustain it only through Faith and the power of the Holy Spirit. Key to this is to place me, by an act of my will, in the presence of Christ each day through Cistercian practices (Eucharist, Eucharistic Adoration, Reading and Praying Scripture, Lectio Divina, the Liturgy of the Hours, and personal prayer that places me in that upper room of mine, (Matthe 6:5) seated on that couch, waiting to hear the heartbeat of Christ next to me and longing to sync my heartbeat with his. This change of paradigm in my spirituality from being centered on what makes me happy (although that is still part of who I am) to what I can do to place myself in the presence of Christ and just wait there, is difficult to master. I never will gain mastery but, having tasted the goodness of Christ, will sell all I have, and give up my free will knowing that this abandonment allows my humanity to lift itself up to the next level of my intelligent design, adoption. As part of that adoption, I am charged, as an individual, to keep the heritage passed down from the Apostles to me (the Church).
• This heritage is not passed down from us to the Apostles but rather comes down from the Apostles through the ages as a testament to our Faith together as Universal, Catholic, Apostolic, and One gathering of believers. Belief is the human response to the divine gift from our Father. Our adoption as sons and daughters means I must die to my selfishness and false self and choose something (someone) that is beyond what my reason and human experience tell me is possible. Belief of all those who have ever lived can’t create Faith. Faith creates belief. Faith comes from the Godhead through Christ alone but is distributed through you are me as we have the capacity to assimilate it into our life events. I am not you; you are not me; God is not us; we, most certainly are not God. Read your heritage and renew your Faith with Real Presence. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. This is from http://www.churchfathers.org.
  • What follows are quotes from various people who lived in the shadow of the Apostles. They comment on the Real Presence. Read them as signposts to point to your heritage.
  • IRENAEUS
  • “He took from among creation that which is bread, and gave thanks, saying, ‘This is my body.’ The cup likewise, which is from among the creation to which we belong, he confessed to be his blood. He taught the new sacrifice of the new covenant, of which Malachi, one of the twelve [minor] prophets, had signified beforehand: ‘You do not do my will, says the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice at your hands. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice; for great is my name among the Gentiles, says the Lord Almighty [Mal. 1:10–11]. By these words he makes it plain that the former people will cease to make offerings to God; but that in every place sacrifice will be offered to him, and indeed, a pure one, for his name is glorified among the Gentiles” (Against Heresies 4:17:5 [A.D. 189]).
  • “If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood?” (Against Heresies 4:33–32 [A.D. 189]).
  • “He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these, the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life—the flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is, in fact, a member of him?” (ibid., 5:2).
  • IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
  • “I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David; and for drink, I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible” (Letter to the Romans 7:3 [A.D. 110]).
  • “Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).
  • JUSTIN MARTYR
  • “We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus” (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151]).
  • CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
  • “’ Eat my flesh,’ [Jesus] says, ‘and drink my blood.’ The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children” (The Instructor of Children 1:6:43:3 [A.D. 191]).
  • TERTULLIAN
  • “[T]here is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believes whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed [in baptism], in order that the soul may be cleansed . . . the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands [in confirmation], that the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds [in the Eucharist] on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may be filled with God” (The Resurrection of the Dead 8 [A.D. 210]).
  • HIPPOLYTUS
  • “‘And she [Wisdom] has furnished her table’ [Prov. 9:2] . . . refers to his [Christ’s] honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day is administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual divine table, as a memorial of that first and ever-memorable table of the spiritual divine supper [i.e., the Last Supper]” (Fragment from Commentary on Proverbs [A.D. 217]).
  • ORIGEN
  • “Formerly there was baptism in an obscure way . . . now, however, in full view, there is regeneration in water and in the Holy Spirit. Formerly, in an obscure way, there was manna for food; now, however, in full view, there is the true food, the flesh of the Word of God, as he himself says: ‘My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink’ [John 6:55]” (Homilies on Numbers 7:2 [A.D. 248]).
  • “I wish to admonish you with examples from your religion. You are accustomed to taking part in the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so believe if any of it be lost through negligence.” (Homilies on Exodus 13:3 [A.D. 244])
  • CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE
  • “He [Paul] threatens, moreover, the stubborn and forward, and denounces them, saying, ‘Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. [1 Cor. 11:27]. All these warnings being scorned and contemned—lapsed Christians will often take Communion] before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offense of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, [and so] violence is done to his body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord” (The Lapsed 15–16 [A.D. 251]).
  • COUNCIL OF NICAEA I
  • “It has come to the knowledge of the holy and great synod that, in some districts and cities, the deacons administer the Eucharist to the presbyters [i.e., priests], whereas neither canon nor custom permits that they who have no right to offer [the Eucharistic sacrifice] should give the Body of Christ to them that do offer [it]” (Canon 18 [A.D. 325]).
  • APHRAAHAT THE PERSIAN SAGE
  • “What is this blood that Isaiah foresaw, if not the Messiah’s, which they took upon themselves and their children, and the blood of the prophets whom they slew? This is the blood that was red as scarlet and crimson, and it marked them. They can only be cleansed by ‘washing’ in the water of baptism, and partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. Blood is washed by Blood, and the body is cleansed by Body. Sins are washed away in water, and prayer converses with God’s majesty.” (Demonstration IV: On Prayer [A.D. 337])
  • “After having spoken thus [at the Last Supper], the Lord rose up from the place where he had made the Passover and had given his body as food and his blood as drink, and he went with his disciples to the place where he was to be arrested. But he ate of his own body and drank of his own blood, while he was pondering on the dead. With his own hands, the Lord presented his own body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood as drink” (Treatises 12:6 [A.D. 340]).
  • CYRIL OF JERUSALEM
  • “The bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ” (Catechetical Lectures 19:7 [A.D. 350]).
  • “Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by the faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the body and blood of Christ. . . . [Since you are] fully convinced that the apparent bread is not bread, even though it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and that the apparent wine is not wine, even though the taste would have it so, . . . partake of that bread as something spiritual, and put a cheerful face on your soul” (ibid., 22:6, 9).
  • AMBROSE OF MILAN
  • “Perhaps you may be saying, ‘I see something else; how can you assure me that I am receiving the body of Christ?’ It remains for us to prove it. And how many examples we might use! Christ is in that sacrament because it is the body of Christ” (The Mysteries 9:50, 58 [A.D. 390]).
  • THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA
  • “When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my body,’ but, ‘This is my body.’ In the same way, when he gave the cup of his blood he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my blood,’ but, ‘This is my blood’; for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements] after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit not according to their nature, but receive them as they are, the body and blood of our Lord. We ought . . . not regard [the elements] merely as bread and cup, but as the body and blood of the Lord, into which they were transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit” (Catechetical Homilies 5:1 [A.D. 405]).
  • AUGUSTINE
  • “Christ was carried in his own hands when referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’ [Matt. 26:26]. For he carried that body in his hands” (Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).
  • “I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ” (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).
  • “What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction” (ibid., 272).
  • COUNCIL OF EPHESUS
  • “We will necessarily add this also. Proclaiming the death, according to the flesh, of the only-begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, confessing his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, we offer the unbloody sacrifice in the churches, and so go on to the mystical thanksgivings, and are sanctified, having received his holy flesh and the precious blood of Christ the Savior of us all. And not as common flesh do we receive it; God forbid: nor as of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of worth, or as having a divine indwelling, but as truly the life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself. For he is the life according to his nature as God, and when he became united to his flesh, he made it also to be life-giving” (Session 1, Letter of Cyril to Nestorius [A.D. 431]).
• We are blessed to have been blessed with the bread of life. God gives us what we need, Faith, to meet the contingencies of living in the world but not being of it.
• IF THERE IS NO RESURRECTION THERE CAN BE NO REAL PRESENCE IN THE EUCHARIST. If we believe in the redemptive act of love by Christ to become a ransom for the many, then Eucharist makes sense. Not even Jesus could penetrate the wall of people’s belief. He could not work miracles among people because of their lack of faith. Think about that for a moment. Faith is the overshadowing of pure knowledge, pure love, and pure service, the real presence of God in Heaven here on earth. But, like other human conditions of nature, I must give my assent that God can do what He says before there is a connection between God’s energy (Faith) and my accessing it (Belief). The tricky part of the Faith/Belief conundrum is that Faith is always available to me if I choose to ask for it. Choosing to ask for Faith from God requires humility and an emptying (the kenosis of Philippians 2:5-12, the abandonment lived out by St. Charles de Foucault) of my will to realize that God is the source of the Way, the Truth, and therefore, the Life. Faith is the life of God present to me; Belief is my presence that says, “Be it done unto me according to your word.” Atheists, Agnostics, and Catholics who are tourists or socially encumbered but don’t believe in the real presence, not only DON’T believe in the real presence (or the reality of the Resurrection) but CAN’T. It is not that they are not intelligent enough or even capable, they just don’t think it is real. For the real presence to be real, it must be real for me, not that my belief makes Christ’s presence in the transubstantiated bread and wine. Read that last sentence again. Faith doesn’t depend on our Belief to be true, but it is not true for me until I say, “Jesus is Lord, in humility and abandonment of my false self). Ironically, the only way for me to access this Way is by freely giving up my will, so that I gain what it means to be fully human as an adopted son (daughter) and also the privilege of being aware of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In fulfillment of both the Old Testament and New Testament covenant, Eucharist means Jesus and I (and the community of like believers) can approach but only approach the Father. Like Chapter 17 of John’s Gospel, Jesus puts his arms around all of us and tells the Father that we are His friends. God then overshadows us forever in an embrace that finally allows all humans to reach their destiny as nature intended. Mary was a type of this archetype of fulfillment, showing us HOW to take Christ into our hearts and follow the Way to the Truth, and thus live the LIFE for which we were originally destined before the Fall.
• I AM THE ULTIMATE TABERNACLE AND TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT THAT HOLDS THE ARC OF THE COVENANT. Over and over, I repeat the words of a penitent Lay Cistercian, those that culminate when I receive the Eucharist, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, say but the word and my soul will be healed.” The Mystery of Faith, one which I appreciate more and more each day but one which still baffles me, is why God who needs nothing to be perfectly divine, needs me, a constant yo-yo of a person in my belief, to be a friend? And more than that, why would he adopt me as a son (daughter) of the Father and heir to a kingdom that is beyond anything I could ever deserve? God is the template for what makes humans achieve their highest potential (The Blessed Mother is our type or example of how much God loves us so much that he redeemed us from our own corruption of mind and matter (original sin) and gave us what we could never deserve or have the energy to achieve, the fulness of what it means to be human. When I look back at my life, or even look at how imperfect I am each day, the only way for me to activate my temple of the Holy Spirit is for me to constantly and consistently seek the one I long for and who makes me fully human. When the priest confects the wafer of bread and the wine into the transubstantiated Christ, present in this world, he puts the remnants into the Tabernacle as did the ancient Israelites who carried the Ten Commandments and the man nuh in the Arc. As the late Father Aidan Kavanaugh, O.S.B., Liturgist, taught me way back in 1963 at St. Meinrad School of Theology, the Eucharist is the pinnacle of love and relationship, the defining moment of our expression in the Liturgy. It is not that divinity touches humanity, as seen in the Sistine Chapel, but that divinity humbles itself (Philippians 2:5-12) to take up residence in me, the broken-down, old, temple of the Holy Spirit, within the arc of my covenant. The genius of Christ is that being human like us in all things but sin, His succession plan is a series of “you and me” called the Church, through which he is made present in each age, and if I am aware each day. Matthew 25 tells of our requirement to take care of others as we can, to love others as Christ loved us. In each age, indeed within each person, is that propagation of the species that is spiritual, and not just physical and mental. I hold the real presence of Christ. I am not the real presence, but, like the Arc of the Covenant, I use the presence of Christ to enhance the flip-flops of my human behavior to keep coming back to my center (Philippians 2:5). The Church Universal becomes the sustaining flow from Christ to me where I am assured that there is a resurrection because that Faith is the same one where Christ said to all humans, “Love others as I have loved you.” That love is made present by me through, with, and in Christ Jesus, to the glory of the Father.” I am the temple of the Holy Spirit, broken and cracked though I am. I offer my will, therefore, to say “Thank you,” to the Father made present as I receive the Eucharist, as I sit in silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, as I reconfirm my Baptism each day by offering my will to the Father and asking for mercy on this unworthy one. By praying for the living and the dead on Thanksgiving that Christ is the ransom for many every moment of every day. By giving thanks to the Father for the gift of adoption and sustaining power of the resurrection from my Lectio Divina, my meditative Rosary, my sitting at the feet of Christ as just waiting to hear his heartbeat so that I can attempt to sync my own with His Sacred Heart. This is the folly of the cross, the sign of contradiction that my worldly self struggles to overcome my spiritual, Baptismal self. The struggle itself is my prayer, that this innocuous fairy tale of love is contained within me in my arc of the covenant for me to keep safe and to nourish me with the bread of life and the laws of what it means to be fully human as nature intended.

Christ knows what I need to be saved from my own pride and jealousy of others on a daily basis. Christ gave those who love Him and carry the mark of the cross on their foreheads, and to eat the bread of Life, His very self so that I can rise to the newness of life each day. It is not an abstract remembrance but the actual Jesus. When I am in my Lay Cistercian Practices and realize what is going on, I am so humbled as I read these lines from St. Benedict’s Rule: RB 4:10-19.

20 Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way;
21 the love of Christ must come before all else.
22 You are not to act in anger
23 or nurse a grudge.
24 Rid your heart of all deceit.
25 Never give a hollow greeting of peace
26 or turn away when someone needs your love.
27 Bind yourself to no oath lest it proves false,
28 but speak the truth with heart and tongue.

Eucharist, the Real Presence, allows me as a Lay Cistercian to be aware of the scope of this dynamic that is just beneath the surface of what I can see, and then to become what I seek. I read Chapter 4 each day and encourage you to do so.