|
|
The
Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
In this
article we shall consider:
-
the fact of the Real Presence, which is, indeed, the central
dogma;
-
the
several allied dogmas grouped about it, namely:
-
the speculations of reason, so far as speculative
investigation regarding the august mystery under its various aspects is
permissible, and so far as it is desirable to illumine it by the light of
philosophy.
I. THE REAL PRESENCE
AS A FACT
According to the teaching
of theology a
revealed fact can be
proved solely by recurrence to the sources of
faith, viz.
Scripture and
Tradition, with which
is also bound up the
infallible magisterium
of the Church.
A. Proof from
Scripture
This may be adduced both
from the words of promise (John 6:26 sqq.) and, especially, from the words of
Institution as recorded in the
Synoptics and
St. Paul (I Cor. 11:23
sqq.).
The words of promise
(John 6)
By the
miracles of the loaves
and fishes and the walking upon the waters, on the previous day,
Christ not only
prepared His hearers for the sublime discourse containing the promise of the
Eucharist, but also
proved to them that He possessed, as Almighty God-man, a power superior to and
independent of the laws of nature, and could, therefore, provide such a
supernatural food, none other, in fact, than His own Flesh and Blood. This
discourse was delivered at Capharnaum (John 6:26-72), and is divided into two
distinct parts, about the relation of which Catholic exegetes vary in opinion.
Nothing hinders our interpreting the first part [John 6:26-48 (51)]
metaphorically and understanding by "bread of heaven" Christ Himself as the
object of faith, to be received in a figurative sense as a spiritual food by the
mouth of faith. Such a figurative explanation of the second part of the
discourse (John, vi, 52-72), however, is not only unusual but absolutely
impossible, as even
Protestant exegetes (Delitzsch, Kostlin, Keil, Kahnis, and others) readily
concede. First of all the whole structure of the discourse of promise demands a
literal interpretation of the words: "eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink
his blood". For Christ mentions a threefold food in His address, the
manna of the past (John
6:31, 32, 49, 59), the heavenly bread of the present (John 6:32 sq.), and the
Bread of Life of the future (John 6:27, 52). Corresponding to the three kinds of
food and the three periods, there are as many dispensers Moses dispensing the
manna, the Father
nourishing man's faith in the
Son of God made flesh,
finally Christ giving His own-Flesh and Blood. Although the
manna, a
type of the
Eucharist, was indeed
eaten with the mouth, it could not, being a transitory food, ward off death. The
second food, that offered by the Heavenly Father, is the bread of heaven, which
He dispenses hic et nunc to the Jews for their spiritual nourishment,
inasmuch as by reason of the Incarnation He holds up His Son to them as the
object of their faith. If, however, the third kind of food, which Christ Himself
promises to give only at a future time, is a new refection, differing from the
last-named food of faith, it can be none other than His true Flesh and Blood, to
be really eaten and drunk in
Holy Communion. This is
why Christ was so ready to use the realistic expression "to chew" (John 6:54,
56, 58: trogein) when speaking of this, His Bread of Life, in addition to
the phrase, "to eat" (John 6:51, 53: phagein).
Cardinal Bellarmine (De
Euchar., I, 3), moreover, calls attention to the fact, and rightly so, that if
in Christ's mind the
manna was a figure of
the Eucharist, the
latter must have been something more than merely blessed bread, as otherwise the
prototype would not substantially excel the
type. The same holds
true of the other figures of the
Eucharist, as the bread
and wine offered by
Melchisedech, the
loaves of proposition (panes propositionis), the
paschal lamb. The
impossibility of a figurative interpretation is brought home more forcibly by an
analysis of the following text: "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last
day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed" (John 6:54-56).
It is true that even among the Semites, and in Scripture itself, the phrase, "to
eat some one's flesh", has a figurative meaning, namely, "to persecute, to
bitterly hate some one". If, then, the words of
Jesus are to be taken
figuratively, it would appear that Christ had promised to His enemies eternal
life and a glorious
resurrection in recompense for the injuries and persecutions directed
against Him. The other phrase, "to drink some one's blood", in Scripture,
especially, has no other figurative meaning than that of dire chastisement (cf.
Isaias 49:26; Apocalypse 16:6); but, in the present text, this interpretation is
just as impossible here as in the phrase, "to eat some one's flesh".
Consequently, eating and drinking are to be understood of the actual partaking
of Christ in person, hence literally.
This interpretation
agrees perfectly with the conduct of the hearers and the attitude of Christ
regarding their doubts and objections. Again, the murmuring of the Jews is the
clearest evidence that they had understood the preceding words of
Jesus literally (John
6:53). Yet far from repudiating this construction as a gross misunderstanding,
Christ repeated them in a most solemn manner, in John (6:54 sqq.). In
consequence, many of His Disciples were
scandalized and said:
"This saying is hard, and who can hear it?" (John 6:61); but instead of
retracting what He had said, Christ rather reproached them for their want of
faith, by alluding to His sublimer origin and His future
Ascension into heaven.
And without further ado He allowed these Disciples to go their way (John 6:62
sqq.). Finally He turned to His twelve Apostles with the question: "Will you
also go away?
Then Peter stepped forth
and with humble faith replied: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words
of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ,
the Son of God" (John
6:68 sqq.). The entire scene of the discourse and murmurings against it proves
that the Zwinglian and
Anglican interpretation of the passage, "It is the spirit that quickeneth",
etc., in the sense of a glossing over or retractation, is wholly inadmissible.
For in spite of these words the Disciples severed their connection with
Jesus, while the Twelve
accepted with simple faith a mystery which as yet they did not understand. Nor
did Christ say: "My flesh is spirit", i.e. to be understood in a figurative
sense, but: "My words are spirit and life". There are two views regarding the
sense in which this text is to be interpreted. Many of the Fathers declare that
the true Flesh of Jesus
(sarx) is not to be understood as separated from His Divinity (spiritus),
and hence not in a cannibalistic sense, but as belonging entirely to the
supernatural economy. The second and more scientific explanation asserts that in
the Scriptural opposition of "flesh and blood" to "spirit", the former always
signifies carnal-mindedness, the latter mental perception illumined by faith, so
that it was the intention of
Jesus in this passage
to give prominence to the fact that the sublime mystery of the
Eucharist can be
grasped in the light of supernatural faith alone, whereas it cannot be
understood by the carnal-minded, who are weighed down under the burden of sin.
Under such circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the Fathers and
several Ecumenical councils (Ephesus,
431; Nicęa, 787)
adopted the literal sense of the words, though it was not dogmatically defined
(cf. Council of Trent, Sess. XXI, c. i). If it be true that a few Catholic
theologians (as Cajetan, Ruardus Tapper, Johann Hessel, and the elder Jansenius)
preferred the figurative interpretation, it was merely for controversial
reasons, because in their perplexity they imagined that otherwise the claims of
the Hussite and Protestant
Utraquists for the partaking of the Chalice by the laity could not be answered
by argument from Scripture. (Cf. Patrizi, "De Christo pane vitę", Rome, 1851;
Schmitt, "Die Verheissung der Eucharistie bei den Vütern", 2 vols., Würzburg,
1900-03.)
The words of
Institution
The Church's Magna
Charta, however, are the words of Institution, "This is my body this is my
blood", whose literal meaning she has uninterruptedly adhered to from the
earliest times. The Real Presence is evinced, positively, by showing the
necessity of the literal sense of these words, and negatively, by refuting the
figurative interpretations. As regards the first, the very existence of four
distinct narratives of the Last Supper, divided usually into the Petrine
(Matthew 26:26 sqq.; Mark 14:22 sqq.) and the double
Pauline accounts (Luke
22:19 sq.; I Cor. 11:24 sq.), favors the literal interpretation. In spite of
their striking unanimity as regards essentials, the Petrine account is simpler
and clearer, whereas
Pauline is richer in additional details and more involved in its citation of
the words that refer to the Chalice. It is but natural and justifiable to expect
that, when four different narrators in different countries and at different
times relate the words of Institution to different circles of readers, the
occurrence of an unusual figure of speech, as, for instance, that bread is a
sign of Christ's Body,
would, somewhere or other, betray itself, either in the difference of
word-setting, or in the unequivocal expression of the meaning really intended,
or at least in the addition of some such mark as: "He spoke, however, of the
sign of His Body." But nowhere do we discover the slightest ground for a
figurative interpretation. If, then, natural, literal interpretation were false,
the Scriptural record alone would have to be considered as the cause of a
pernicious error in faith and of the grievous crime of rendering Divine homage
to bread (artolatria) a supposition little in harmony with the
character of the four Sacred Writers or with the inspiration of the Sacred Text.
Moreover, we must not omit the important circumstance, that one of the four
narrators has interpreted his own account literally. This is
St. Paul (I Cor. 11:27
sq.), who, in the most vigorous language, brands the unworthy recipient as
"guilty of body and of the blood of the Lord". There can be no question of a
grievous offense against Christ Himself unless we suppose that the true Body and
the true Blood of Christ are really present in the
Eucharist. Further, if
we attend only to the words themselves their natural sense is so forceful and
clear that Luther wrote
to the Christians of
Strasburg in 1524: "I am caught, I cannot escape, the text is too forcible" (De
Wette, II, 577). The necessity of the natural sense is not based upon the absurd
assumption that Christ could not in general have resorted to use of figures, but
upon the evident requirement of the case, which demand that He did not, in a
matter of such paramount importance, have recourse to meaningless and deceptive
metaphors. For figures enhance the clearness of speech only when the figurative
meaning is obvious, either from the nature of the case (e.g. from a reference to
a statue of Lincoln, by saying: "This is Lincoln") or from the usages of common
parlance (e.g. in the case of this synecdoche: "This glass is wine"), Now,
neither from the nature of the case nor in common parlance is bread an apt or
possible symbol of the human body. Were one to say of a piece of bread: "This is
Napoleon", he would not
be using a figure, but uttering nonsense. There is but one means of rendering a
symbol improperly so called clear and intelligible, namely, by, conventionally
settling beforehand what it is to signify, as, for instance, if one were to say:
"Let us imagine these two pieces of bread before us to be Socrates and Plato".
Christ, however, instead of informing His Apostles that he intended to use such
a figure, told them rather the contrary in the discourse containing the promise:
"the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world" (John
6:52), Such language, of course, could be used only by a God-man; so that belief
in the Real Presence necessarily presupposes belief in the true Divinity of
Christ, The foregoing rules would of themselves establish the natural meaning
with certainty, even if the words of Institution, "This is my body this is my
blood", stood alone, But in the original text corpus (body) and
sanguis (blood) are followed by significant appositional additions,
the Body being designated as "given for you" and the Blood as "shed for you
[many]"; hence the Body given to the Apostles was the self same Body that was
crucified on Good Friday,
and the Chalice drunk by them, the self same Blood that was shed on the Cross
for our sins, Therefore the above-mentioned appositional phrases directly
exclude every possibility of a figurative interpretation.
We reach the same
conclusion from a consideration of the concomitant circumstances, taking into
account both the hearers and the Institutor, Those who heard the words of
Institution were not learned Rationalists, possessed of the critical equipment
that would enable them, as philologists and logicians, to analyze an obscure and
mysterious phraseology; they were simple, uneducated fishermen, from the
ordinary ranks of the people, who with childlike naļveté hung upon the
words of their Master and with deep faith accepted whatever He proposed to them,
This childlike disposition had to be reckoned with by Christ, particularly on
the eve of His Passion and Death, when He made His last will and testament and
spoke as a dying father to His deeply afflicted children. In such a moment of
awful solemnity, the only appropriate mode of speech would be one which,
stripped of unintelligible figures, made use of words corresponding exactly to
the meaning to be conveyed. It must be remembered, also, that Christ as
omniscient God-man, must have foreseen the shameful error into which He would
have led His Apostles and His Church by adopting an unheard-of metaphor; for the
Church down to the present day appeals to the words of Christ in her teaching
and practice. If then she practices idolatry by the adoration of mere bread and
wine, this crime must be laid to the charge of the
God-man Himself.
Besides this, Christ intended to institute the
Eucharist as a most
holy sacrament, to be solemnly celebrated in the Church even to the end of time.
But the content and the constituent parts of a sacrament had to be stated with
such clearness of terminology as to exclude categorically every error in liturgy
and worship. As may be gathered from the words of consecration of the Chalice,
Christ established the New Testament in His Blood, just as the Old Testament had
been established in the typical blood of animals (cf, Ex., xxiv, 8; Heb., ix, 11
sqq,). With the true instinct of justice, jurists prescribe that in all
debatable points the words of a will must be taken in their natural, literal
sense; for they are led by the correct conviction, that every testator of sound
mind, in drawing up his last will and testament, is deeply concerned to have it
done in language at once clear and unencumbered by meaningless metaphors. Now,
Christ, according to the literal purport of His testament, has left us as a
precious legacy, not mere bread and wine, but His Body and Blood. Are we
justified, then, in contradicting Him to His face and exclaiming: "No, this is
not your Body, but mere bread, the sign of your Body!"
The refutation of the
so-called Sacramentarians, a name given by
Luther to those who
oppmpossibility of a figurative meaning. Once the manifest literal sense is
abandoned, occasion is given to interminable controversies about the meaning of
an enigma which Christ supposedly offered His followers for solution. There were
no limits to the dispute in the sixteenth century, for at that time Christopher
Rasperger wrote a whole book on some 200 different interpretations: "Ducentę
verborum, 'Hoc est corpus meum' interpretationes" (Ingolstadt, 1577). In this
connection we must restrict ourselves to an examination of the most current and
widely known distortions of the literal sense, which were the butt of
Luther's bitter
ridicule even as early as 1527. The first group of interpreters, with Zwingli,
discovers a figure in the copula est and renders it: "This signifies (est =
significat) my Body". In proof of this interpretation, examples are quoted
from scripture, as: "The seven kine are seven years" (Gen., xli, 26) or: "Sara
and Agar are the two covenants" (Gal., iv, 24), Waiving the question whether the
verb "to be" (esse, einai) of itself can ever be used as the "copula in a
figurative relation" (Weiss) or express the "relation of identity in a
metaphorical connection" (Heinrici), which most logicians deny, the fundamental
principles of logic firmly establish this truth, that all propositions may be
divided into two great categories, of which the first and most comprehensive
denominates a thing as it is in itself (e.g. "Man is a rational being"), whereas
the second designates a thing according as it is used as a sign of something
else (e.g, "This picture is my father"). To determine whether a speaker intends
the second manner of expression, there are four criteria, whose joint
concurrence alone will allow the verb "to be" to have the meaning of "signify".
Abstracting from the three criteria, mentioned above, which have reference
either to the nature of the case, or to the usages of common parlance, or to
some convention previously agreed upon, there remains a fourth and last of
decisive significance, namely: when a complete substance is predicated of
another complete substance, there can exist no logical relation of identity
between them, but only the relation of similarity, inasmuch as the first is an
image, sign, symbol, of the other. Now this last-named criterion is inapplicable
to the Scriptural examples brought forward by the Zwinglians, and especially so
in regard to their interpretation of the words of Institution; for the words are
not: "This bread is my Body", but indefinitely: "This is my Body". In the
history of the Zwinglian conception of the Lord's Supper, certain "sacramental
expressions" (locutiones sacramentales) of the Sacred Text, regarded as
parallelisms of the words of Institution, have attracted considerable attention.
The first is to be found in I Cor. 10:4: "And the rock was [signified] Christ",
Yet it is evident that, if the subject rock is taken in its material sense, the
metaphor, according to the fourth criterion just mentioned, is as apparent as in
the analogous phrase "Christ is the vine". If, however, the word rock in
this passage is stripped of all that is material, it may be understood in a
spiritual sense, because the Apostle himself is speaking of that "spiritual
rock" (petra spiritalis), which in the Person of the Word in an invisible
manner ever accompanied the Israelites in their journeyings and supplied them
with a spiritual fountain of waters. According to this explanation the copula
would here retain its meaning "to be". A nearer approach to a parallel with the
words of Institution is found apparently in the so-called "sacramental
expressions": "Hoc est pactum meum" (Gen., xvii, 10), and "est enim Phase Domini"
(Ex., xii, 11). It is well known how Zwingli by a clever manipulation of the
latter phrase succeeded in one day in winning over to his interpretation the
entire Catholic population of Zurich. And yet it is clear that no parallelism
can be discerned between the aforesaid expressions and the words of Institution;
no real parallelism, because there is question of entirely different matters.
Not even a verbal parallelism can be pointed out, since in both texts of the Old
Testament the subject is a ceremony (circumcision in the first case, and the
rite of the paschal lamb in the second), while the predicate involves a mere
abstraction (covenant, Passover of the Lord). A more weighty consideration is
this, that on closer investigation the copula est will be found to retain its
proper meaning of "is" rather than "signifies". For just as the circumcision not
only signified the nature or object of the Divine covenant, but really was such,
so the rite of the Paschal lamb was really the Passover (Phase) or Pasch,
instead of its mere representation. It is true that in certain
Anglican circles it was
formerly the custom to appeal to the supposed poverty of the Aramaic tongue,
which was spoken by Christ in the company of His Apostles; for it was maintained
that no word could be found in this language corresponding to the concept "to
signify". Yet, even prescinding from the fact that in the Aramaic tongue the
copula est is usually omitted and that such an omission rather makes for its
strict meaning of "to be",
Cardinal Wiseman (Horę Syriacę, Rome, 1828, pp. 3-73) succeeded in producing
no less than forty Syriac expressions conveying the meaning of "to signify" and
thus effectually exploded the myth of the Semitic tongue's limited vocabulary.
A second group of
Sacramentarians, with Oecolampadius, shifted the diligently sought-for metaphor
to the concept contained in the predicate corpus, giving to the latter
the sense of "signum corporis", so that the words of Institution were to be
rendered: "This is a sign [symbol, image, type] of my Body". Essentially
tallying with the Zwinglian interpretation, this new meaning is equally
untenable. In all the languages of the world the expression "my body" designates
a person's natural body, not the mere sign or symbol of that body. True it is
that the Scriptural words "Body of Christ" not infrequently have the meaning of
"Church", which is called the mystical Body of Christ, a figure easily and
always discernible as such from the text or context (cf. Col., i, 24). This
mystical sense, however, is impossible in the words of Institution, for the
simple reason that Christ did not give the Apostles His Church to eat, but His
Body, and that "body and blood", by reason of their real and logical
association, cannot be separated from one another, and hence are all the less
susceptible of a figurative use. The case would be different if the reading
were: "This is the bread of my Body, the wine of my Blood". In order to prove at
least this much, that the contents of the Chalice are merely wine and,
consequently, a mere sign of the Blood,
Protestants have
recourse to the text of St. Matthew, who relates that Christ, after the
completion of the Last Supper, declared: "I will not drink from henceforth of
this fruit of the vine [genimen vitis]" (Matt 26:29). It is to be noted
that St. Luke (22:18 sqq.), who is chronologically more exact, places these
words of Christ before his account of the Institution, and that the true Blood
of Christ may with right still be called (consecrated) wine, on the one hand,
because the Blood was partaken of after the manner in which wine is drunk and,
on the other, because the Blood continues to exist under the outward appearances
of the wine. In its multifarious wanderings from the old beaten path being
consistently forced with the denial of
Christ's Divinity to
abandon faith in the Real Presence, also, modern criticism seeks to account for
the text along other lines. With utter arbitrariness, doubting whether the words
of Institution originated from the mouth of Christ, it traces them to
St. Paul as their
author, in whose ardent soul something original supposedly mingled with his
subjective reflections on the value attached to "Body" and on the "repetition of
the Eucharistic
banquet". From this troubled fountain-head the words of Institution first found
their way into the Gospel of St, Luke and then, by way of addition, were woven
into the texts of St. Matthew and St. Mark. It stands to reason that the latter
assertion is nothing more than a wholly unwarrantable conjecture, which may be
passed over as gratuitously as it was advanced. It is, moreover, essentially
untrue that the value attached to the Sacrifice and the repetition of the Lord's
Supper are mere reflections of
St. Paul, since Christ
attached a sacrificial value to His Death (cf. Mark 10:45) and celebrated His
Eucharistic Supper in
connection with the Jewish Passover, which itself had to be repeated every year.
As regards the interpretation of the words of Institution, there are at present
three modern explanations contending for supremacy the symbolical, the
parabolical, and the eschatological. According to the symbolical interpretation,
corpus is supposed to designate the Church as the mystical Body and
sanguis the New Testament. We have already rejected this last meaning as
impossible. For is it the Church that is eaten and the New Testament that is
drunk? Did St. Paul
brand the partaking of the Church and of the New Testament as a heinous offense
committed against the Body and Blood of Christ? The case is not much better in
regard to the parabolical interpretation, which would discern in the pouring out
of the wine a mere parable of the shedding of the Blood on the Cross. This again
is a purely arbitrary explanation, an invention, unsupported by any objective
foundation. Then, too, it would follow from analogy, that the breaking of the
bread was a parable of the slaying of
Christ's Body, a
meaning utterly inconceivable. Rising as it were out of a dense fog and laboring
to take on a definite form, the incomplete eschatological explanation would make
the Eucharist a mere
anticipation of the future heavenly banquet. Supposing the truth of the Real
Presence, this consideration might be open to discussion, inasmuch as the
partaking of the Bread of Angels is really the foretaste of eternal beatitude
and the anticipated transformation of earth into heaven. But as implying mere
symbolical anticipation of heaven and a meaningless manipulation of
unconsecrated bread and wine the eschatological interpretation is diametrically
opposed to the text and finds not the slightest support in the life and
character of Christ.
B. Proof from
Tradition
As for the cogency of the
argument from tradition, this historical fact is of decided significance,
namely, that the dogma of the Real Presence remained, properly speaking,
unmolested down to the time of the heretic
Berengarius of Tours
(d. 1088), and so could claim even at that time the uninterrupted possession of
ten centuries. In the course of the dogma's history there arose in general three
great Eucharistic
controversies, the first of which, begun by Paschasius Radbertus, in the ninth
century, scarcely extended beyond the limits of his audience and concerned
itself solely with the philosophical question, whether the
Eucharistic Body of
Christ is identical with the natural Body He had in Palestine and now has in
heaven. Such a numerical identity could well have been denied by
Ratramnus,
Rabanus Maurus,
Ratherius,
Lanfranc, and others,
since even nowadays a true, though accidental, distinction between the
sacramental and the natural condition of
Christ's Body must be
rigorously maintained. The first occasion for an official procedure on the part
of the Church was offered when
Berengarius of Tours,
influenced by the writings of
Scotus Eriugena (d.
about 884), the first opponent of the Real Presence, rejected both the latter
truth and that of Transubstantiation. He repaired, however, the
public scandal he had
given by a sincere retractation made in the presence of
Pope Gregory VII at a
synod held in Rome in 1079, and died reconciled to the Church. The third and the
sharpest controversy was that opened by the Reformation in the sixteenth
century, in regard to which it must be remarked that
Luther was the only one
among the Reformers who still clung to the old Catholic doctrine, and, though
subjecting it to manifold misrepresentations, defended it most tenaciously. He
was diametrically opposed by Zwingli of Zurich, who, as was seen above, reduced
the Eucharist to an
empty, meaningless symbol. Having gained over to his views such friendly
contemporary partisans as Carlstadt, Bucer, and Oecolampadius, he later on
secured influential allies in the Arminians, Mennonites, Socinians, and
Anglicans, and even
today the rationalistic conception of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper does not
differ substantially from that of the Zwinglians. In the meantime, at Geneva,
Calvin was cleverly
seeking to bring about a compromise between the extremes of the
Lutheran literal and
the Zwinglian figurative interpretations, by suggesting instead of the
substantial presence in one case or the merely symbolical in the other, a
certain mean, i.e. "dynamic", presence, which consists essentially in this, that
at the moment of reception, the efficacy of
Christ's Body and Blood
is communicated from heaven to the souls of the predestined and spiritually
nourishes them. Thanks to Melanchthon's pernicious and dishonest double-dealing,
this attractive intermediary position of
Calvin made such an
impression even in Lutheran
circles that it was not until the Formula of Concord in 1577 that the
"crypto-Calvinistic venom" was successfully rejected from the body of
Lutheran doctrine. The
Council of Trent met
these widely divergent errors of the Reformation with the dogmatic definition,
that the God-man is
"truly, really, and substantially" present under the appearances of bread and
wine, purposely intending thereby to oppose the expression vere to
Zwingli's signum, realiter to Oecolampadius's figura, and
essentialiter to
Calvin's virtus (Sess. XIII, can. i). And this teaching of the
Council of Trent has
ever been and is now the unwavering position of the whole of Catholic
Christendom.
As regards the doctrine
of the Fathers, it is not possible in the present article to multiply patristic
texts, which are usually characterized by wonderful beauty and clearness.
Suffice it to say that, besides the
Didache (ix, x, xiv),
the most ancient Fathers, as
Ignatius (Ad. Smyrn.,
vii; Ad. Ephes., xx; Ad. Philad., iv),
Justin (Apol., I, lxvi),
Irenęus (Adv. Hęr., IV, xvii, 5; IV, xviii, 4; V, ii, 2),
Tertullian (De
resurrect. carn., viii; De pudic., ix; De orat., xix; De bapt., xvi), and
Cyprian (De orat. dom.,
xviii; De lapsis, xvi), attest without the slightest shadow of a
misunderstanding what is the faith of the Church, while later patristic theology
bears witness to the dogma in terms that approach exaggeration, as
Gregory of Nyssa (Orat.
catech., xxxvii), Cyril of
Jerusalem (Catech. myst., iv, 2 sqq.), and especially the Doctor of the
Eucharist,
Chrysostom [Hom. lxxxii
(lxxxiii), in Matt., 1 sqq.; Hom. xlvi, in Joan., 2 sqq.; Hom. xxiv, in I Cor.,
1 sqq.; Hom. ix, de pnit., 1], to whom may be added the Latin Fathers, Hilary
(De Trinit., VIII, iv, 13) and Ambrose (De myst., viii, 49; ix, 51 sq.).
Concerning the Syriac Fathers see Th. Lamy "De Syrorum fide in re eucharisticā"
(Louvain, 1859).
The position held by St.
Augustine is at present the subject of a spirited controversy, since the
adversaries of the Church rather confidently maintain that he favored their side
of the question in that he was an out-and-out "Symbolist". In the opinion of
Loofs ("Dogmengeschichte", 4th ed., Halle, 1906, p. 409), St. Augustine never
gives, the "reception of the true Body and Blood of Christ" a thought; and this
view Ad. Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., Freiburg, 1897, III, 148)
emphasizes when he declares that St. Augustine "undoubtedly was one in this
respect with the so-called pre-Reformation and with Zwingli". Against this
rather hasty conclusion Catholics first of all advance the undoubted fact that
Augustine demanded that Divine worship should be rendered to the
Eucharistic Flesh (In
Ps. xxxiii, enarr., i, 10), and declared that at the Last Supper "Christ held
and carried Himself in His own hands" (In Ps. xcviii, n. 9). They insist, and
rightly so, that it is not fair to separate this great Doctor's teaching
concerning the Eucharist
from his doctrine of the Holy Sacrifice, since he clearly and unmistakably
asserts that the true Body and Blood are offered in the Holy Mass. The variety
of extreme views just mentioned requires that an attempt be made at a reasonable
and unbiased explanation, whose verification is to be sought for and found in
the acknowledged fact that a gradual process of development took place in the
mind of St. Augustine. No one will deny that certain expressions occur in
Augustine as forcibly realistic as those of
Tertullian and
Cyprian or of his
intimate literary friends, Ambrose, Optatus of Mileve, Hilary, and
Chrysostom. On the
other hand, it is beyond question that, owing to the determining influence of
Origen and the Platonic philosophy, which, as is well known, attached but slight
value to visible matter and the sensible phenomena of the world, Augustine did
not refer what was properly real (res) in the Blessed Sacrament to the
Flesh of Christ (caro), but transferred it to the quickening principle (spiritus),
i.e. to the effects produced by a worthy
Communion. A logical
consequence of this was that he allowed to caro, as the vehicle and
antitype of res, not indeed a mere symbolical worth, but at best a
transitory, intermediary, and subordinate worth (signum), and placed the
Flesh and Blood of Christ, present under the appearances (figurę) of
bread and wine, in too decided an opposition to His natural, historical Body.
Since Augustine was a strenuous defender of personal co-operation and effort in
the work of salvation and an enemy to mere mechanical activity and superstitious
routine, he omitted insisting upon a lively faith in the real personality of
Jesus in the
Eucharist, and called
attention to the spiritual efficiency of the Flesh of Christ instead. His mental
vision was fixed, not so much upon the saving caro, as upon the
spiritus, which alone possessed worth. Nevertheless a turning-point occurred
in his life. The conflict with Pelagianism and the diligent perusal of
Chrysostom freed him
from the bondage of Platonism, and he thenceforth attached to caro a separate,
individual value independent of that of spiritus, going so far, in fact, as to
maintain too strongly that the
Communion of children
was absolutely necessary to salvation.
If, moreover, the reader
finds in some of the other Fathers difficulties, obscurities, and a certain
inaccuracy of expression, this may be explained on three general grounds:
-
because of the peace
and security there is in their possession of the Church's truth, whence
resulted a certain want of accuracy in their terminology;
-
because of the
strictness with which the
Discipline of the Secret, expressly concerned with the
Holy Eucharist, was
maintained in the East until the end of the fifth, in the West down to the
middle of the sixth century;
-
because of the
preference of many Fathers for the allegorical interpretation of Scripture,
which was especially in vogue in the Alexandrian School (Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Cyril),
but which found a salutary counterpoise in the emphasis laid on the literal
interpretation by the School of Antioch (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret).
Since, however, the allegorical sense of the Alexandrians did not exclude the
literal, but rather supposed it as a working basis, the realistic phraseology
of Clement (Pęd., I, vi), of Origen (Contra Celsum VIII, xiii 32; Hom. ix, in
Levit., x) and of Cyril
(in Matt., xxvi, xxvii; Contra Nestor., IV, 5) concerning the Real Presence is
readily accounted for. (For the solution of patristic difficulties, see Pohle,
"Dogmatik", 3rd ed., Paderborn, 1908, III, 209 sqq.)
The argument from
tradition is supplemented and completed by the argument from prescription, which
traces the constant belief in the dogma of the Real Presence through the
Middle Ages back to the
early Apostolic Church, and thus proves the anti-Eucharistic heresies to have
been capricious novelties and violent ruptures of the true faith as handed down
from the beginning. Passing over the interval that has elapsed since the
Reformation, as this period receives its entire character from the
Council of Trent, we
have for the time of the Reformation the important testimony of
Luther (Wider etliche
Rottengeister, 1532) for the fact that the whole of
Christendom then
believed in the Real Presence. And this firm, universal belief can be traced
back uninterruptedly to
Berengarius of Tours (d. 1088), in fact omitting the sole exception of
Scotus Eriugena to
Paschasius Radbertus (831). On these grounds, therefore, we may proudly maintain
that the Church has been in legitimate possession of this dogma for fully eleven
centuries. When Photius
started the Greek Schism in 869, he took over to his Church the inalienable
treasure of the Catholic
Eucharist, a treasure which the Greeks, in the negotiations for reunion at
Lyons in 1274 and at Florence in 1439, could show to be still intact, and which
they vigorously defended in the schismatical Synod of Jerusalem (1672) against
the sordid machinations of the
Calvinistic-minded
Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople (1629). From this it follows
conclusively that the Catholic dogma must be much older than the Eastern Schism
under Photius. In fact,
even the Nestorians and Monophysites, who broke away from Rome in the fifth
century, have, as is evident from their their literature and liturgical books,
preserved their faith in the
Eucharist as
unwaveringly as the Greeks, and this in spite of the dogmatic difficulties
which, on account of their denial of the
hypostatic union, stood
in the way of a clear and correct notion of the Real Presence. Therefore the
Catholic dogma is at least as old as Nestorianism (A.D. 431). But is it not of
even greater antiquity? To decide this question one has only to examine the
oldest Liturgies of the Mass, whose essential elements date back to the time of
the Apostles (see articles on the various liturgies), to visit the Roman
Catacombs, where Christ is shown as present in the
Eucharistic food under
the symbol of a fish (see
EARLY
SYMBOLS OF THE EUCHARIST), to decipher the famous
Inscription of Abercius
of the second century, which, though composed under the influence of the
Discipline of the Secret,
plainly attests the faith of that age. And thus the argument from prescription
carries us back to the dim and distant past and thence to the time of the
Apostles, who in turn could have received their faith in the Real Presence from
no one but Christ Himself.
II. THE TOTALITY OF
THE REAL PRESENCE
In order to forestall at
the very outset, the unworthy notion, that in the
Eucharist we receive
merely the Body and merely the Blood of Christ but not Christ in His entirety,
the Council of Trent
defined the Real Presence to be such as to include with
Christ's Body and His
Soul and Divinity as well. A strictly logical conclusion from the words of
promise: "he that eateth me the same also shall live by me", this Totality of
Presence was also the constant property of tradition, which characterized the
partaking of separated parts of the Savior as a sarcophagy (flesh-eating)
altogether derogatory to
God. Although the separation of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Logos, is,
absolutely speaking, within the almighty power of
God, yet then actual
inseparability is firmly established by the dogma of the indissolubility of the
hypostatic union of
Christ's Divinity and
Humanity. In case the Apostles had celebrated the Lord's Supper during the
triduum mortis (the time during which Christ"s Body was in the tomb), when a
real separation took place between the constitutive elements of Christ, there
would have been really present in the Sacred Host only, the bloodless, inanimate
Body of Christ as it lay in tomb, and in the Chalice only the Blood separated
from His Body and absorbed by the earth as it was shed, both the Body and the
Blood, however,
hypostatically united to His Divinity, while His Soul, which sojourned in
Limbo, would have remained entirely excluded from the
Eucharistic presence.
This unreal, though not impossible, hypothesis, is well calculated to throw
light upon the essential difference designated by the
Council of Trent (Sess,
XIII, c. iii), between the meanings of the words ex vi verborum and
per concomitantiam. By virtue of the words of consecration, or ex vi
verborum, that only is made present which is expressed by the words of
Institution, namely the Body and the Blood of Christ. But by reason of a natural
concomitance (per concomitantiam), there becomes simultaneously present all that
which is physically inseparable from the parts just named, and which must, from
a natural connection with them, always be their accompaniment. Now, the
glorified Christ, Who "dieth now no more" (Rom, vi, 9) has an animate Body
through whose veins courses His life's Blood under the vivifying influence of
soul. Consequently, together with His Body and Blood and Soul, His whole
Humanity also, and, by virtue of the
hypostatic union, His
Divinity, i.e. Christ whole and entire, must be present. Hence Christ is present
in the sacrament with His Flesh and Blood, Body and Soul, Humanity and Divinity,
This general and
fundamental principle, which entirely abstracts from the duality of the species,
must, nevertheless, be extended to each of the species of bread and wine. For we
do not receive in the Sacred Host one part of Christ and in the Chalice the
other, as though our reception of the totality depended upon our partaking of
both forms; on the contrary, under the appearance of bread alone, as well as
under the appearance of wine alone, we receive Christ whole and entire (cf.
Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. iii). This, the only reasonable conception,
finds its Scriptural verification in the fact, that
St. Paul (I Cor. 11:27,
29) attaches the same guilt "of the body and the blood of the Lord" to the
unworthy "eating or drinking", understood in a disjunctive sense, as he does to
"eating and drinking", understood in a copulative sense. The traditional
foundation for this is to be found in the testimony of the Fathers and of the
Church's liturgy, according to which the glorified Savior can be present on our
altars only in His totality and integrity, and not divided into parts or
distorted to the form of a monstrosity. It follows, therefore, that supreme
adoration is separately due to the Sacred Host and to the consecrated contents
of the Chalice. On this last truth are based especially the permissibility and
intrinsic propriety of Communion only under one kind for the laity and for
priests not celebrating Mass (see
COMMUNION
UNDER BOTH KINDS). But in particularizing upon the
dogma, we are naturally led to the further truth, that, at least after the
actual division of either Species into parts, Christ is present in each part in
His full and entire essence. If the Sacred Host be broken into pieces or if the
consecrated Chalice be drunk in small quantities, Christ in His entirety is
present in each particle and in each drop. By the restrictive clause,
separatione factā the Council of Trent (Sess. XIII, can. iii) rightly raised
this truth to the dignity of a dogma. While from Scripture we may only judge it
improbable that Christ consecrated separately each particle of the bread He had
broken, we know with certainty, on the other hand, that He blessed the entire
contents of the Chalice and then gave it to His disciples to be partaken of
distributively (cf. Matthew 26:27 sq.; Mark 14:23). It is only on the basis of
the Tridentine dogma that we can understand how
Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech.
myst. v, n. 21) obliged communicants to observe the most scrupulous care in
conveying the Sacred Host to their mouths, so that not even "a crumb, more
precious than gold or jewels", might fall from their hands to the ground; how
Cęsarius of Arles
taught that there is "just as much in the small fragment as in the whole"; how
the different liturgies assert the abiding integrity of the "indivisible Lamb",
in spite of the "division of the Host"; and, finally, how in actual practice the
faithful partook of the broken particles of the Sacred Host and drank in common
from the same cup.
While the three foregoing
theses contain dogmas of faith, there is a fourth proposition which is merely a
theological conclusion, namely, that even before the actual division of the
Species, Christ is present wholly and entirely in each particle of the still
unbroken Host and in each drop of the collective contents of the Chalice. For
were not Christ present in His entire Personality in every single particle of
the Eucharistic Species
even before their division took place, we should be forced to conclude that it
is the process of dividing which brings about the Totality of Presence, whereas
according to the teaching of the Church the operative cause of the Real and
Total Presence is to be found in Transubstantiation alone. No doubt this last
conclusion directs the attention of philosophical and scientific inquiry to a
mode of existence peculiar to the
Eucharistic Body, which
is contrary to the ordinary laws of experience. It is, indeed, one of those
sublime mysteries, concerning which speculative theology attempts to offer
various solutions [see below under (5)].
III.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
Before proving
dogmatically the fact of the substantial change here under consideration, we
must first outline its history and nature.
(a) The scientific
development of the concept of Transubstantiation can hardly be said to be a
product of the Greeks, who did not get beyond its more general notes; rather, it
is the remarkable contribution of the Latin theologians, who were stimulated to
work it out in complete logical form by the three
Eucharistic
controversies mentioned above, The term transubstantiation seems to have
been first used by Hildebert of Tours (about 1079). His encouraging example was
soon followed by other theologians, as Stephen of Autun (d. 1139), Gaufred
(1188), and Peter of Blois (d. about 1200), whereupon several ecumenical
councils also adopted this significant expression, as the
Fourth Council of the
Lateran (1215), and the
Council of Lyons (1274), in the profession of faith of the Greek Emperor
Michael Palęologus. The
Council of Trent (Sess. XIII, cap. iv; can. ii) not only accepted as an
inheritance of faith the truth contained in the idea, but authoritatively
confirmed the "aptitude of the term" to express most strikingly the legitimately
developed doctrinal concept. In a closer logical analysis of Transubstantiation,
we find the first and fundamental notion to be that of conversion, which may be
defined as "the transition of one thing into another in some aspect of being".
As is immediately evident, conversion (conversio) is something more than
mere change (mutatio). Whereas in mere changes one of the two extremes
may be expressed negatively, as, e.g., in the change of day and night,
conversion requires two positive extremes, which are related to each other as
thing to thing, and must have, besides, such an intimate connection with each
other, that the last extreme (terminus ad quem) begins to be only as the
first (terminus a quo) ceases to be, as, e.g., in the conversion of water
into wine at Cana. A third element is usually required, known as the commune
tertium, which, even after conversion has taken place, either physically or
at least logically unites one extreme to the other; for in every true conversion
the following condition must be fulfilled: "What was formerly A, is now B." A
very important question suggests itself as to whether the definition should
further postulate the previous non-existence of the last extreme, for it seems
strange that an existing terminus a quo, A, should be converted into an already
existing terminus ad quem, B. If the act of conversion is not to become a mere
process of substitution, as in sleight-of-hand performances, the terminus ad
quem must unquestionably in some manner newly exist, just as the terminus a quo
must in some manner really cease to exist. Yet as the disappearance of the
latter is not attributable to annihilation properly so called, so there is no
need of postulating creation, strictly so called, to explain the former's coming
into existence. The idea of conversion is amply realized if the following
condition is fulfilled, viz., that a thing which already existed in substance,
acquires an altogether new and previously non-existing mode of being.
Thus in the resurrection of
the dead, the dust of the human bodies will be truly converted into the
bodies of the risen by their previously existing souls, just as at death they
had been truly converted into corpses by the departure of the souls. This much
as regards the general notion of conversion. Transubstantiation, however, is not
a conversion simply so called, but a substantial conversion (conversio
substantialis), inasmuch as one thing is substantially or
essentially converted into another. Thus from the concept of
Transubstantiation is excluded every sort of merely accidental conversion,
whether it be purely natural (e.g. the metamorphosis of insects) or supernatural
(e.g. the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor). Finally, Transubstantiation
differs from every other substantial conversion in this, that only the
substance is converted into another the accidents remaining the same just as
would be the case if wood were
miraculously converted
into iron, the substance of the iron remaining hidden under the external
appearance of the wood.
The application of the
foregoing to the Eucharist
is an easy matter. First of all the notion of conversion is verified in the
Eucharist, not only in
general, but in all its essential details. For we have the two extremes of
conversion, namely, bread and wine as the terminus a quo, and the Body and Blood
of Christ as the terminus ad quem. Furthermore, the intimate connection between
the cessation of one extreme and the appearance of the other seems to be
preserved by the fact, that both events are the results, not of two independent
processes, as, e.g. annihilation and creation, but of one single act, since,
according to the purpose of the Almighty, the substance of the bread and wine
departs in order to make room for the Body and Blood of Christ. Lastly, we have
the commune tertium in the unchanged appearances of bread and wine, under which
appearances the pre-existent Christ assumes a new, sacramental mode of being,
and without which His Body and Blood could not be partaken of by men. That the
consequence of Transubstantiation, as a conversion of the total substance, is
the transition of the entire substance of the bread and wine into the Body and
Blood of Christ, is the express doctrine of the Church (Council of Trent, Sess.
XIII, can. ii). Thus were condemned as contrary to faith the antiquated view of
Durandus, that only the substantial form (forma substantialis) of the
bread underwent conversion, while the primary matter (materia prima)
remained, and, especially,
Luther's doctrine of Consubstantiation, i.e. the coexistence of the
substance of the bread with the true Body of Christ. Thus, too, the theory of
Impanation advocated by Osiander and certain Berengarians, and according to
which a hypostatic union
is supposed to take place between the substance of the bread and the
God-man (impanatio =
Deus panis factus), is authoritatively rejected. So the Catholic doctrine of
Transubstantiation sets up a mighty bulwark around the dogma of the Real
Presence and constitutes in itself a distinct doctrinal article, which is not
involved in that of the Real Presence, though the doctrine of the Real Presence
is necessarily contained in that of Transubstantiation. It was for this very
reason that Pius VI, in
his dogmatic Bull "Auctorem fidei" (1794) against the Jansenistic pseudo Synod
of Pistoia (1786), protested most vigorously against suppressing this
"scholastic question", as the synod had advised pastors to do.
(b) In the mind of the
Church, Transubstantiation has been so intimately bound up with the Real
Presence, that both dogmas have been handed down together from generation to
generation, though we cannot entirely ignore a dogmatico-historical development.
The total conversion of the substance of bread is expressed clearly in the words
of Institution: "This is my body". These words form, not a theoretical, but a
practical proposition, whose essence consists in this, that the objective
identity between subject and predicate is effected and verified only after the
words have all been uttered, not unlike the pronouncement of a king to a
subaltern: "You are a major", or, "You are a captain", which would immediately
cause the promotion of the officer to a higher command. When, therefore, He Who
is All Truth and All Power said of the bread: "This is my body", the bread
became, through the utterance of these words, the Body of Christ; consequently,
on the completion of the sentence the substance of bread was no longer present,
but the Body of Christ under the outward appearance of bread. Hence the bread
must have become the Body of Christ, i.e. the former must have been converted
into the latter. The words of Institution were at the same time the words of
Transubstantiation. Indeed the actual manner in which the absence of the bread
and the presence of the Body of Christ is effected, is not read into the words
of Institution but strictly and exegetically deduced from them. The
Calvinists, therefore,
are perfectly right when they reject the
Lutheran doctrine of
Consubstantiation as a fiction, with no foundation in Scripture. For had Christ
intended to assert the coexistence of His Body with the Substance of the bread,
He would have expressed a simple identity between hoc and corpus
by means of the copula est, but would have resorted to some such
expression as: "This bread contains my body", or, "In this bread is my Body."
Had He desired to constitute bread the sacramental receptacle of His Body, He
would have had to state this expressly, for neither from the nature of the case
nor according to common parlance can a piece of bread be made to signify the
receptacle of a human body. On the other hand, the synecdoche is plain in the
case of the Chalice: "This is my blood", i.e. the contents of the Chalice are my
blood, and hence no longer wine.
Regarding tradition, the
earliest witnesses, as
Tertullian and Cyprian,
could hardly have given any particular consideration to the genetic relation of
the natural elements of bread and wine to the Body and Blood of Christ, or to
the manner in which the former were converted into the latter; for even
Augustine was deprived of a clear conception of Transubstantiation, so long as
he was held in the bonds of Platonism. On the other hand, complete clearness on
the subject had been attained by writers as early as
Cyril of Jerusalem,
Theodoret of Cyrrhus,
Gregory of Nyssa,
Chrysostom, and Cyril
of Alexandria in the East, and by Ambrose and the later Latin writers in the
West. Eventually the West became the classic home of scientific perfection in
the difficult doctrine of Transubstantiation. The claims of the learned work of
the Anglican Dr. Pusey
(The Doctrine of the Real Presence as contained in the Fathers, Oxford, 1855),
who denied the cogency of the patristic argument for Transubstantiation, have
been met and thoroughly answered by
Cardinal Franzelin (De
Euchar., Rome, 1887, xiv). The argument from tradition is strikingly confirmed
by the ancient liturgies, whose beautiful prayers express the idea of conversion
in the clearest manner. Many examples may be found in Renaudot, "Liturgię
orient." (2nd ed., 1847); Assemani, "Codex liturg." (13 vols., Rome 1749-66);
Denzinger, "Ritus Orientalium" (2 vols., Würzburg, 1864), Concerning the
Adduction Theory of the Scotists and the Production Theory of the Thomists, see
Pohle, "Dogmatik" (3rd ed., Paderborn, 1908), III, 237 sqq.
IV. THE PERMANENCE AND
ADORABLENESS OF THE EUCHARIST
Since
Luther arbitrarily
restricted Real Presence to the moment of reception (in usu, non extra),
the Council of Trent (Sess.
XIII, can. iv) by a special canon emphasized the fact, that after the
Consecration Christ is truly present and, consequently, does not make His
Presence dependent upon the act of eating or drinking. On the contrary, He
continues His Eucharistic Presence even in the consecrated Hosts and Sacred
particles that remain on the altar or in the ciborium after the distribution of
Holy Communion. In the
deposit of faith the Presence and the Permanence of Presence are so closely
allied, that in the mind of the Church both continue on as an undivided whole.
And rightly so; for just as Christ promised His Flesh and blood as meat and
drink, i.e. as something permanent (cf. John 6:50 sqq.), so, when He said: "Take
ye, and eat. This is my body", the Apostles received from the hand of the Lord
His Sacred Body, which was already objectively present and did not first become
so in the act of partaking. This non-dependence of the Real Presence upon the
actual reception is manifested very clearly in the case of the Chalice, when
Christ said: "Drink ye all of this. For [enim] this is my Blood." Here
the act of drinking is evidently neither the cause nor the conditio sine qua
non for the presence of
Christ's Blood.
Much as he disliked it,
even Calvin had to
acknowledge the evident force of the argument from tradition (Instit. IV, xvii,
sect. 739). Not only have the Fathers, and among them
Chrysostom with special
vigor, defended in theory the permanence of the Real Presence, but the constant
practice of the Church has also established its truth. In the early days of the
Church the faithful frequently carried the
Blessed Eucharist with
them to their homes (cf.
Tertullian, "Ad uxor.", II, v; Cyprian, "De lapsis", xxvi) or upon long
journeys (Ambrose, De excessu fratris, I, 43, 46), while the deacons were
accustomed to take the Blessed Sacrament to those who did not attend Divine
service (cf. Justin,
Apol., I, n. 67), as well as to the martyrs, the incarcerated, and the infirm
(cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI, xliv). The deacons were also obliged to transfer
the particles that remained to specially prepared repositories called
Pastophoria (cf. Apostolic Constitutions, VIII, xiii). Furthermore, it was
customary as early as the fourth century to celebrate the Mass of the
Presanctifed (cf. Synod of Laodicea, can. xlix), in which were received the
Sacred Hosts that had been consecrated one or more days previously. In the Latin
Church the celebration of the Mass of the Presanctified is nowadays restricted
to Good Friday,
whereas, ever since the Trullan Synod (692), the Greeks celebrate it during the
whole of Lent, except
on Saturdays, Sundays, and the feast of the Annunciation (25 March). A deeper
reason for the permanence of Presence is found in the fact, that some time
elapses between the confection and the reception of the sacrament, i.e. between
the Consecration and the Communion, whereas in the case of the other sacraments
both the confection and the reception take place at the same instant. Baptism,
for instance, lasts only as long as the baptismal action or ablution with water,
and is, therefore, a transitory sacrament; on the contrary, the
Eucharist, and the
Eucharist alone,
constitutes a permanent sacrament (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, cap. iii).
The permanence of Presence, however, is limited to an interval of time of which
the beginning is determined by the instant of Consecration and the end by the
corruption of the Eucharistic Species. If the Host has become moldy or the
contents of the Chalice sour, Christ has discontinued His Presence therein.
Since in the process of corruption those elementary substances return which
correspond to the peculiar nature of the changed accidents, the law of the
indestructibility of matter, notwithstanding the
miracle of the
Eucharistic conversion, remains in force without any interruption.
The Adorableness of the
Eucharist is the
practical consequence of its permanence. According to a well known principle of
Christology, the same worship of latria (cultus latrię) as is due to the
Triune God is due also
to the Divine Word, the
God-man Christ, and in
fact, by reason of the
hypostatic union, to the Humanity of Christ and its individual component
parts, as, e.g., His Sacred Heart. Now, identically the same Lord Christ is
truly present in the Eucharist as is present in heaven; consequently He is to be
adored in the Blessed Sacrament, and just so long as He remains present under
the appearances of bread and wine, namely, from the moment of Transubstantiation
to the moment in which the species are decomposed (cf. Council of Trent, Sess.
XIII, can. vi).
In the absence of
Scriptural proof, the Church finds a warrant for, and a propriety in, rendering
Divine worship to the Blessed Sacrament in the most ancient and constant
tradition, though of course a distinction must be made between the dogmatic
principle and the varying discipline regarding the outward form of worship.
While even the East recognized the unchangeable principle from the earliest
ages, and, in fact, as late as the schismatical Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, the
West has furthermore shown an untiring activity in establishing and investing
with more and more solemnity, homage and devotion to the Blessed Eucharist. In
the early Church, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was restricted chiefly
to Mass and Communion, just as it is today among the Orientals and the Greeks.
Even in his time Cyril of
Jerusalem insisted just as strongly as did Ambrose and Augustine on an
attitude of adoration and homage during
Holy Communion (cf.
Ambrose, De Sp. Sancto, III, ii, 79; Augustine, In Ps. xcviii, n. 9). In the
West the way was opened to a more and more exalted veneration of the Blessed
Eucharist when the faithful were allowed to Communicate even outside of the
liturgical service. After the Berengarian controversy, the Blessed Sacrament was
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries elevated for the express purpose of
repairing by its adoration the blasphemies of heretics and, strengthening the
imperiled faith of Catholics. In the thirteenth century were introduced, for the
greater glorification of the Most Holy, the "theophoric processions" (circumgestatio),
and also the feast of
Corpus Christi, instituted under
Urban IV at the
solicitation of St. Juliana
of Ličge. In honor of the feast, sublime hymns, such as the
"Pange Lingua" of St.
Thomas Aquinas, were composed. In the fourteenth century the practice of the
Exposition of the Blessed
Sacrament arose. The custom of the annual
Corpus Christi
procession was warmly defended and recommended by the
Council of Trent (Sess.
XIII, cap. v). A new impetus was given to the adoration of the Eucharist through
the visits to the Blessed
Sacrament (Visitatio SS. Sacramenti), introduced by
St. Alphonsus Liguori;
in later times the numerous orders and congregations devoted to
Perpetual Adoration,
the institution in many dioceses of the devotion of "Perpetual Prayer", the
holding of International
Eucharistic Congresses, e.g. that of London in September, 1908, have all
contributed to keep alive faith in Him Who has said: "behold I am with you all
days, even to the consummation of the world" (Matthew 28:20).
V. SPECULATIVE
DISCUSSION OF THE REAL PRESENCE
The principal aim of
speculative theology with regard to the Eucharist, should be to discuss
philosophically, and seek a logical solution of, three apparent contradictions,
namely:
(a) the continued
existence of the Eucharistic Species, or the outward appearances of bread and
wine, without their natural underlying subject (accidentia sine subjecto);
(b) the spatially uncircumscribed, spiritual mode of existence of
Christ's Eucharistic
Body (existentia corporis ad modum spiritus);
(c) the simultaneous existence of Christ in heaven and in many places on earth
(multilocatio).
(a) The study of the
first problem, viz. whether or not the accidents of bread and wine continue
their existence without their proper substance, must be based upon the clearly
established truth of Transubstantiation, in consequence of which the entire
substance of the bread and the entire substance of the wine are converted
respectively into the Body and Blood of Christ in such a way that "only the
appearances of bread and wine remain" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. ii:
manentibus dumtaxat speciebus panis et vini). Accordingly, the continuance
of the appearances without the substance of bread and wine as their connatural
substratum is just the reverse of Transubstantiation. If it be further asked,
whether these appearances have any subject at all in which they inhere, we must
answer with St. Thomas Aquinas (III:77:1), that the idea is to be rejected as
unbecoming, as though the Body of Christ, in addition to its own accidents,
should also assume those of bread and wine. The most that may be said is, that
from the Eucharistic Body proceeds a
miraculous sustaining
power, which supports the appearances bereft of their natural substances and
preserves them from collapse. The position of the Church in this regard may be
readily determined from the
Council of Constance (1414-1418). In its eighth session, approved in 1418 by
Martin V, this synod
condemned the following articles of
Wyclif:
-
"Substantia panis
materialis et similiter substantia vini materialis remanent in Sacramento
altaris", i.e. the material substance of bread and likewise the material
substance of wine remain in the Sacrament of the Altar;
-
"Accidentia panis non
manent sine subjecto", i.e. the accidents of the bread do not remain without a
subject.
The first of these
articles contains an open denial of Transubstantiation. The second, so far as
the text is concerned, might be considered as merely a different wording of the
first, were it not that the history of the council shows that
Wyclif had directly
opposed the Scholastic doctrine of "accidents without a subject" as absurd and
even heretical (cf, De Augustinis, De re sacramentariā, Rome, 1889, II, 573 sqq.),
Hence it was the intention of the council to condemn the second article, not
merely as a conclusion of the first, but as a distinct and independent
proposition; wherefore we may gather the Church's teaching on the subject from
the contradictory proposition; "Accidentia panis manent sine subjecto," i.e. the
accidents of bread do remain without a subject. Such, at least, was the opinion
of contemporary theologians regarding the matter; and the
Roman Catechism,
referring to the above-mentioned canon of the
Council of Trent,
tersely, explains: "The accidents of bread and wine inhere in no substance, but
continue existing by themselves." This being the case, some theologians in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who inclined to Cartesianism, as E,
Maignan, Drouin, and Vitasse, displayed but little theological penetration when
they asserted that the Eucharistic appearances were optical illusions,
phantasmagoria, and make-believe accidents, ascribing to Divine omnipotence an
immediate influence upon the five senses, whereby a mere subjective impression
of what seemed to be the accidents of bread and wine was created. Since
Descartes (d. 1650) places the essence of corporeal substance in its actual
extension and recognizes only modal accidents metaphysically united to their
substance, it is clear, according to his theory, that together with the
conversion of the substance of bread and wine, the accidents must also be
converted and thereby made to disappear. If the eye nevertheless seems to behold
bread and wine, this is to be attributed to an optical illusion alone. But it is
clear at first blush, that no doubt can be entertained as to the physical
reality, or in fact, as to the identity of the accidents before and after
Transubstantiation, This physical, and not merely optical, continuance of the
Eucharistic accidents was repeatedly insisted upon by the Fathers, and with such
excessive rigor that the notion of Transubstantiation seemed to be in danger.
Especially against the Monophysites, who based on the Eucharistic conversion an
a pari argument in behalf of the supposed conversion of the Humanity of Christ
into His Divinity, did the Fathers retort by concluding from the continuance of
the unconverted Eucharistic accidents to the unconverted Human Nature of Christ.
Both philosophical and theological arguments were also advanced against the
Cartesians, as, for instance, the infallible testimony of the senses, the
necessity of the commune tertium to complete the idea of Transubstantiation [see
above, (3)], the idea of the Sacrament of the Altar as the visible sign of
Christ's invisible
Body, the physical signification of Communion as a real partaking of food and
drink the striking expression "breaking of bread" (fractio panis), which
supposes the divisible reality of the accidents, etc. For all these reasons,
theologians consider the physical reality of the accidents as an
incontrovertible truth, which cannot without temerity be called in question.
As regards the
philosophical possibility of the accidents existing without their substance, the
older school drew a fine distinction between modal and absolute accidents, By
the modal accidents were understood such as could not, being mere modes, be
separated from their substance without involving a metaphysical contradiction,
e.g. the form and motion of a body. Those accidents were designated absolute,
whose objective reality was adequately distinct from the reality of their
substance, in such a way that no intrinsic repugnance was involved in their
separability, as, e.g., the quantity of a body.
Aristotle, himself
taught (Metaphys., VI, 3rd ed. of Bekker, p. 1029, a. 13), that quantity was not
a corporeal substance, but only a phenomenon of substance. Modern philosophy, on
the other hand, has endeavored since the time of John Locke, to reject
altogether from the realm of ideas the concept of substance as something
imaginary, and to rest satisfied with qualities alone as the excitants of
sensation, a view of the material world which the so-called psychology of
association and actuality is trying to carry out in its various details. The
Catholic Church does not feel called upon to follow up the ephemeral vagaries of
these new philosophical systems, but bases her doctrine on the everlasting
philosophy of sound reason, which rightly distinguishes between the thing in
itself and its characteristic qualities (color, form, size, etc.). Though the
"thing in itself" may even remain imperceptible to the senses and therefore be
designated in the language of
Kant as a noumenon, or
in the language of Spencer, the Unknowable, yet we cannot escape the necessity
of seeking beneath the appearances the thing which appears, beneath the colour
that which is colored beneath the form that which has form, i.e. the substratum
or subject which sustains the phenomena. The older philosophy designated the
appearances by the name of accidents, the subject of the appearances, by that of
substance. It matters little what the terms are, provided the things signified
by them are rightly understood. What is particularly important regarding
material substances and their accidental qualities, is the necessity of
proceeding cautiously in this discussion, since in the domain of natural
philosophy the greatest uncertainty reigns even at the present day concerning
the nature of matter, one system pulling down what another has reared, as is
proved in the latest theories of atomism and energy, of ions and electrons.
The old theology tried
with St. Thomas Aquinas (III:77) to prove the possibility of absolute accidents
on the principles of the Aristotelean-Scholastic hylomorphism, i.e. the system
which teaches that the essential constitution of bodies consists in the
substantial union of materia prima and forma substantialis. Some
theologians of today would seek to come to an understanding with modern science,
which bases all natural processes upon the very fruitful theory of energy, by
trying with Leibniz to explain the Eucharistic accidentia sine subjecto
according to the dynamism of natural philosophy. Assuming, according to this
system, a real distinction between force and its manifestations, between energy
and its effects, it may be seen that under the influence of the First Cause the
energy (substance) necessary for the essence of bread is withdrawn by virtue of
conversion, while the effects of energy (accidents) in a
miraculous manner
continue. For the rest it may be said, that it is far from the Church's
intention to restrict the Catholic's investigation regarding the doctrine of the
Blessed Sacrament to any particular view of natural philosophy or even to
require him to establish its truth on the principles of
medieval physics; all
that the Church demands is, that those theories of material substances be
rejected which not only contradict the teaching of the Church, but also are
repugnant to experience and sound reason, as Pantheism,
Hylozoism, Monism,
Absolute Idealism, Cartesianism, etc.
(b) The second problem
arises from the Totality of Presence, which means that Christ in His entirety is
present in the whole of the Host and in each smallest part thereof, as the
spiritual soul is present in the human body [see above, (2)]. The difficulty
reaches its climax when we consider that there is no question here of the Soul
or the Divinity of Christ, but of His Body, which, with its head, trunk, and
members, has assumed a mode of existence spiritual and independent of space, a
mode of existence, indeed, concerning which neither experience nor any system of
philosophy can have the least inkling. That the idea of conversion of corporeal
matter into a spirit can in no way be entertained, is clear from the material
substance of the Eucharistic Body itself. Even the above-mentioned separability
of quantity from substance gives us no clue to the solution, since according to
the best founded opinions not only the substance of
Christ's Body, but by
His own wise arrangement, its corporeal quantity, i.e. its full size, with its
complete organization of integral members and limbs, is present within the
diminutive limits of the Host and in each portion thereof. Later theologians (as
Rossignol, Legrand) resorted to the unseemly explanation, according to which
Christ is present in diminished form and stature, a sort of miniature body;
while others (as Oswald, Fernandez, Casajoana) assumed with no better sense of
fitness the mutual compenetration of the members of
Christ's Body to within
the narrow compass of the point of a pin. The vagaries of the Cartesians,
however, went beyond all bounds. Descartes had already, in a letter to P.
Mesland (ed. Emery, Paris, 1811), expressed the opinion, that the identity of
Christ's Eucharistic
with His Heavenly Body was preserved by the identity of His Soul, which animated
all the Eucharistic Bodies. On this basis, the geometrician Varignon suggested a
true multiplication of the Eucharistic Bodies upon earth, which were supposed to
be most faithful, though greatly reduced, miniature copies of the prototype, the
Heavenly Body of Christ. Nor does the modern theory of n-dimensions throw any
light upon the subject; for the Body of Christ is not invisible or impalpable to
us because it occupies the fourth dimension, but because it transcends and is
wholly independent of space. Such a mode of existence, it is clear, does not
come within the scope of physics and mechanics, but belongs to a higher,
supernatural order, even as does the
Resurrection from the
sealed tomb, the passing in and out through closed doors, the Transfiguration of
the future glorified risen Body. What explanation may, then, be given of the
fact?
The simplest treatment of
the subject was that offered by the Schoolmen, especially St, Thomas (III:76:4),
They reduced the mode of being to the mode of becoming, i.e. they traced back
the mode of existence peculiar to the Eucharistic Body to the
Transubstantiation; for a thing has to so "be" as it was in "becoming", Since
ex vi verborum the immediate result is the presence of the Body of Christ,
its quantity, present merely per concomitantiam, must follow the mode of
existence peculiar to its substance, and, like the latter, must exist without
division and extension, i.e. entirely in the whole Host and entirely in each
part thereof. In other words, the Body of Christ is present in the sacrament,
not after the manner of "quantity" (per modum quantitatis), but of
"substance" (per modum substantię), Later Scholasticism (Bellarmine,
Suarez, Billuart, and others) tried to improve upon this explanation along other
lines by distinguishing between internal and external quantity. By internal
quantity (quantitas interna seu in actu primo) is understood that entity,
by virtue of which a corporeal substance merely possesses "aptitudinal
extension", i.e. the "capability" of being extended in tri-dimensionaI space.
External quantity, on the other hand (quantitas externa seu in actu secundo),
is the same entity, but in so far as it follows its natural tendency to occupy
space and actually extends itself in the three dimensions. While
aptitudinal extension or internal quantity is so bound up with the essences of
bodies that its separability from them involves a metaphysical contradiction,
external quantity is, on the other hand, only a natural consequence and effect,
which can be so suspended and withheld by the First Cause, that the corporeal
substance, retaining its internal quantity, does not extend itself into space.
At all events, however plausibly reason may seem to explain the matter, it is
nevertheless face to face with a great mystery.
(c) The third and last
question has to do with the multilocation of Christ in heaven and upon thousands
of altars throughout the world. Since in the natural order of events each body
is restricted to one position in space (unilocatio), so that before the
law proof of an alibi immediately frees a person from the suspicion of crime,
multilocation without further question belongs to the supernatural order. First
of all, no intrinsic repugnance can be shown in the concept of multilocation.
For if the objection be raised, that no being can exist separated from itself or
show forth local distances between its various selves, the sophism is readily
detected; for multilocation does not multiply the individual object, but only
its external relation to and presence in space. Philosophy distinguishes two
modes of presence in creatures:
-
the circumscriptive,
and
-
the definitive.
The first, the only mode
of presence proper to bodies, is that by virtue of which an object is confined
to a determinate portion of space in such wise that its various parts (atoms,
molecules, electrons) also occupy their corresponding positions in that space.
The second mode of presence, that properly belonging to a spiritual being,
requires the substance of a thing to exist in its entirety in the whole of the
space, as well as whole and entire in each part of that space. The latter is the
soul's mode of presence in the human body. The distinction made between these
two modes of presence is important, inasmuch as in the Eucharist both kinds are
found in combination. For, in the first place, there is verified a continuous
definitive multilocation, called also replication, which consists in this, that
the Body of Christ is totally present in each part of the continuous and as yet
unbroken Host and also totally present throughout the whole Host, just as the
human soul is present in the body. And precisely this latter analogy from nature
gives us an insight into the possibility of the Eucharistic
miracle. For if, as has
been seen above, Divine omnipotence can in a supernatural manner impart to a
body such a spiritual, unextended, spatially uncircumscribed mode of presence,
which is natural to the soul as regards the human body, one may well surmise the
possibility of Christ's
Eucharistic Body being present in its entirety in the whole Host, and whole and
entire in each part thereof.
There is, moreover, the
discontinuous multilocation, whereby Christ is present not only in one
Host, but in numberless separate Hosts, whether in the ciborium or upon all the
altars throughout the world. The intrinsic possibility of discontinuous
multilocation seems to be based upon the non-repugnance of continuous
multilocation. For the chief difficulty of the latter appears to be that the
same Christ is present in two different parts, A and B, of the continuous Host,
it being immaterial whether we consider the distant parts A and B joined by the
continuous line AB or not. The marvel does not substantially increase, if by
reason of the breaking of the Host, the two parts A and B are now completely
separated from each other. Nor does it matter how great the distance between the
parts may be. Whether or not the fragments of a Host are distant one inch or a
thousand miles from one another is altogether immaterial in this consideration;
we need not wonder, then, if Catholics adore their Eucharistic Lord at one and
the same time in New York, London, and Paris. Finally, mention must be made of
mixed multilocation, since Christ with His natural dimensions reigns in
heaven, whence he does not depart, and at the same time dwells with His
Sacramental Presence in numberless places throughout the world. This third case
would be in perfect accordance with the two foregoing, were we per impossible
permitted to imagine that Christ were present under the appearances of bread
exactly as He is in heaven and that He had relinquished His natural mode of
existence. This, however, would be but one more marvel of
God's omnipotence.
Hence no contradiction is noticeable in the fact, that Christ retains His
natural dimensional relations in heaven and at the same time takes up His abode
upon the altars of earth.
There is, furthermore, a
fourth kind of multilocation, which, however, has not been realized in the
Eucharist, but would be, if
Christ's Body were present in its natural mode of existence both in heaven
and on earth. Such a
miracle might be assumed to have occurred in the conversion of
St. Paul before the
gates of Damascus, when Christ in person said to him: "Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me?" So too the
bilocation of saints,
sometimes read of in the pages of hagiography, as, e.g., in the case of
St. Alphonsus Liguori,
cannot be arbitrarily cast aside as untrustworthy. The Thomists and some later
theologians, it is true, reject this kind of multilocation as intrinsically
impossible and declare
bilocation to be nothing more than an "apparition" without corporeal
presence. But Cardinal De
Lugo is of opinion, and justly so, that to deny its possibility might
reflect unfavorably upon the Eucharistic multilocation itself. If there were
question of the vagaries of many Nominalists, as, e.g., that a
bilocated person could
be living in Paris and at the same time dying in London, hating in Paris and at
the same time loving in London, the impossibility would be as plain as day,
since an individual, remaining such as he is, cannot be the subject of contrary
propositions, since they exclude one another. The case assumes a different
aspect, when wholly external contrary propositions, relating to position in
space, are used in reference to the
bilocated individual.
In such a bilocation,
which leaves the principle of contradiction intact, it would be hard to discover
an intrinsic impossibility.
|
