Last month the Church celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, or the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, honoring the greatest gift the Lord has given to His Church: Himself. In the Eucharist, the whole Christ is present: Body and blood, soul and divinity, the fullness of His humanity and the fullness of His divinity. A single particle of the Eucharist is more precious than the entire universe. It is the hidden way in which the Lord is intimately present to His Church, knowable only to the one who has faith in His word, “This is My body.”
We might sometimes think that the apostles had it easy: they saw Christ physically, witnessed His miracles, and heard Him preach. “They didn’t even really need faith,” we might say to ourselves. “They just saw Him.” But if you read the Gospels for just a few pages, you see that this isn’t the case. There were many people who saw His miracles, and who still did not believe or understand. There were many who heard Him, and were scandalized. Among those who saw and heard Him, the only ones who really saw and heard Him for Who He is were those who had the gift of faith. So we are ultimately in the same position as the apostles and the other contemporaries of Christ: both they and we can only see Him with the “eyes” of faith: they, in the reality of His Incarnation, we in the reality of the Eucharist.
The sad fact is, however, that many in the Church today do not know the true significance of Christ’s gift to us of the Eucharist. On vacation this year for the great feast of Corpus Christi itself, for instance, the priest who gave the homily at the parish we attended never once mentioned the Eucharist! Many Catholics today regard the Mass as merely a “memorial meal” and the Eucharist itself as a “symbol of God’s love.” Many think that the “true presence” of Christ is limited to the assembly of the people in the Mass, who as Church are His body, or to the Word proclaimed in the Scriptures.
Now, it is perfectly true that Christ is “present” in the world and in the Mass in many ways: “in His word [the Scriptures], in His Church’s prayer, ‘where two or three are gathered in My name,’ in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, in the sacraments of which He is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1373). It is also obviously true that the Mass is in one way a meal done “in memory” of Christ (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24-25). “But,” the Catechism continues, “‘He is present . . . most especially in the Eucharistic species’” (CCC 1373).Due to this need to reawaken an awareness of the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the bishops of the United States have called for a Eucharistic Revival, a multi-year initiative to come to a deeper understanding of and love for Christ in the Eucharist. Currently there is a cross-country pilgrimage (May 17-July 17), in which four paths tracing the shape of a Cross across the United States are processing with the Eucharist to gather in Indianapolis, for a National Eucharistic Congress, which will go from July 17-21. Many thousands are expected to participate. Here, too, in Wilmington, our diocese will host its own diocesan Eucharistic Congress on October 5. You can find more information about the National Eucharistic Congress at eucharisticrevival.org, and our diocesan Congress at cdow.org/eucharisticcongress, and look for information on how the Oratory will participate in the diocesan Congress in future bulletins.