Franciscan at Home

n our previous issue, Dr. Kreeft explored several important issues that arise when we consider the questions of “who” and “when” as they relate to Christ in the Eucharist. In this article, he will examine three final questions, to help us better understand the Church’s teaching concerning our Eucharistic Lord.

What?

What activity is Christ performing in the Eucharist? Obviously, he is acting on us and in us in Holy Communion, both in body and soul, since he enters us both in body and soul not just in order to be there, to be actual, but also to be active in us. He does stuff to us. He saves us from ourselves, he washes away our sins, he justifies and sanctifies us, and glorifies us. He gives us all graces, he makes us, gradually, what he made Mary suddenly and totally, namely “full of grace.” For us, this process is not completed and perfected in this life, as it was for Mary. But what God did to her, he does to us. He does—he is now at work doing—a far greater work than making the entire universe out of nothing: he is making saints out of sinners. The whole world is like that more-than-magical-box we call the confessional: Adam walks in and Jesus walks out. Christ does what only God can do: he creates in us a clean heart. He is performing heart surgery on us. He is what T.S. Eliot called “the wounded surgeon.” Holy Communion is heart surgery.

But what is Christ doing there in the Eucharist all the time, even when we are not receiving Holy Communion and when we are not offering his Body and Blood to the Father for the salvation of the world as we assist at the Mass? What is he doing there during Eucharistic adoration? And what is he doing right now?

St. Thomas answers that question in a single word, a wonderful word, in the most perfect and beautiful Eucharistic hymn ever written. The first line is “Adora te devote, latens deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas.” (Devoutly I adore thee, hidden deity, Who beneath these figures hideth there from me.) That word latitas is the answer to our question, “What is Christ doing there?” He is hiding.

The phrases “God from God” and “Light from Light” are used in the Nicene Creed which is recited at every Sunday Mass.

In Latin, the phrase “Light from Light” is lumen de lumine. The phrase appears in the very first section of the Creed:

"I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made."

The Symbolum Nicaenum, or Nicene Creed, was first promulgated at the Council of Nicea (325), though in an abbreviated form from what we have today. St. Athanasius (296-373), the great bishop of Alexandria, attributes the composition of the Nicene Creed to a Papal Legate called Hossius of Cordoba. The Creed is also sometimes called the Nicene-Constantinoplian Creed since it appears in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople (381). It was formally promulgated at Chalcedon in 451 and has come down to us as our present Nicene Creed.

It was at the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople that the true nature of Jesus was defended against a multitude of heresies. In particular, the words “God from God” and “Light from Light” were aimed against the Arian heresy, which denied the pre-existence of Christ. Arius (c. 250-336), a priest from Alexandria, argued that the Father alone is God in the full sense and that the Son was a being created by the Father. This idea was also called “subordinationism.” The Councils, drawing upon the traditions handed down to them from the Apostles, condemned the heresy and declared that Jesus was indeed both true God and true man. Against Arius, the Nicene Creed reasserts the principle that Jesus Christ is not made by God and so is of the created order, but is instead of the same order of being as the Father: uncreated, eternal, and timeless. The Greek word “homo-ousios” (of the same being), or in Latin “consubstantialis” and now in the English version of the Creed “consubstantial,” was used to denote the relationship of God the Father to God the Son.

Nonetheless, Arianism remained a problem for well over a century. The whole of modern day France was infected with Arianism until King Clovis married Burgundian Princess Clotilde. In 496, Clotilde, who was not an Arian, convinced Clovis that Christ really was God. When Clovis converted to this position, some 4,000 of his soldiers followed him, and as a consequence Arianism died out in the Frankish kingdom. St. Clotilde is one of a number of saintly queens who used her influence with poorly catechised husbands to change the course of history in a decidedly Christian direction.

In what is perhaps the most foundational statement in all the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read something puzzling: “The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity.”

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If you have ever traveled internationally, you have undoubtedly experienced the challenge of interpreting unfamiliar signs. Deciphering these enigmatic symbols can be a funny exercise, as long as you are not desperately lost. The first time I traveled to Australia, my wife and I were regularly in stiches at the utterly unique signs. My favorite had to be the camel, wombat, and kangaroo caution sign. Seeing this sign was a clear indication that we were far from home and in very unfamiliar territory[CR1] .

The purpose of a sign is to teach the viewer something: warning, action, direction, etc. The Catholic Christian faith is filled with signs that are designed to teach, but just like unfamiliar signs in a foreign country, if someone does not clearly explain the meaning of the sign, we will remain in ignorance or left to make our best guess. Frequently, cradle Catholics do not understand the meaning of the signs that surround them and this leads to a deficient Christian life, lacking the full available richness .

When it comes to RCIA, explaining the meaning of the signs and symbols is all the more crucial. Being one who came to the Catholic Church later in life, I cannot state strongly enough how confusing are many of the actions within the liturgy to an uninitiated observer. I’ll never forget being handed the baptismal candle, when my children were baptized, and seeing the chi rho (☧) on the side of the candle. Not knowing what it was, I asked the three religious sisters present at the baptism what it meant and they didn’t know either. I now know and can give a wonderful explanation, but that is for another time.

Un día hace como 6 años, mientras trabajaba como Director de Formación Religiosa en una parroquia católica rural, estaba en mi oficina echando un vistazo a Facebook. Vi la imagen de un evangelista católico en un malecón público evangelizando a un hombre que portaba un casco de Darth Vader y montado en un monociclo. Por supuesto que tuve que darle clic al link para leer la historia acerca de St. Paul Street Evangelization (Evangelización Callejera San Pablo). Me puse en contacto con el apostolado y eché a andar un equipo en mi parroquia. Admito que en realidad no me esperaba a que la evangelización directa fuera fructífera, o por lo menos que una conversación que duraba 2 minutos con alguien que nunca en mi vida había conocido antes pudiera llevar a una conversión genuina hacia Jesucristo y su Iglesia. Pensé que la mayor parte de nuestro trabajo sería discutir acerca de la doctrina y sembrar semillas. En fin de cuenta, ¿no iba todo el mundo paseando por la calle preguntándose si los católicos adoran a María?

Por lo tanto, no sabía cómo reaccionar cuando, la segunda vez que salí a evangelizar en nuestra comunidad, conocimos a un señor, Tomás, quien acababa de leer el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica y quería saber más acerca de Jesús. No conocía a ningún católico y tenía demasiado miedo de entrar en un templo católico al azar. Quedé asombrado cuando, tras nuestra explicación del Evangelio, su corazón “ardía dentro” y quiso saber qué hacer a continuación.

¿Cómo íbamos a ayudarle en ese momento a satisfacer su necesidad de Jesús en su vida? Sabía que mi sacerdote no le iba a gustar si mi equipo lo bautizaba allí mismo en ese momento. Pero decirle que se “uniera a un programa” tampoco era una respuesta satisfactoria. Y un programa que comenzaba varias semanas más adelante no se dirigía a su necesidad de una relación con el Salvador quien lo ama ahora mismo.

En su discurso a los obispos de las Filipinas del 18 de febrero del 2011, el Papa Emérito Benedicto XVI declaró que “vuestra gran tarea en la evangelización es proponer una relación personal con Cristo como clave para la realización plena”. Ese momento en la calle quizás no haya sido el momento preciso para bautizar a Tomás, pero sí fue el momento perfecto para presentarle a Jesús. Oramos juntos para agradecerle a Dios por la vida de Tomás, arrepentirnos de nuestros pecados, y pedirle a Cristo a que entrara al corazón de Tomás y que le diera todas las gracias que Dios le tenía guardadas. Lo conducimos hacia Jesús.

One day about 6 years ago, when I worked as a Director of Religious Education for a rural Catholic parish, I was in my office browsing Facebook. I saw an image of a Catholic evangelist on a boardwalk out in public evangelizing a man wearing a Darth Vader helmet and riding a unicycle. Of course, I had to click through the link to read the story about St. Paul Street Evangelization. I contacted the ministry and started a team at my parish. I admit that I didn’t actually expect that direct evangelization would be fruitful, at least I didn’t expect that a 2-minute conversation with someone that I never met could lead to a genuine conversion to Jesus Christ and his Church. I thought most of our work would just be arguing about doctrine and planting seeds. After all, wasn’t everyone walking down the street wondering whether Catholics worship Mary?

Therefore, I didn’t know how to react when, the second time I went out to evangelize in our community, we met a man, Tom, who had just read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and wanted to know more about Jesus. He didn’t know any Catholics and was too afraid to walk into a random Catholic Church. I was floored that after we explained the Gospel, his heart was “burning within him” and he wanted to know what to do next.

How were we going to help him at that moment to satisfy his need for Jesus in his life? I knew my priest wouldn’t be pleased if my team baptized him right then and there. Telling him that he should just “go to a program” wasn’t a satisfactory answer. A program a few weeks distant would not address his need for a relationship with the Savior who loves him right now.

In Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s 2011 address to the bishops of the Philippines, he states that “your great task in evangelization is therefore to propose a personal relationship with Christ as key to complete fulfillment.” That moment on the street may not have been the right moment to baptize Tom, but it was the perfect time to introduce him to Jesus. We prayed together to thank God for Tom’s life, repent of our sins, and ask Christ to come into Tom’s heart, to give him all of the graces God had for him. We led him to Jesus.

A brief survey of our world should be evidence enough that we are sorely in need of virtue. In need of a disposition for the good, beautiful, and true, as well as strength to choose them over what is bad, ugly, and false. Even within our own personal lives, the call to holiness requires both supernatural grace (what God does) and human virtue (what we do to participate in becoming who God made us to be). One of the principal responsibilities of any parent, teacher, or catechist is to help form their children/students with a vision of what a virtuous life looks like and how to acquire and grow in virtue. Most of us are familiar with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, as well as the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude that build from and are strengthened by the theological virtues. However, many are not as familiar with virtue of magnanimity: the virtue of desiring and doing great things

I grew up in a relatively large Catholic family who never missed Sunday Mass. I was sent to Catholic elementary and high schools, where school Masses were celebrated with regularity. I also had what I now believe to be a special grace of faith from the Lord, where I never questioned the existence of God or Church teaching (as I understood it to be at the time)—even though by young adulthood many of those around me were questioning both. I also was a faithful altar-server straight up until college, serving at many Masses during the school year. Considering the trajectory of my life, I had received Communion nearly one thousand times by the time I went away to college.

But in reality, the effects that receiving my Lord in communion had on me were minimal. I went to Mass faithfully, and I even went prayerfully, but I was not coming away changed by the encounter in any visible way. While I had a personal faith in God, I was lacking in a personal understanding of what it meant to give my life to him, to desire to live a new life in Christ, and ultimately, to have this change of life flow from personal repentance and conversion. Sherry Weddell points out that any of these four obstacles “can block the ultimate fruitfulness of valid sacraments,”[1] and I was missing three out of four.

This stymied the flow of sacramental grace in my life. It would do the Lord a disservice to say that I had no spiritual benefit at all: I was going to Mass weekly, doing so in a spirit of faith, and offering sincere prayers during the liturgy. All the same, I can say with certainty that the spiritual effects of Communion for me were minimal. In terms of grace, I was collecting a dime each week at best, but the Lord had been offering me a dollar. And a central reason that I benefited so little was precisely because I had attended Mass in my parish so often.

Counterintuitive as that might sound, it’s true. This was because in my culturally Catholic parish, no one had ever modeled for me in my Catholic schooling or in my parish a discipled life flowing from the Eucharist, complete with active and visible spiritual fruit. Regularly observing and participating in a parish culture of churchgoing Catholics taught me to expect little transformation from receiving communion (either personally or in the community), and so I never did. Participation was the clear focus, not fruitfulness. Therefore, any catechesis on the Real Presence I received in a classroom setting was always obstructed by what my experience was teaching me—namely, that receiving the Lord in Communion was not meant to result in immediate spiritual fruit that could be visibly perceived in the community.