How can we be sure that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist?
There are many responses to this question. Below I offer a brief selection:
1. By believing what Jesus says in the Bible
In John 6:51-52, Jesus says, ‘I am the living bread, descended from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread, he shall live in eternity. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.’
However, some of his followers protest: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they ask (v.53). They think he must be speaking literally.
But Jesus does not try to correct them, he doesn’t try to stop them walking off, because he is speaking literally. In fact, he reinforces what he has been saying: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him… Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever (v.54-58).
Jesus then goes on to make things even more specific, by switching from the Greek verb for ‘eating,’ to the verb for ‘gnawing,’ as in gnawing on a bone.
In Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us 13 times that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood. He clearly meant it literally.
2. By understanding the Jewish culture of the time
At the Last Supper, Jesus takes the bread and gives it to his disciples, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’ (Lk.22:19).
Then Jesus takes the cup filled with wine. He blesses it and says, ‘Take this and drink it. This is my blood spilled for you on Calvary so that your sins may be forgiven’ (Mt.26:26-29).
Here, Jesus is using words from another time and culture, and we misunderstand it if we just use our modern ears.
In English today, when we think of the word ‘body,’ it’s easy to imagine someone being separated from their body. We see this in news stories about the victims of crime, where someone’s body has been found somewhere. Our understanding is that that person has died, and their body and soul have been separated.
But in the New Testament, the word Jesus uses for ‘body’ (‘soma’ in Greek) means the whole person, not just their flesh or physical body.
The Hebrew language doesn’t have a specific word for body. They don’t think of a person’s soul being separate from their body; they’re always together.
So, when Jesus offers us his body in Holy Communion, he’s actually offering us his whole self. He’s giving us himself.
Likewise, in the Jewish culture, blood is believed to represent the life of a living being. So, when Jesus offers us his blood, he’s offering us his life.
The Holy Eucharist, then, is not just a piece of bread, and it’s not just a symbol or a metaphor. Jesus is offering us himself. He literally becomes a part of us and we become alive in him.
But how can Jesus be in the Eucharist when we can’t see him?
It’s true that the bread and wine look no different before and after their consecration. However, there’s a lot going on here that our eyes fail to see. Here are some things to reflect on:
- In a recent reflection, the Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr talks about the ‘mystery of incarnation’ and the life of St Francis of Assisi.
He says that St Francis lived a life of wholeness and holiness. He achieved this by understanding that the visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world. He also understood that the invisible world is much larger than the visible.
For there to be any wholeness, or holiness, Rohr says, our outer world and its inner significance must come together. And when it does, the result is both deep joy and a resounding sense of coherent beauty.
Jesus Christ is the perfect example of this, and he teaches us this one universal truth: that matter is, and always has been, the hiding place for the Spirit.
Why is Jesus the perfect example? It’s because he is God himself, and yet outwardly he appears to us as an ordinary man. Many people refused to believe that Jesus was God because he didn’t look like God. But through faith, we know that Jesus is God. In the same way, we know that the Eucharist is Jesus himself.
2. Pope Benedict XVI said that in the Holy Eucharist, God takes the bread and the wine and makes them pure bearers of his presence at the deepest part of their being. The change is not empirical; the change is at the substantial level. In other words, at their deepest dimension, the reality of the bread and wine have been changed.
We see something similar in the lives of the saints. Outwardly, they are the same people they used to be. But through the processes of spiritual conversion, when they allow God to enter into their hearts, they are inwardly transformed.
At the deepest part of their being, God makes them bearers of his presence. This is not always easy to outwardly see, and that’s why every now and then God gives us a glimpse of this through the stigmata.
3. Pope Benedict XVI also said that there are many things in life we cannot see, but we believe in them. We know they’re real.
Think of gravity, electricity, Wi-Fi, love, air and numbers. We can’t see these things, but we know they’re real because of their effects, so we have faith in them.
Gravity keeps things steady and predictable. Electricity gives us light and power. Wi-Fi keepsour electronic devices alive. Love helps us to grow and thrive. We need air to breathe, and numbers help us manage the world around us. We can’t see these things, but we know they’re real because we can see their effects.
It’s the same with Jesus in the Eucharist. We can’t see him with our eyes, but we can see the effects of his presence, because wherever Jesus is, people change. They improve. And there’s more chance for peace and reconciliation.
We don’t see Jesus, but we know he’s there because of the effects he has.
4. Bishop Robert Barron says that in the Biblical imagination, things are what God says they are. We see this in Genesis: God speaks, and then things happen. That’s a poetic way of saying that God’s knowledge grounds the reality of things.
God doesn’t look at the world, and therefore know it, like we do. Rather, God knows the world, and thereafter it is. What God says, is.
So, in Genesis 1, God says, ‘Let there be light.’ And there is light. He says, ‘Let there be sky,’ and the sky appears. He says ‘Let there be land,’ and land appears.
Who then is Jesus? He is God. He is the Word himself. Therefore, what he says, is. Jesus says ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ and that’s precisely what follows.
By saying and doing this, God is thereby seizing these elements by the very root of their being and making them bearers of his presence.
5. Eucharistic Miracles
God also occasionally gives us a glimpse of what is really happening in the Mass through his Eucharistic miracles. Over the years there have been dozens of these miracles across 22 countries. Here are three examples:
The first miracle happened in 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when Pope Francis was the bishop. A priest found a host in a candle-stand. He put it in a bowl of water to dissolve it, and kept it in the tabernacle. Eight days later the host had turned red and was oozing blood.
When Pope Francis heard about this, he asked for a sample to be sent to New York for forensic examination. Several scientists studied it, without knowing where it came from.
They all identified the red substance as human heart tissue. The presence of white blood cells indicated that the heart had suffered trauma. It also indicated that the person was still alive when the heart tissue was collected.
The second miracle was in 2008, in Sokolka, Poland. A consecrated host was accidentally dropped at Mass. It was also placed in water to dissolve it, and locked in a safe.
A few days later, that host had developed a red mark on it. It was sent for analysis, and again they found human heart tissue from a live heart.
The third miracle was in Lanciano, in Italy, in 750 AD. As the priest consecrated the bread and wine at Mass, they literally turned into flesh and blood. That flesh and blood are still there today in a reliquary in the Church of St. Legontian.
These relics have been examined by university scientists, and even though they’re some 1300 years old, the specimens are still fresh. Again, they found human heart tissue, and blood type AB – the same as in all the other Eucharistic miracles
When Jesus says, ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ he’s not joking. He is literally giving us his own Sacred Heart. He is giving us himself.
References:
https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/step-by-step-walk-through-the-mass
Robert Barron, Eucharist, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2008.
Charles Belmonte, Understanding the Mass, Gill and McMillan, Dublin, 1997.
Harold Burke-Sivers, The Mass in Sacred Scripture, Aurem Cordis Publications, Portland OR, 2012.
Ricardo Reyes Castillo, The Mass Revealed, Independently Published, Rome, 2023.
Johannes H Emminghaus, The Eucharist – Essence, Form, Celebration, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 1997.
Dominic Grassi & Jow Paprocki, Living the Mass, Loyola Press, Chicago, 2011.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperOne, NY, 2015.
Pierre Loret, The Story of the Mass, Liguori Publications, Liguori MO, 1982.
Alfred McBride, A Short History of the Mass, St Anthony Messenger Press, Cincinnati, OH, 2006.
David M McKnight, A Fresh Look at the Mass, Twenty-Third Publications, New London CT, 2015.