The following essay is from the November-December 1923 issue of the Hungarian Catholic periodical “Örökimádás” (“Eternal Adoration”) and was written by Dr. Endre Werdenich. “Örökimádás” ran from 1900 until 1944, and the issues can be downloaded in PDF format from the page of the Péter Pázmány Electronic Library.
One of the greatest maladies of our time is the weakening of faith in divine providence in the souls of many people. Faith in a God who not only cares for all of humanity, but also focuses His attention on each individual person, and takes each individual person into His heart as if He had nothing else to do but care for that one person, as if He had nothing else to do but care for me. Because of the great value of life contained in this faith, I feel that when I have to proclaim the glory of the Eucharistic Lord Jesus in this dwelling place, I am undertaking a task pleasing to God if I highlight a few thoughts from the Eucharistic doctrine of the ancients; just one or two thoughts that are excellently suited to turning our souls toward the Eucharist as the strongest pillar of this faith.
1. Faithfully adhering to the teaching of the Church of all times, we profess that through consecration, the substance of bread is changed into the Body of Christ and the substance of wine is changed into the Blood of Christ. Catholic theology, which, like every other branch of science, seeks to advance as far as possible, cannot be blamed for acknowledging the mystery inherent in transubstantiation while at the same time striving to explain it in some way. This raises the question: how does the Eucharistic transubstantiation take place? When I mention this fact, I do not do so because I believe that this question has any practical value in itself. I mention it only because I want to point out that the Church Fathers knew nothing about the explanations of transubstantiation in modern theology. Nor did the great leaders of medieval scholasticism, Albert the Great, St. Thomas, Alexander Halensis, St. Bonaventure, and the Roman Aegidius Colonna, St. Thomas’ most distinguished disciple, knew anything about it. These great scholars, although they had the necessary knowledge and the inclination to explain everything possible, bow down in reverence before the mystery of transubstantiation and abandon any attempt at explanation. Why? Because they saw from the doctrine of the Eucharist of the early Fathers that any attempt at explanation in this area would jeopardize the complete identity of the Eucharistic Body and the heavenly Body of Christ, an identity that the early Fathers so firmly professed. They saw as endangered the identity that preserves and maintains intact in the Eucharistic Body not only the inner life of the heavenly Body, but also the form of the heavenly Body with all its beauty. Following in the footsteps of the ancients, we too must proclaim and preserve intact this beauty of the Eucharistic Body. If anyone wants to explain it, let them do so, but let them do so in such a way that their explanation also preserves the heavenly beauty of the Eucharistic body. For this dogmatic statement alone, it was worth briefly looking back at the humble faith of our ancestors regarding the mystery of transubstantiation. Standing on this ancient foundation, we can say without the slightest distortion of the meaning of our words: in the Eucharist, there is the same Blood and the same Body in which our Lord Christ rose from the dead. Here is the humanity of Christ, excluding any metabolism or organic alteration that would be incompatible with His now glorious Body. The Eucharistic Body is therefore composed of the same muscles, muscle fibers, nerve fibers, and bone tissue that the divine omnipotence reunited into a living Body at the dawn of the first Easter; it is composed of the same drops of blood that our Lord Christ shed for us during His Passion. — With the senses of faith, during Holy Communion, the Christian soul can almost feel, can almost touch on this Holy Bbody and Blood the sharp points of the nails and whips, the rough and prickly thorns of the crown pressed into the Holy Head, as if Longinus had just pierced that heart; that heart that unites with the soul of the communicant, immersing his will, his intellect, and his heart into the blazing sea of flames, into the burning furnace of heavenly love for the heavenly Father, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the chosen saints. All worthy communicants are united with the whole Christ reigning in heaven with His whole inner life. Therefore, I have no reason to fear that the Savior’s love for me will be diminished to my detriment, or that it will not be strong enough, or that it will be less strong because the Eucharistic Jesus must love and care for others besides me. There is not, there cannot be, a hunger or thirst in my soul, no capacity to receive grace that the Savior cannot satisfy. Herein lies the profound practical value of our holy faith, which today’s people, who find it so difficult to believe in the goodness of a providential God, so desire: it places in our souls and hearts a God who not only cares for the multitude, but who also cares for me, who has truly and completely become mine, who is truly my Lord and my God: Dominus meus et Deus meus.
2. The faith of the early Fathers also sees the grace of the Eucharist as grounded in the fact that the Holy Body and Blood, under the appearance of the Eucharistic species, act on the soul as food and drink. In addition, however, the church Fathers discover a certain title to grace in the Holy Scriptures, namely that in the Eucharistic nourishment the soul comes into close contact with the holy humanity of the Savior. The Lord Jesus’ promise: “He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever”, (John 6:59) leads the Church Fathers to draw a parallel between the Eucharist and the mortal body of the Savior, whose blessing hand, by a mere touch, at the command of the God-man, healed so many people both in body and soul, so that “all the multitude sought to touch him, for virtue went out from him, and healed all.” (Luke 6:19) From this consideration, the early Fathers derive the doctrine of the “life-giving body,” and in this power of the holy Body, namely the Eucharistic Body, St. Cyril of Alexandria and later the Council of Ephesus (can. 11) see one of the strongest proofs that the humanity of Christ was united with the eternal Word in His person.Thus, the Eucharistic Body was already at the center of the entire mystery and Eucharistic worship in the early Church. In the faith of the ancients, the Eucharistic Holy Blood is no less capable of satisfying the hunger and thirst of the soul and completely satisfying her receptivity than the Eucharistic Body; yet in the ancient doctrine of the life-giving Body, it seems that both the Holy Body and the Holy Blood have a different effect on the soul of the communicant. The Eucharistic Blood is indeed the mediator between divine power and the soul, but it is primarily a stream imbued with divine grace, through which grace flows into the soul; the Holy Body, on the other hand, is not only the bearer of this power, but also a special conduit through which divine power connects with the soul; It is connected to her in a special way, just as the Savior healed by the touch of his hand during his earthly life. Hence the special reverence with which the early Church treats the Eucharistic Body during the rite of Holy Communion, and one of the reasons why the practice of receiving Communion under the appearance of bread alone has become so prevalent in the Church. Canon 18 of the I. Council of Nicea (325), trying to put an end to abuses by deacons introduced in many places, orders that the deacons should not dare to give Communion to presbyters under the appearance of bread, since this form of Communion is a prerogative of the presbyteral authority. According to the old ritual books published by Mabillon, Ordo Romanus I and V, even in the Roman Church’s Holy Mass, the deacon presented the chalice to the presbyters and the celebrating bishop; However, under the appearance of bread, he could only give the Eucharist to the lay faithful when no bishop or presbyter was present, as Pope Gelasius I re-regulated at the end of the 5th century, referring to older canons. (Ep. Ad eppos Lucaniae cap. 8. ML. 59, 51.) The role of the Eucharistic Body and Blood in the transmission of grace, as understood by the early Church, appears separately, if not as essential characteristics, then at least as indelible nuances. Theologians sought to establish this somewhat peculiar effect of the Eucharistic Body on the one hand and the Eucharistic Blood on the other, with regard to the Eucharistic species, from the world of ideas in the Holy Scriptures, in which bread strengthens the weak and wine comforts and cheers up the sad. (Psalm 103:15) St. Thomas, the greatest theologian of the Eucharist, also embraces this when he sings about the Eucharist, and then the Church repeats it year after year in the Lord’s Day officium: Dedit fragilibus corporis ferculum, dedit et tristibus sanguinis poculum. He gave His Body as strength to the weak and the cup of His Blood as consolation to the sorrowful.
3. This strengthening bread is needed precisely by the soul clinging to the Eucharistic Jesus, because according to the faith of the early Church the Eucharist not only gives strength for the struggle, but is also an abundant source of trials. “We offer You this sacrifice,” says the Church in one of the Masses of Lent (secr. fer. 5. post Dom. 3. Quadr.), “from which all martyrdom originated, which is the source of all martyrdom.” How many Christian souls, faithful to their God and to Jesus in the Eucharist, have drawn comfort and spiritual strength from this majestic prayer in the early Church! How many sufferers can be comforted by this reflection when they receive assurance from the Church’s ancient public prayer, repeated every year, that their sufferings are almost literally counted as crosses, splinters from the cross of the Lord Jesus intended for them. When she [the soul] understands that her trials are only the fruits of her faithfulness, of her prayers and self-offerings to the sacramental Savior during Holy Communion and Holy Mass, of her oft-repeated request: Thy will be done. And because the Church considers the sufferings that weigh on the shoulders of true Christians to be a divine gift, a gift that comes precisely from the Eucharist: for this very reason, at every Holy Mass, she places all the sorrows and troubles, all the adversities of those present, as it were, on the paten. In one of the prayers of the Offertory, it almost sinks them into the sacrificial chalice, uniting them with the sacrificial heart of the eternal High Priest, so that in the reality of the sacrifice, buried in the divine sacrifice, our sacrifice, our self-offering, may also rise as a pleasant fragrance to the throne of the heavenly Father. “Lord,” thus prays the Church, “in spiritu humilitatis et in animo contrito, with hearts humbled by the weight of suffering and souls contrite in the knowledge of our sins, may we find acceptance with You, and may our sacrifice be pleasing to You, our Lord and God.” From this sacrifice come the patriotic pains and anxieties of the soul living the Eucharistic life, and as a gift pleasing to God, they return to the sacrifice; pains to which the heart of the Savior was so sensitive that He shed tears over the foreseen ruin of His homeland. Is it not a striking phenomenon that the divine Savior, who could have come during the golden age of his nation, at a time when the legislative chambers of Rome and Sparta resounded with the martial glory of the Jewish people, appeared on the stage of humanity at a time when this people was barely surviving politically and, moreover, was the object of contempt of the great nations that ruled the world at that time? The patriotic sorrow of a man who is distant from the Savior and indifferent to Him is only bitterness and pain; on the other hand, for a soul united with Him, even this sorrow is grace, a heavenly gift intended as a Eucharistic sacrifice, and a connection with the patriotic tears of the God-Man.
4. In the teaching of the early Fathers, the Christian soul needs the Eucharist not only to gain strength, but also so that her spiritual life and communion with Christ may not remain incomplete. In the faith of the ancients, the life of grace obtained through holy baptism is not subject to our sensory observation, but with an inner impetus it gravitates toward the Eucharist, demanding the Eucharist as its culmination, after which it strives; and this gravitation, not to say striving, does not come to rest until it is established in the sacramental grace of the Eucharist. One might ask why Canon 77 of the Council of Elvira, held around 305, perhaps during the great persecutions, calls Christians who have received the grace of the Eucharist or Holy Mass justus, righteous. Were not the grace of Christianity and Confirmation sufficient to obtain this name, why was the Eucharist also necessary for this? The Catholic doctrine expounded during the Pelagian controversy, the beliefs of St. Augustine, Pope St. Innocent I, and other Church Fathers of that era regarding the mutual relationship between Baptism and the Eucharist shed light even on this question. Infants, says St. Innocent, cannot attain eternal life without Baptism because it is written that without Holy Communion there can be no life in us. (John 654-55. epist, ad Concil. Milevit. PL. 56470.) According to the ancients, therefore, the divine command ordering Holy Communion is fulfilled on the part of the child through Holy Baptism, on the basis that, in the grace of Baptism, the soul already begins to enjoy the grace of the Eucharist. The adult Christian, however, must be determined not to be satisfied with this initial stage of life, but to seek satisfaction for the longing and striving of his soul for the Eucharist. In the completion of the union of grace with Christ, the true goodness and beauty of the Eucharist as good grace shines forth, in accordance with its Greek name. Its goodness, I say, insofar as the goodness by its very nature communicates itself to others, voluntarily overflowing onto others. Here, Christ gives himself completely, to everyone, all at once, without delay; not little by little, drop by drop, but by immersing the soul that approaches Him in His holy humanity. Here His beauty also shines forth, because He gives me His glorious and inexpressibly beautiful humanity and, completing the spiritual life that longs for fulfillment, He creates the supernatural harmony for the soul, for the whole person.
“Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!” [Zech 9:17] This is what the prophet asks when he prophesies the blessings of the Eucharist. And ever since Catholic life began and the Blessed Sacrament became the center of that life, the faithful of the Eucharistic Jesus see in their souls that this question, together with the answer that follows it, shines on the door of every tabernacle as the inscription of the greatest treasure of our worship. “For what is the good thing of him, and what is his beautiful thing, but the corn of the elect, and wine springing forth virgins?” (Zech 6:19)
St. John Armenian Catholic Church in Sohrol, Iran. Image by Farzin Izaddoust dar, CC-BY-SA 4.0, here.
