Everybody’s Doing It: Church Tradition on the Eucharist

Yesterday’s post (I hope) made it pretty clear that Scripture supports the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist.  In all things, though, we need to look to Church Tradition as well.  1 Thes 2:13 and 2 Thes 2:15–among many other verses–tell us that we need both Scripture and the inspired Tradition of the Church in order to come to a fuller understanding of our faith.  But that’s an argument for another day.

Church Fathers

Suffice it to say that whether or not you believe in the Church’s ability to speak infallibly, it’s hard to argue with the unanimous tradition of the early Church Fathers.  After all, these guys were only a few generations removed from Jesus–early in the game of telephone, if you will.  It stands to reason that their understanding of the faith has been less corrupted than what it might have become centuries later.

This was the clear understanding of the reformers.  Facing an ornate, bureaucratic Church weighed down by what appeared to be the accumulated “traditions of men” (Mark 7:8), Luther and his colleagues sought to go “ad fontes,” to the sources.  Their theory was that a Christianity 1500 years removed from Christ couldn’t possibly know what Christ taught unless it looked to the early Christian Church.  Now, Luther tended to look at Scripture alone, but his theory seems to indicate that the earliest Christians were almost as reliable.

So when we’re talking about the Eucharist, let’s start with the earliest Christians.  If we’ve got a consensus in Scripture and a consensus in the early Church, I don’t think there’s much left to argue.

The Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead. -St. Ignatius of Antioch, around 100 AD

As Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. -St. Justin Martyr, around 150 AD

Could not Christ’s word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature. -St. Ambrose of Milan, 4th century

Since Christ himself has declared the bread to be his body, who can have any further doubt? Since he himself has said quite categorically, “This is my blood,” who would dare to question it and say that it is not his blood? -St. Cyril of Jerusalem, late 4th century

Cyril asks the exact question here: who, John Calvin, are you to say that Jesus didn’t mean what he said?  It seems that Cyril was just making a point, though, not addressing anyone in particular; history tells us of absolutely no mainstream Christian denying the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist during his time.

Actually, we have no record of anything of the kind for more than 1000 years after the time of Christ.  Berengarius of Tours in 1088 is the first Christian on record as denying that the Eucharist is the true body and blood of Jesus.  This idea of a “symbolic” or “spiritual” presence of Jesus was so foreign to the early Church that nobody even considered it for a thousand years and when someone did they branded him a heretic and ran him out of town.

You want to tell me that 1000 years of Christians were all completely wrong on this central mystery of their faith?  Doesn’t sound ad fontes to me.

Saints Throughout History

The Saints’ obsession with the Eucharist didn’t stop in the early Church, though.  Love of the Blessed Sacrament is a hallmark of sanctity, found in the lives of every Saint we have adequate information on.  Here are some highlights:

 Material food first changes into the one who eats it, and then, as a consequence, restores to him lost strength and increases his vitality.  Spiritual food, on the other hand, changes the person who eats it into itself.  Thus the effect proper to this Sacrament is the con­ver­sion of a man into Christ, so that he may no longer live, but Christ lives in him; conse­quent­ly, it has the double effect of restoring the spiritual strength he had lost by his sins and defects, and of increasing the strength of his virtues. -St. Thomas Aquinas, 13th century

I don’t know how many of you are aware of how desperately Catholic Tolkien was, but I hope you see the connection between Aquinas’ understanding of the Eucharist and Tolkien’s description of elven lembas (waybread–viaticum, anyone?).

The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die. It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet, this way bread of the Elves had potency that increased as travelers relied upon it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (For more on lembas, check this out.)

I know, right?  Here’s St. Francis of Assisi, “the most Christlike man since Christ”:

And just as He appeared before the holy Apostles in true flesh, so now He has us see Him in the Sacred Bread. Looking at Him with the eyes of their flesh, they saw only His Flesh, but regarding Him with the eyes of the spirit, they believed that He was God. In like manner, as we see bread and wine with our bodily eyes, let us see and believe firmly that it is His Most Holy Body and Blood, True and Living. (12th century)

Let’s listen to the Little Flower:

Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you–for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart. -St. Thérèse of Lisieux, 19th century

Or her namesake, Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now.

You can find tons of these all over the internet because the Saints agree with Christ: this is his body.

Regular Folk

I just couldn’t leave this smorgasbord of quotations on the Eucharist without my very favorites, from regular people (okay, geniuses, but not Saints).

Blaise Pascal, famous for being a philosopher and a mathematician and one of the greatest minds of all time, sums it up quite nicely:

How I hate such foolishness as not believing in the Eucharist!  If the Gospel is true, if Jesus Christ is God, where is the difficulty?

Tolkien didn’t stop at allusion when discussing his love of the Eucharist.  In a letter to his son, he explained what the love of his life was:

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament…..There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that.

Twenty years later, his feelings were much the same:

 I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning – and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again: but alas! I indeed did not live up to it…Out of wickedness and sloth I almost ceased to practice my religion – especially at Leeds, and at 22 Northmoor Road. Not for me the Hound of Heaven, but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger.

This, friends–this is what it means to be a Catholic.  To hunger for the Eucharist, to be enamored of Christ’s body and blood, here present to us at all times, sinners that we are.

I leave you with the words of Flannery O’Connor, an American Catholic author from the early 20th century.  She says what we, perhaps, would say: I can’t explain it, but I believe it with everything that I am.

I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, “A Charmed Life.”) She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. . . . Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.

That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.

All the rest of life is expendable.

Tomorrow: Source and Summit and Everything in Between: Why the Eucharist.