Often while attending Mass, I find myself thinking about something my third grade teacher, Mrs. Elmes, told me when I was goofing around with some friends during a school liturgy some twenty-five years ago. Just before the start of the Eucharistic Prayer, Mrs. Elmes noticed me acting up and came over and said something that I have never forgotten. After the obligatory “be quiet or else,” she said that if I was to give my full attention to the Priest at any time during the Mass, now was the time to do it, because nothing in the Mass was more important than the Consecration.
Over the years, I have come to realize how profound a point my teacher was making. Certainly, there can be little argument regarding the centrality and importance of the Eucharist in the life of the Church. Given this significance, it stands to reason that our utmost attention is required during the Consecration, and that nothing should distract us from the miracle of Christ present during Mass.
Theologian Regis Martin captures this truth in his wonderful 2003 book What is the Church?: Confessions of a Cradle Catholic, where he proclaims:
Let’s face it, here is the most fearful and holy of all mysteries in which our lives as baptized children of God are centered. It is the only mystery, moreover, in which the unseen Lord of the universe — the ineffably transcendent Other — freely consents to become wholly present in an act of perfect, unsurpassed self-donation. Who among us is equal to an event as august as this?
Wow! Clearly, such an event requires one’s full attention!
This critical insight, which invokes the Eucharistic heart of the Church, is one that the Church itself has been making for many years. For example, at the Council of Trent (1542-1563), the Church insisted that Christ is present in the Eucharist in an absolutely singular way (i.e., a presence par excellance) and did not waiver from that stance in the face of multiple protestant teachings regarding a lesser presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Thus, the Tridentine Fathers were aware that Christ’s unique presence in the Eucharist was at the center of the Church’s existence.
The Bishops present at the Second Vatican Council were likewise aware of the Eucharistic heart of the Church, and declared in Lumen Gentium that the Eucharistic sacrifice is the “fount and apex of the whole Christian life.” In this regard, Lumen Gentium echoed the prophetic statements of Henri Cardinal de Lubac, a French theologian, who (nearly a decade before the Second Vatican Council in his book The Splendor of the Church) acknowledged that the Eucharist is “the sacrament of sacraments” and stated that “[w]hen we get down to bedrock, ‘there is contained the whole mystery of our salvation.’”
In this regard, I recall a wise theology professor once stating that “[t]he fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” I do not recall exactly what he was talking about (oops!), but I have always remembered the phrase. Used in this context, the Eucharist, which is the true presence of Christ, is “the one big thing” that we as Catholic “hedgehogs” must know. The Eucharist is Christ Himself, in all his glory and beautiful self-sacrificing love, ceaselessly present in our midst. The Church, as the Bride and Body of Christ, in all its levels of membership — Militant, Suffering and Triumphant — is unified and continuously fed and strengthened by that presence.
The bottom line is that the centrality and importance of the Eucharist in the life of the Church cannot be overstated. Borrowing again from Regis Martin’s What Is the Church?, the Eucharist is the “irreducibly unique symbol of our faith” and “forms the whole basis of Catholic identity, igniting the spark of that divine conflagration Christ came into this world to set.” Or as another brilliant theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, put it in his short but powerful book Razing the Bastions, “No Holy Communion is like another.” Rather, each communion, each Mass, is a singular event, and one that is super-charged with the Holy Spirit, filling each individual Christian with the grace required to go out and be Christ to the world.
Thus, the Eucharist is indeed the heart of the Church, and, as Mrs. Elmes suggested, we best pay close attention.
This critical insight, which invokes the Eucharistic heart of the Church, is one that the Church itself has been making for many years. For example, at the Council of Trent (1542-1563), the Church insisted that Christ is present in the Eucharist in an absolutely singular way (i.e., a presence par excellance) and did not waiver from that stance in the face of multiple protestant teachings regarding a lesser presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Thus, the Tridentine Fathers were aware that Christ’s unique presence in the Eucharist was at the center of the Church’s existence.
The Bishops present at the Second Vatican Council were likewise aware of the Eucharistic heart of the Church, and declared in Lumen Gentium that the Eucharistic sacrifice is the “fount and apex of the whole Christian life.” In this regard, Lumen Gentium echoed the prophetic statements of Henri Cardinal de Lubac, a French theologian, who (nearly a decade before the Second Vatican Council in his book The Splendor of the Church) acknowledged that the Eucharist is “the sacrament of sacraments” and stated that “[w]hen we get down to bedrock, ‘there is contained the whole mystery of our salvation.’”
In this regard, I recall a wise theology professor once stating that “[t]he fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” I do not recall exactly what he was talking about (oops!), but I have always remembered the phrase. Used in this context, the Eucharist, which is the true presence of Christ, is “the one big thing” that we as Catholic “hedgehogs” must know. The Eucharist is Christ Himself, in all his glory and beautiful self-sacrificing love, ceaselessly present in our midst. The Church, as the Bride and Body of Christ, in all its levels of membership — Militant, Suffering and Triumphant — is unified and continuously fed and strengthened by that presence.
The bottom line is that the centrality and importance of the Eucharist in the life of the Church cannot be overstated. Borrowing again from Regis Martin’s What Is the Church?, the Eucharist is the “irreducibly unique symbol of our faith” and “forms the whole basis of Catholic identity, igniting the spark of that divine conflagration Christ came into this world to set.” Or as another brilliant theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, put it in his short but powerful book Razing the Bastions, “No Holy Communion is like another.” Rather, each communion, each Mass, is a singular event, and one that is super-charged with the Holy Spirit, filling each individual Christian with the grace required to go out and be Christ to the world.
Thus, the Eucharist is indeed the heart of the Church, and, as Mrs. Elmes suggested, we best pay close attention.
Praise God!!
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