Dominica XX per annum, B

18 August, A.D. MMXXIV

            Last Sunday, we saw how there are two “this is my Body”s – the “this is my body” of Holy Thursday, when Christ gave His body in the Eucharist to His Apostles for the first time, and the “this is my body” of Good Friday, when He gave His body to be crucified. The “this is my body” of Good Friday is anticipated at the Last Supper, and the “this is my body” of the Last Supper is completed on the Cross on Good Friday.

            We also celebrated last week the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, which reminded us that we are beings fundamentally oriented towards eternity, with a new heavenly destiny. We saw that the banquet shared with us by Christ in the Eucharist is a foretaste of what the Blessed Mother and the saints and angels do in Heaven – although only She in its fullness, because only She is there in Her body as well as Her soul. Christ is the living bread come down from Heaven, and so, as Catholics, we worship Him in a heavenly way, recognizing our destiny as Christians remade in His image and likeness by Baptism, who are called to partake of a foretaste of that destiny here and now in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.

            Today we can see that there is another “this is my body,” that of Easter Sunday. He is the living bread come down from Heaven. His body, in the Eucharist and in the Church who celebrates the Eucharist, is alive.

            We can’t emphasize enough just how hard it is to stop thinking of the Eucharist as a thing rather than as a Person. When we say that we receive Christ’s Body and Blood, our minds so often go to thinking of them as things. A body is a thing I have. Blood is a thing in my body. Even if we consider the fuller formula: Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, we go right back to things. Soul: A thing that lives in my body (not actually true, but a common misconception); Divinity: A property of a person. Things and more things.

            But in the Eucharist, we do not receive a thing. We receive a Person. Of course, as Catholics, we know that, but in the way that we speak and think about the Eucharist we keep falling back into the thing mode of thinking. (Or, in philosophical language, we “reify” the Eucharist.) How do we stop from thinking of the Eucharist, of Christ’s Body and Blood as a thing and instead recognize that we receive a Person?

            I think that one of the most important remedies the Church offers for this reification – “thingification” – of the Eucharist is the doctrine of concomitance. The doctrine of concomitance – solemnly confirmed in five ecumenical councils, including the Second Vatican Council – teaches that either species of Holy Communion contains the entirety of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. Which is to say, He is completely and personally present. Though we say “the body of Christ” when distributing the Host, this is not merely His Body – it is His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

            Now, I think this frequently comes off as a hand-wavy theology trick that people suspect that priests are using to not need to purify a bunch of chalices (or get a bunch of sinus infections from purifying all those chalices), re-clericalizing the liturgy by eliminating Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, and in the process depriving the lay faithful of the chance to receive the Precious Blood. “I know that it doesn’t feel like you are really receiving the Precious Blood, but there’s this thing called concomitance! It’s this big fancy word that enables me to do whatever I want, because you’re still really receiving the Precious Blood even though that seems to be manifestly false! Ah-ha!” (That’s the handwavy part.)

            The first evidence I’ll offer for the doctrine of concomitance is that if God is able to turn bread into Christ’s Body, He can certainly turn bread into Christ’s Body and Blood. Receiving the Host does not objectively feel any more like receiving just His Body than it feels like receiving His Body and Blood. If it does feel like that to you, your mind is playing tricks on you, because nothing about eating an otherwise unappetizing wafer feels at all like eating flesh.

            However, this argument is a little dangerous, because it can also devolve into presumptuously assuming God will do things that He obviously can do, but has never promised to do: If God can turn wine into the Precious Blood, then He can also keep Father from getting a cold from purifying the chalice. Well, God could clearly also eliminate all colds, sinus infections, and every much worse illness from the world. But He quite evidently doesn’t, because the order of nature is generally good, and excessive divine interventions in the order of nature would incline us to be superstitious.

            The better reason for believing in the doctrine of concomitance, and the one that helps remedy the “thingification” (or, reification if you want to be precise) of the Eucharist, is this: He is the living bread that came down from Heaven. His Body in the Eucharist is not the dead body on the Cross on Good Friday. It is the living body that has been gloriously restored and recreated on Easter Sunday morning. In a living body, the flesh is animated by blood. A body without blood – flesh without blood – is a dead body. And at that point, what you have actually is a thing rather than a person. A dead body is only analogously the person whose name we give it. It is really a corpse – a thing.

            While I recognize that distribution of Holy Communion under both species is allowed by the Church, and even sometimes held up as the ideal (provided, at least, that there are sufficient priests and deacons to distribute from the Chalice), and that Communion under both kinds is normative in non-Western Catholic rites, the Roman Church has been wise over the centuries to distribute Holy Communion to the faithful primarily in the Host, not only because of concern for reverence to the Sacred Species, but to emphasize this essential fact: We do not receive a thing, but a Person, and a living Person, a living Person whose body, because it is alive, necessarily also includes His blood. After all, blood is a part of the human body, unless it has been removed, in which case, it is not a person anymore, but just a thing, a thing that could be very useful to another person who might receive it in a transfusion, but again, just a thing.

            This is why I worry that – though distribution of Holy Communion under both kinds can be legitimate – when we insist on it as necessary, when we think that we are missing out by not having it, we are at risk of falling back into thinking of the Body and Blood of Christ as things, and the Body of Christ as a dead body, rather than the living body that brings life to those who receive It. If the Body we receive is living, if we really receive a Person rather than a thing, there is nothing we could possibly be missing out on.

            Over the past few weeks, I’ve been arguing for a rather sober understanding of the Sacred Liturgy, one that sees the celebration of the mysteries of our faith as a solemn re-presentation of a Passover sacrifice.  But if we continue with reading the Bread of Life discourse through Ephesians, as I said that we were going to do, there seems to be a contradiction when St. Paul tells us to: “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts.”

Paul is describing the spiritual extasy that comes from receiving the living body. Just as partaking in a symbol could not possibly be a reason for condemnation when received unworthily, so likewise partaking in a symbol could not bring this kind of joy. The key is to understand that the Eucharist is the living body of the Lord.

The spiritual extasy that Paul describes as the result of receiving the Lord’s Body and Blood is only possible by receiving a Body that is alive. As Catholics, rather than focus on what we might be missing out on, we should keep our focus on what we really receive: The living body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord – always a person, and never a thing.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

XX Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV