2024 | SUMMER SCHOOL
The Most Holy Eucharist: Sacrifice, Presence, Banquet
KEYNOTE address by Bishop Columba Macbeth-Green OSPPE
St Thomas Aquinas differentiated between God's love and Human love, and I think it will be important to remember this distinction as we proceed with this talk.
When we love, we behold what is loveable in another, affirm it, and desire that it be preserved.
When God loves, He causes goodness and love to exist in the beloved.
Jesus, being fully God and fully man, united both forms of love in His Person
Our Fallen Nature
The Nature of God as Love has been revealed to us by Him in Sacred Scripture and Tradition throughout the ages. You would think that we all would be on the ‘same page’, so to speak, when it comes to forming an understanding of that Love and how it is manifested in the world in Word, Sacrament, and the Christian life. Many Christians have had problems apprehending, applying, and living these revealed truths of Faith because they tend to confuse things or put their biases on things and that can distort the truth. Unfortunately, this has been done concerning the understanding of the nature of God’s Love, the Blessed Eucharist and the other means of salvation. We Christians, tend to go ‘off track’ in this area because of the effects of Original sin, which has weakened our Intellect and Will.
Our first Parents, Adam and Eve, failed in their test of returning God's love for them by disobedience and committing the Original sin.
God, in his love and mercy, continues to reach out to Adam and Eve and their descendants, including you and me, to redeem us from that Original sin and bring us back to Him in love. That is the history of salvation, and it culminated in the Incarnation when the Word was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us!
Because of the residual effects of Original Sin that we inherited, we now have a weakened nature. When I was 18, I got my first car. It was an old Ute. It was a good old car, and I “Loved it". One of the biggest problems with it, though, was that the front wheels would not stay in alignment.
That meant that if I took my hands off the wheel while driving it would pull to the left. This meant that I always had to consider this weakness and compensate for it by keeping a firm grip on the steering wheel.
This is a little like the way Original sin affects us. Without a firm grip on the wheel, we tend to veer off the road that God has mapped out for us on our journey to Heaven. This is no small thing because, unchecked, it can lead to our rejection of God’s love by sin and in our ultimate damnation.
Our weakened nature can be seen in our spiritual lives in things such as Distractions (things that keep us from pursuing a life of virtue) and the misunderstanding of the Gospel and the truths of Faith. Our weakened nature can incline us to vices like Pride, Envy, and Greed which can retard and distort our relationship with God. God, however, in His Love and Mercy, knows our weaknesses and consistently assists us in keeping a 'grip on the steering wheel of life’; the catch is we need to accept this assistance.
This assistance is primarily in sending Our Lord Jesus Christ to us to redeem us by His Suffering, Death and Resurrection, giving us the Good News in the Gospel and founding a Church in which we can be part of His Mystical Body. Through the Church, we can receive the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as well as Grace to enable us to be conformed more closely to Christ and adhere more fully to the truths of Faith. Through the Church’s teachings and the witnesses of the saints, we are more able to understand and receive God's love and return that love through lives of adoration, perseverance, and charity.
To help focus on a particular aspect of the Christian life and to help strengthen our faith, God also uses Private Revelations and Miracles.
God is love
We use the word love in many different ways in our society. We say we love "ice cream", "Cricket, a Caramel latte, or an old ute. We say we love our spouse and our Country or that we love God.
Surely love is not the same in all these circumstances? The problem is that in many instances, we use the word love to mean like, prefer, desire, romanticism, or even a sexual act.
Let me take you back in time to France in the 17th Century to get a little snapshot of what the spiritual life of a Catholic might have been like and how they might have understood or misunderstood God’s Love.
In an average Parish, you would probably find it quite rigorous. The most popular spiritual doctrine of the time was based on the teaching of the Abbott of Sainte Cyran. These spiritual teachings practised a severe devotion that tried to eliminate any elements of reassurance in a person’s salvation or a personal relationship with Christ. Instead, they aimed to build a Christian life based on a continual and prolonged cycle of penance and contemplation on one's wrongdoings and unworthiness.
You may be told that you were too unworthy to receive the sacraments until as much Penance as feasible could be done before approaching them.
Often, many would only go to communion and Confession once a year (the Church requires a Catholic in good standing to go to Confession and Holy Communion at Easter- the 'Easter Dues’). One local Bishop even bragged that in his Diocese, no lay people went to communion for a whole year!
When you enter a Church, you may find a severe painting of God the Father in Anger or Jesus Christ as a Judge. Sometimes, these paintings are placed in front of the Tabernacle to remind you of God's displeasure with you and your unworthiness.
The preaching at the Mass you attended was on Sin and Damnation and how your chances of salvation are thin.
Let’s take a wander to another Church now, a Jesuit Church. Things are different here. People are encouraged by the priests to confess and receive Holy Communion frequently.
There are people there spending time in prayer and adoration. People in this Church are encouraged to believe that Mercy and the Grace of God can transform a person's soul and that they can be saved if they cooperate with that Mercy and Grace. In the first Church, people were afraid of God; they were afraid of Jesus, and the idea or concept of God's love and Mercy wasn't even ‘on the Radar’.
Let’s come back to 2024.
One of the things we may have noticed in our little imaginary journey is that those beliefs are still around today. However, we might add another - total indifference to God's grace, Mercy, and eternal life.
In France in the 17th Century, they believed in the same doctrine of Jesus being truly present in the Holy Eucharist but understood and responded to that doctrine differently.
It was at that time that Our Lord appeared to St Margaret Mary Alocoque while she was praying before the Blessed Sacrament to nudge us all back to the authentic belief in Our Lord’s Love for us symbolized by His Sacred Heart and present in the Holy Eucharist.
Revelations to St Margaret Mary
While kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque had a vision of Our Lord displaying His Heart as "a throne of fire with flames radiating on every side, more brilliant than the sun and transparent like crystal, with a visible wound from the Cross, surrounded by a crown of thorns and topped by a cross." Pope Pius XII emphasized that devotion to the Sacred Heart is the most effective way to learn to love God.
Our Lord conveyed to St. Margaret Mary that His Sacred Heart symbolizes His immense love for humanity, particularly for the sufferings endured for our redemption and the outrages faced in the Blessed Sacrament. He expressed sadness at humanity's ignorance of His deep desire to be loved in the Blessed Sacrament. He requested special devotions, including Communion on First Fridays and a Holy Hour of Reparation on Thursdays. He recalled His agony in Gethsemane and the Apostles' abandonment on the night of the Eucharist's institution. Our Lord foresaw the neglect and indifference He would face in countless tabernacles over the centuries.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus goes back to the early Church. Like all other true devotion in the Catholic Church, devotion to the Sacred Heart is based on divinely revealed truth.
Two passages in Sacred Scripture reveal the foundations for the Sacred Heart devotion. The first is Christ's invitation to His followers, "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart" (Matt 11:29). The second revealed foundation is Christ's Sacred Heart being pierced on the cross by the soldier's lance (cf. John 19:33-34). From the very beginning, the followers of Christ were devoted to the Heart of Jesus. While the devotion existed before St. Margaret Mary's revelations, her experiences clarified its true meaning and distinguished it with unique qualities of love.
Our focus will be on what we mean when we say the Sacred Heart is the Holy Eucharist. Then, we shall discuss why this is so and how we can put Sacred Heart devotion into practice.
The Sacred Heart is the Holy Eucharist
Why do we equate the Sacred Heart with the Holy Eucharist? Let's understand this by considering the Church's teachings on the term "Sacred Heart," which symbolizes Christ's love in three ways.
Firstly, the Sacred Heart represents God as love. In the Divine Trinity, God is a Community of three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – sharing love eternally. This love is defined by the selfless giving of each Divine Person to the others.
Secondly, God is loving. God brought us into being and created us as beings capable of love. His act of creation is an expression of His eternal love, and He continues to love us unconditionally.
Thirdly, God loves with human feelings. The Sacred Heart symbolizes God's love as the God-man, expressing human emotions and sensitivity. In the Holy Eucharist, God's infinite love becomes tangible. When we receive the Eucharist, we invite the same God who became man out of love to be within us.
The Eucharist is a manifestation of divine genius, allowing us to be intimately close to God. God, as the God-man, experiences human feelings, providing comfort and understanding to us as sensitive beings. Devotion to the Sacred Heart bridges the divine and human, making our prayers reach the very human Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The Church teaches that the Sacred Heart symbolizes God's love in a unique way
- God loves not only as God but also as the God-man, experiencing human feelings, emotions, and sensitivity. This understanding is crucial for us for we are beings with feelings and emotions. In the Holy Eucharist, God is not distant; He is truly a Divine Person with supreme sensitivity. St. Margaret Mary explains that Christ in the Eucharist feels in a way that resonates with our own hypersensitive human experiences.
How, many times do we hear, even from people in love, things like – ‘ I do the cooking and cleaning but never get a ‘thank you’ or ‘It hurts me when so and so passes me in the street and doesn’t even say hello, after all, I have done for them’.
When we come to Him in the Blessed Sacrament, He wants us to tell Him how we feel, and He will tell us how He feels. We should not leave our hearts in the car when we come to Church. When Christ came to earth, He did not leave His Heart in heaven.
Why is the Sacred Heart the Holy Eucharist?
During the Mass at the words of Consecration, the substance of bread and wine is replaced by the whole of Christ – His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Therefore, Christ in the Holy Eucharist is here with His human heart. Is it a living heart? Yes! That is why the revelations our Lord made to St. Margaret Mary about promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart were all made from the Holy Eucharist.
If we needed more ‘Divine Nudging” to see the Sacred Heart and The Holy Eucharist as one, God has provided us with some astounding miracles. Probably the most famous of which is the Miracle of Lanciano.
Lanciano
Throughout the centuries since the Last Supper, Our Lord has reaffirmed the truth of His Real Presence in the Eucharist to strengthen people's wavering faith. In the 8th century, a priest, facing doubt after consecration, witnessed the Sacred Host transform into flesh and the consecrated wine into blood, forming five distinct clots.
Over the centuries, four authentications were conducted, with the latest in 1970 being the most scientifically thorough. Microscopic studies confirmed that the flesh and blood are genuinely human. The flesh is identified as heart tissue, including the myocardium, endocardium, vagus nerve, and left ventricle. The blood identified as type AB and the blood also preserves the chemical makeup of fresh human blood.
This ongoing miracle, lasting over 1200 years without preservatives, defies decay, emphasizing the reality of Jesus' presence in the Eucharist.
Why do we equate the Sacred Heart with the Holy Eucharist? Because the Holy Eucharist is the whole Christ with His human heart. According to St. Margaret Mary, the Sacred Heart is the Holy Eucharist. So, it follows that devotion to the Sacred Heart is devotion to the Holy Eucharist. It is infinite Love Incarnate living in our midst in the Blessed Sacrament.
Love for the Eucharist
Christ's profound love is most vividly expressed in the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament of His love. Corpus Christi, celebrated in June, emphasizes the inseparable connection between devotion to the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart. In the Sacred Host, Jesus, the God-man, resides, and His Heart symbolizes the perfect blend of humanity and divinity. Thus St. Peter Julian Eymard instructs us, "Let us learn to honour the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist. Let us never separate them.
Practicing Devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus
Devotion to the Sacred Heart naturally leads to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a tangible representation of God's infinite love, embodied by the Sacred Heart. The connection between the Sacred Heart, the Eucharist, and love is inseparable. Jesus resides in the Eucharist, and His Heart is a vessel of boundless love. The Eucharist is illuminated by the love of Jesus, making the Sacred Heart essential to understanding it. By embracing the love of the Sacred Heart, we draw closer to Jesus in Holy Communion.
Receiving the Eucharist is akin to carrying fire in our hearts – it ignites our love for Jesus. According to St. Bernard, the Blessed Sacrament is the epitome of love, where Jesus offers Himself, fostering deep affection for Him from us. St. Francis de Sales advises that our primary goal in receiving the Eucharist should be to grow in the love of God, fostering intimacy with Him. Regular visits to the Blessed Sacrament, moments of prayer, and adoration are vital for this purpose.
Our Lord requested special devotions, including Communion on First Fridays and a Holy Hour of Reparation on Thursdays, recalling His agony in Gethsemane and the Apostles' abandonment on the night of the
Eucharist's institution. Our Lord foresaw the neglect and indifference He would face in countless tabernacles over the centuries and asks us to console Him. Prayer and Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament are opportunities to console Our Lord by our loving presence.
