The Body and Blood of Christ

The first Mass that was ever celebrated was celebrated by Christ Himself in the Upper Room the day before His death on the cross. And as a result of His action, something existed which had never existed before – namely, the Blessed Sacrament, bread and wine which had actually, though not visibly page 464 or in any other way that gave evidence to the senses, become the Body and Blood of the Priest who was offering that Sacrifice.

It is significant that the bloodless Sacrifice preceded the bloody one in time. It is as if Our Lord were telling us – ‘Do not ever doubt that I have given my priests the power to perform this miracle. I celebrated the first Mass before I died and was resurrected; I celebrated it when I seemed to all eyes to be just another man among men. I was able to do it because I am God; it did not depend on any factor other than my will, and I have willed also that the power to perform this miracle should be transferred to my priests, so that I should be among you until the end of the world, not in spirit alone, but all that I am, the whole Christ, hidden under the humble appearances of bread and wine.’

The Blessed Sacrament is thus a gift infinitely dear to the hearts of all Catholics. And in this time of change and turbulence within the Church, when it seems (wrongly to some) that the very fabric of our Faith is changing, it may be helpful for one writer to make a few awe-struck assertions about this simple and yet unfathomable Mystery.

I do not knows what theologians mean when they write about ‘transsignification’ – if they are trying to find other words to say what we know already, that Our Lord is alive and present among us under the appearances of bread and wine in the Blessed Sacrament, I will listen to them cheerfully since words change from generation to generation; if, on the other hand, they are trying to say that the Mystery is less or other than this, I will turn away from them and go into a church and kneel down before Our Lord who is alive there in the tabernacle, and pray both for them and for myself. And my knowledge does not come merely from subjective criteria; it comes from the contemporary statements of the Holy Father, whose public and considered words carry with them the authority of the magisterium (teaching authority). Theologians may speculate; by their difficult vocation they may add to the intellectual wealth of the Church; and they may also run the risk of error. But my own safety rests in the magisterium; the teaching authority of the Church herself; and what she has taught she continues to teach – namely, that when any of the faithful approach the Blessed Sacrament they are approaching Christ present among them in His full Godhead and Manhood, though in a manner hidden from our human senses.

With the deepest and fullest respect towards all Protestant believers, I think it is still apparent that the Church’s role as guardian of the Blessed Sacrament is one of the several factors that distinguish her from other Christian denominations. I remember well that when I was an Anglican, it often used to sadden me that the time of the Apostles was past; that Christian life had become thinner and shadowier since that marvellous time when Our Lord walked among us; that we could look back to that time and believe, but that we could not find anywhere in our present lives a corresponding page 465 direct intimacy with Him. I believe that this kind of sadness is obscurely present in the experience of Protestants; for their Communion with Christ is a spiritual one alone, valuable, sincere, communicating a thousand graces, but still lacking the immediacy and fullness which the Blessed Sacrament can alone provide.

When I first knelt down in a Catholic church, in half-darkness before the flickering tabernacle light, and allowed myself to sink silently into the great ocean of that Presence mysteriously contained in the Consecrated Host, the change was as if I had crossed a boundary from one country to another. Behind me was narrowness, in front of me a darkness that was the Light of the World; behind me measured sacrifices and doubtful allegiances, in front of me that Man who is also God and who demands the last atom of our love.

Though experience is not our only teacher, experience deserves to be noticed; and undoubtedly a radical difference in my own life of prayer was one of the first things I noticed when I began to be a Catholic. In those days I would go to a Catholic church as a boy goes to the public baths (the analogy is not irreverent) – with joy and expectation, to stay as long as I could and leave only when the church was shut up for the night. And even then, from time to time, I would come and kneel on the concrete outside the door, to join myself to the Beloved Presence who remained there in the darkness beside the allnight-burning tabernacle lamp. Was this a form of religious insanity? No – it was my first experience of the Eucharistic Presence of Our Lord; and I thank Him that it is still in some measure renewed almost daily.

In that time of transition I was much troubled about the possible validity of Anglican Orders; and I think the crucial pivot of my own conversion was this experience of the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. If – whatever the sincerity and holiness and doctrinal orthodoxy of many Anglicans might be – if the Anglican Church did not actually and undeniably possess this Treasure, and the Catholic Church did possess it – then where my treasure was, my heart would have to be also, and there was no place for me to go except to that Church who is the guardian of the Blessed Sacrament. Certainly logic played a part in my conversion, and the realisation that the magisterium was necessary if the faithful were to be preserved from error; but the heart went before the head, love before intellect, and my heart went before the head, love before intellect, and my heart has been content since that time to rest in the actuality of Our Lord’s Presence. I have never regretted for a single instant the day when I was received into the Catholic Church.

If we deny ourselves the experience of regular visits to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, we may certainly be accused of an unloving neglect of Him; but it is ourselves also that we neglect, our own poor souls, that could be bathed and refreshed regularly by the tremendous peace and silence and joy of His Presence. Certainly these supernatural effects may be imperceptible to our senses. But over a period of years they can influence our lives as a magnet page 466 influences the iron filings that lie within its field of force. People marvelled at the serenity and warmth and magnanimity of Pope John. Where did he get these virtues from? I suggest that he acquired them imperceptibly over a lifetime of constant communication with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. As a piece of wood set in front of a fire will first become dry and then finally perhaps burst into flame itself, so our hearts can be kindled with the Divine Love by a constant association with that sacramental Friend.

I remember in Bombay seeing various Catholic women, the poorest of the poor, kneeling hour after hour on the stones of the churches, in total silence. What were they doing there? Were they praying solely for the necessities of life for themselves and their children? I doubt it. They may have begun by doing this; but their souls had been caught by the tide of the love of God whose Body was present in the tabernacle, and they were freed of their daily and intolerable chains. Such people are the pillars on earth of the supernatural structure which we call the Catholic Church. How do we compare with them? In my own case, I dare not make the comparison.

Devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is not a dispensable thing. He has made Himself accessible to us in this fashion to help us to get rid of our sins.

In one of the Greek legends (a favourite one of mine) the hero Hercules was given the task of cleaning out the stable of a certain king. But the stable was floored by a six-foot-deep layer of the dung of horses, which they had dropped there for more than fifty years, and the dung had set as hard as concrete. Hercules tried for a little to dig into it by conventional means – let us say, by the use of a pick and shovel – but he got nowhere. Then an inspiration took hold of him. He went to a nearby river, and dug a channel so that the whole river was diverted to flow through the stable. At the end of a single day the stable was swept clean.

I find this legend provides me with a basic analogy of the spiritual life. At some level we all find our faults and imperfections beyond our own power to remedy; if we think otherwise, we are certainly deceiving ourselves. But fortunately we do not exactly have to improve ourselves. The role of the will in the spiritual life is essential; yet the will is more like the rudder of a boat than the boat itself. The winds and the tides come direct from God. And – returning to the hero Hercules – our Christian Hercules has always a river near at hand. He has only to go regularly to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and there open his soul to be cleansed and purified; Our Lord is for ever willing to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And the happening has in it a large element of relief and joy.

Was there ever a saint who did not have a strong devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament? – excepting Our Lady, for part of her life, and Saint Joseph and that handful of the earliest Christians who lived and died before the Mass was instituted and they had the visible Presence not accessible to page 467 the senses, but no less corporeal for all that. No doubt Our Lady received Communion daily between the time of Our Lord’s Passion and her own Assumption; and if the Blessed Sacrament was ever reserved at that time, she would also join herself to Him by prayer in its vicinity. In our own times we wonder sometimes at the special atmosphere of religious communities, their quality of charity, their exhibition of a spiritual order and serenity which astonishes our own poverty of soul. ‘Yes; they do it by prayer,’ may be the obvious answer. But to Whom is their prayer directed? Who is the unconscious pivot of their lives? Again and again one finds that the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament lies right at the heart of monastic communities. Without Him – one can even say, without Him present in this special fashion – the extension of His Incarnation in time and place would be less actual and more restricted.

It may be of help to any disturbed believer, uncertain what he should believe in these times of theological controversy, that the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament does not depend in the slightest on what words we use to describe or define that blessed Fact. When the early Christians gathered to celebrate Mass, they had not yet adopted the language of St Thomas Aquinas – they did not yet speak of substance and accident – but their writings and their tomb paintings indicate that they had no doubt whatever that the consecrated bread and wine was in fact the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Perhaps this firm belief, more than any other enabled them to die generously and courageously for the Faith. They knew Our Lord was already with them; they were eager to be wholly joined to Him in Heaven. The Blessed Sacrament was their guarantee of corporate unity.

He did not only make Himself accessible to us in this fashion in order to remove our sins and imperfections. The Lover wishes to be close to the beloved, apart from considerations of vice and virtue; though our vices do hinder union with Him, and our virtues make it more intimate. But because He loves us, He wishes to gather us into His arms; and through His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament He has provided a means by which this can readily occur. We have simply to go to Him; to rest with Him; to talk to Him, or listen to His non-auditory communications; to endure with Him the weight of the sins of the world; to rejoice with Him in the triumph of His Holy Will.

What kind of love is it that does not seek out the One who is loved? Can we claim to love Him truly if we do not go to meet Him in the places where he waits for us with an endless patience? What would transform this country of ours into a place that bore a little more resemblances to paradise? Perhaps it would help if we knelt more often in our churches in the Presence of the One who loves us, and learnt from Him in silence how to love our neighbours better.

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