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JMJ
Holy Thursday
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| "THIS IS My BODY." |
At last, the long-looked-for day has come
when Our Lord is to fulfil the promise He made to the Jews that He would give
us the living bread... of God (cf., Jn.
6.26-59 in our post “The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of theHoly Eucharist”): His Flesh – Meat indeed (Jn. 6.56). At the Last
Supper, Our Savior took bread and blessed and gave to His disciples and said: “This
IS My BODY.” Then taking the chalice, He gave thanks, and gave to them, saying:
“...This IS My BLOOD...” (Mt. 26.26,28). Now in these words of the ‘consecration’
it is the same Almighty God, Jesus Christ, Who, in the beginning (Jn. 1.1; Gen. 1.1; cf., Col. 1.16), SAID: Be light made (Gen. 1.3); Who once
changed water into wine; Who gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf,
speech to the dumb, and life to the dead. When God speaks, whatever He commands
does not entertain any impossibility and it is done in an instant. For He spoke and they were created: He
commanded and they were made (Ps. 32.9). At the Last Supper, by the
almighty power of His words alone, He instantaneously changed the substance of
the bread into His Body and the substance of the wine into His Blood (the Catholic
dogma of Transubstantiation) but without changing the sensible qualities or
appearances of the bread and the wine. “In a word,” says Fr. Michael Muller,
C.S.S.R., “whatever [the accidents] is
capable of being perceived by the senses remains, but the substance, which is perceived by the understanding alone, and not by the senses, is changed.”
The Protestants confess, as Catholics do,
that in God there are three Divine Persons; but, only Catholics truly believe
and confess that the power of the Son of God is “supreme over all things... that
His omnipotence can accomplish the great work which we admire and adore in the
Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist” (the Roman Catechism or the Catechism of the
Council of Trent). They also confess that he who believes in Jesus Christ hath everlasting life (Jn. 6.47) but
only Catholics go as far as Jesus Christ would bid them: He that eateth My Flesh, and
drinketh My Blood, hath everlasting life (Jn. 6.55). Calvin said: “The
bread signifies only the Body of
Jesus Christ.” Luther said: “No, the bread and the wine, in the moment of their reception by the faithful, becomes, by the faith of the communicant, the
Body and Blood of Christ.” But, according to the Protestants’ own criterion of “sola
scriptura” (only what the Bible says) by which they acknowledge a teaching to
be divine, nowhere in the Sacred Scriptures do we read “signifies” and nowhere do
we read also that it is “in the moment of their reception... by the faith of
the recipient.” The Eternal Word of God pronounces over the bread: This is My Body – and the same the Catholic Church affirms; St. John
Chrysostom, a great Father and Doctor of the Church: “Let us obey, not
contradict God, although what He says
may seem contrary to our reason and
sight. His words cannot deceive, our
senses our easily deceived.”
The sensists or the materialists object
simply because they pretend that the world of reality encompasses only what
their five senses could perceive and that the mind can rise no higher than the
physical. And the Savior, after that He has already worked many incontrovertible
miracles to prove that He is really present in the Sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist, is not going to win them to His love according to the diabolical
demand that He prove Himself to be the Almighty by openly displaying, every
time that the priest pronounces the words of consecration of Our Lord, His
awesome and ‘cool’ miraculous powers – manifesting on the altar the sensible
qualities of His glorious Body, bearing the marks of His wounds, His merciful
countenance, and His radiant majesty. They
are asking for that reward which God reserves for the blessed alone! Blessed are they that have not seen and yet
believe (Jn. 20.29).
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