The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

Today is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (celebration of the Body of Christ) in the Roman Catholic tradition. The feast was officially proclaimed by Pope Urban IV in 1263 after being requested by the mystic Juliana of Liège on repeated visions of Christ in which, according to her recorded confessions, the Saviour asked for a celebration of the act of his sublime love to humanity in which he gives life to those who partake in  the Holy Communion i.e. The Eucharist or the Mystery of Thanksgiving. St.Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of Catholic intellectuals in history, composed a liturgy for the feast and prepared a hymn that is still sung today in adoration of Christ present in the Eucharist.  Thomas was so absorbed by the beauty of the Eucharist that he had a vision after which he said that all what he wrote which amounts to the works of a lifetime of genius is like a straw compared to what was revealed to him. If such a great intellectual could, in humility, confess his utter lack of knowledge of the Mystery of God, and yet fall in so much love of his Saviour and God, how about us who claim to know much?

Here are words of the hymn Pange Lingua 
Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail,
Lo! o'er ancient forms departing
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.
To the everlasting Father,
And the Son Who reigns on high
With the Holy Ghost proceeding
Forth from Each eternally,
Be salvation, honor, blessing,
Might and endless majesty.
Amen.


You can listen to the hymn here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8fVgqTtPfA&feature=fvwrel

There is more evidence to show our brothers who do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. One of the miracles took place in 700 AD when a Basilian Monk celebrating Mass started to have doubt as to whether Christ could possibly be present in the bread on the altar after consecration. The Miracle of Lanciano took place at the altar. In it the priest saw the bread change into living flesh and the wine change into 5 globules of blood. has been scientifically verified in 1970 by Professor Edoardo Linoli and Professor Bertelli of the University of Siena. In 1973, the World Health Organization  appointed a commission to verify Linoli's conclusions. The WHO commissioned work was carried out over 15 months with a total of 500 experiments and came out to the same conclusions of Professors Linoli & Bertelli. 
What were the conclusions? 

The flesh is real flesh, and the blood is real blood belonging to human species; the flesh consists of the muscular tissue of the heart; the flesh and blood have the same blood type AB. 

The above was  documented online (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Lanciano ) and presentation is already available on YouTube here:

The Miracle of the Eucharist in Lanciano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJ8BORx1p8

Let us adore the divine man, The Word, eternally begotten of the Father, whose presence in the Mystery of thanksgiving is available to all in the Eucharist.  

Henri de Lubac: Catholicism

I have been reading "Catholicism" a volume written by the great Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac in 1937 well before the reforms of Vatican II to which Henri de Lubac contributed substantially. In his "Catholicism", de Lubac retrieves the meaning of the Body of Christ as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church and the great medieval scholars including St. Thomas Aquinas. While Pope Pius XII interpreted the mystical body of Christ to be the institution of the Catholic Church, the Fathers believed it referred to the Eucharist, the most important sacrament of communion for the life of Christians. This is only the beginning on which de Lubac builds his "New Theology" where the "Supernatural" is not separate from "Nature." In Henri de Lubac, "Human nature [the Church] tells us at the outset, is certainly sick, infirm, but it is not totally depraved...The divine likeness in it may be dimmed, veiled, disfigured, but it is always there." (Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, Chapter IX, Page 145).  On the non-Christian religions including the Gentiles de Lubac expounds the universality of the Catholic Church not only geographically but also theologically:  "Ever since the day when, full of the strength and the promises of the Holy Spirit, the Church issued from the Cenacle to overrun the earth, she has encountered everywhere in her progress countries that are already, in the religious sense, occupied... Must everything be jettisoned to give place to the Gospel?...False religions, therefore, are religions that stray from the truth to become engulfed in error, rather than religions whose whole direction is misleading and whose principles are wholly false. They are based on childish ideas more often than evil ones." 

Let's look anew at the New Theology ushered by Henri de Lubac. His efforts at retrieving the early Biblical scholarship of Origen, the Fathers and the Scholastics have three important dimensions in the continuing development of understanding in the Catholic Church:

First: God works in every created human person. The Holy Spirit is not bound by any particular theology for "the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles" (Acts 10: 45). If the Spirit leads persons and communities such as Cornelius to Peter before their baptism, then the Church proposes to all non-Christians that salvation is always possible to those who, following the dictates of their conscience, search for God. It is with this in mind that, from the beginning, the Church married the good elements she found in the Greek philosophies with what she believes is revealed Hebrew tradition.While she started with Peter, Paul and the other disciples as a little Jewish group of followers of Christ, she continued to preach the good news to non Jews too, always in the hope that they will find salvation through Jesus Christ the only way to heaven. On this basis too, the grace that the Holy Spirit bestows on persons and communities includes many Pagans that the Spirit prepared for Christ's coming. The Magi may saw his light in their own cultures and therefore came to Bethlehem to pay homage to the Saviour of all. The preparation for Christ's coming could also be understood as the preparation for the Second Coming of Christ in which the New Jerusalem or the Kingdom of God reaches out to the world at the end of time.

Second: The Church, according to Vatican II, is not only the Mystical Body of Christ, but also the People of God from the earliest monotheist faith of Abraham to the end of the ages and in the cultures which receive Christ. Let me add that according to the CDF declaration Dominus Iesus or "The Lord Jesus" approved for publication by Blessed John Paul II in 2000, the following is stated: 
"Above all else, it must be firmly believed that 'the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16;Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door'.⁷⁷ This doctrine must not be set against the universal salvific will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); “it is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for this salvation”. The Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation”, since, united always in a mysterious way to the Saviour Jesus Christ, her Head, and subordinated to him, she has, in God's plan, an indispensable relationship with the salvation of every human being. For those who are not formally and visibly members of the Church, 'salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church, but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation. This grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit'; it has a relationship with the Church, which 'according to the plan of the Father, has her origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit'.
21.  With respect to the way in which the salvific grace of God — which is always given by means of Christ in the Spirit and has a mysterious relationship to the Church — comes to individual non-Christians, the Second Vatican Council limited itself to the statement that God bestows it 'in ways known to himself'.  Theologians are seeking to understand this question more fully.  Their work is to be encouraged, since it is certainly useful for understanding better God's salvific plan and the ways in which it is accomplished. However, from what has been stated above about the mediation of Jesus Christ and the 'unique and special relationship⁸⁴ which the Church has with the kingdom of God among men — which in substance is the universal kingdom of Christ the Saviour — it is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God." The Declaration continues:"Certainly, the various religious traditions contain and offer religious elements which come from God, and which are part of what “the Spirit brings about in human hearts and in the history of peoples, in cultures, and religions”. Indeed, some prayers and rituals of the other religions may assume a role of preparation for the Gospel, in that they are occasions or pedagogical helps in which the human heart is prompted to be open to the action of God. One cannot attribute to these, however, a divine origin or an ex opere operato salvific efficacy, which is proper to the Christian sacraments.⁸⁸ Furthermore, it cannot be overlooked that other rituals, insofar as they depend on superstitions or other errors (cf. 1 Cor 10:20-21), constitute an obstacle to salvation.
22.  With the coming of the Saviour Jesus Christ, God has willed that the Church founded by him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity (cf. Acts 17:30-31). This truth of faith does not lessen the sincere respect which the Church has for the religions of the world, but at the same time, it rules out, in a radical way, that mentality of indifferentism “characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another'”. I have removed the notes for easier reading but you may wish to look again at this rich document. See http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html.  

Third: Henri de Lubac's work is at the same time a reminder to all of Christian Humanism which developed in Western Christian culture starting in the 12th century with the retrieval of the Roman and Greek Classics. It is an expression of the beauty of creation as we find in the paintings of Michael Angelo and Rafael, the polyphonic music and chants of Palestrina and Bach, and the architecture of St. Peter's in Rome as well as Notre Dame in Paris.  We may recall here the enormous work of Blessed John Henry Newman on the development of doctrine, and before him the humanist work of St. Thomas More in his "Utopia" of the 16th century. In fact we could go back to St. Francis of Assisi  in the 12th century, probably the first Christian Humanist in the West. While we are at it, let's recall to memory yje work of St. Basil the Great, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century who built a city with hospitals to serve the poor.

When we think of Christian unity which is a dear goal for all committed Christians, let's recall to  mind that the doctrinal and liturgical developments in the entire Catholic Church remain a treasure to hold. 

For many reasons, historical and theological, I remain convinced that every human person who seriously searches for the truth is, according to Dominus Iesus, in a mysterious way, linked to the Mystery of the Church i.e. The Catholic Church. That is how open and far-reaching is Catholicism. Henri de Lubac certainly contributed to such openness.

The Fulfillment of Life

I am reminded by a word that the late holy archbishop Paul Antaki wrote to me some 20 years ago. He wrote: No one is ever fully satisfied in this life wherever he goes.

Fully satisfied?

As my wife and I attended the eve Mass of Pentecost at Holy Rosary Church, a young man who is now a seminarian was given permission to talk briefly about his own ambitions as he grew here in Toronto. He spoke about being attracted to sports when in high school; how he made nice networks among his peers at York University when he studied life sciences; how he was involved in a relationship with a beautiful young woman that they intended to fulfill in marriage; and how all this success, fascination and satisfaction with life came short of full satisfaction that he prayed God to take him and direct his future. He ended up in finding his fulfillment in a vocation to become a priest.  Nevertheless, this eloquent young man continued, life is not easier for priests than it is for married couples or for unmarried singles. Everyone is called by God to live his fulfilled vocation whether in celibate or in married life. What matters is to find the real joy God is calling us to; for God wants us to be fully happy (Luke 12: 32).

Satanic Influences

Why is this important? Because Satan also calls us to another life – a life of misery and division. Satan is working hard to make sure we lose hope and commit suicide. Without significant help by friends to find a job, a married man at Jesus the King Church was so depressed this past week that he was losing hope. He wanted to be left alone. From time to time, especially since my stroke, I also feel depressed as I see myself unable to resolve certain difficulties or how ungrateful some friends are towards me. For over 35 years I have been serving the Church for free whether in Egypt or in Canada, so why continue?

Relationships?

There are no short answers to our difficulties in life.  Married couples surely go through difficulties with their relationships and their children. Friends tell me about their intimate relationships that can break in a moment of anger.  Monks have their own temptations and faults...Yet I know that God loves me and loves everyone else. The joy of knowing this fact should drive me to love God. I need God in my life. The worst decision that any person can make is to despair of God’s love and commit suicide. The Holy Spirit, tells us the Church, always urges you and me to repent and reconcile with God and everyone else in order to find eternal peace and life.  Full and continuous despair with no hope leads to the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12: 32) simply because God respects my freedom and choice until the last moment of life on earth.

Two Related Questions: Purgatory and Praying for the Dead

First Question: Why does the Catholic Church believe in Purgatory?

Implicitly in Christ’s own words “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12: 31, 32). According to traditional interpretation this means that some sins are forgiven in the age to come. Those who were not in the state of mortal or grave sins (such as cheating, betrayal, adultery, or murder) at the moment of death yet had not purified their thoughts or acts from small “venial sins” (such as joking in some inappropriate manners) can be considered in a state of grace but not fully pure to enter heaven yet.

A clearer statement is found in the first Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw -- each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” ( 1 Cor 3: 10-15). 

Jerry L. Walls wrote a book published by Oxford Press in 2011 in print titled "Purgatory, The Logic of Total Transformation." You can buy it from Amazon if you wish to study this dogma of the Catholic Church which many Protestant theologians including the author (a Protestant theologian himself) are defending it today.

According to the teaching of the Catholic Church every soul is judged in a private judgment immediately after death. See for example the parable of Lazarus and the Rich.

However the important element in Catholic dogma is this:

According to St. Paul “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13: 11-13).  It follows that ordinary people including  saints who died in grace but are not perfectly in love with God will endure purification which is a process of longing and increasing love. Since no one can see God if he is not in perfect relationship with God, there must be a state after death for those who died in grace but not in a perfect relationship of love towards God to be purified before entering heaven where no impure person can be found. God justifies the soul by transforming it and sanctifying it in his grace from within. If more Protestant theologians are seeing now the validity of this dogma, I would expect a more recognition of this dogma by Orthodox theologians.

The dogma of Purgatory is a view of hope missing in Christian Calvinism and the idea of fate in Islam which probably influenced the Eastern Orthodox theology.

Second Question: Why does the Catholic Church allow (in most instances) prayer over persons who committed suicide?

Psychological research has shown that some persons who committed suicide and died may have been depressed and lonely for too long that they lacked the full knowledge and full will in their drastic action at the moment of death. Who are we to judge them unworthy of prayer? In her prayer the Church continues to hope that everyone who died reconciled with God provided they were capable of making the choice following the dictates of their conscience and in full knowledge and freedom given to them at death.     

The Father in my life and yours

Christ said "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7: 7-12)

Let’s forgive each other and recharge our relationships to receive God’s blessings (Matthew 11: 25). Since I have memory, it is not easy to remove from memory the hurts that I perceive others directed against me. People who leave the Church may be angry with God or with the priest or with other important people in the Church. It is a perception that the idea of stereotyping reinforces. It takes time to repent and reconcile, yet it is crucial for my eternal peace, the peace of Christ.

A Reflection on The Grim Situation of the World Today

The situation today as you see is a global political game for more money and control by "shareholders," following the free market concept, of large organizations, and most countries. 


The Arab world is waiting for the results of the first free elections of an Egyptian president in generations while violence continues in other Arab countries. The U.S. Administration who supported the Egyptian Revolution of January 25 2011 seems to be losing ground to the Islamists. While forerunner Islamists for presidential elections use the technology developed in the West, they speak negatively about the U.S. (where this information technology developed) and have vowed to reverse the 1979 Agreement by the late President Sadat with Israel, thus throwing the entire Middle East into a new round of uncertainty. See the Washington Post here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/egyptian-election-will-us-lose/2012/05/24/gJQA41g0mU_blog.html  and The New York Times makes a similar observation here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/world/middleeast/egyptians-vote-for-second-day-in-presidential-election.html?_r=1

The G-8 have just finished their meeting in Washington with an attempt to salvage the Euro-Crisis and solidify growth in Europe and cooperation between the advanced pro-capital economies of Germany and the more socialist ones in France...Yet, according to the pro-capitalist The Economist, there seems to be two directions for European states to choose from - none of them is easy. See http://www.economist.com/node/21555916


In Africa, Sudan and Southern Sudan are fighting for control of oil rich resources which happen to be at the border in Southern Sudan. In Asia, Pakistan seems to be challenging the U.S. by prosecuting, on charges of treason, a Pakistani physician who collaborated with the American Administration to find and kill the arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden last year. 

There appears to be a growing polarization and impatience in the debate for the future of the human race. This reminds me by Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" which  predicted the division between the civil/secular cultures of the West and those of a resurgent Islam in the Middle East and beyond. 


One of the main differences between the civilized Western world (including Catholic countries) and the rest of the world (including Islamic countries) is the commitment of Western countries to non-violence and some freedom for their citizens in their choices of how they wish to live their lives as individuals and families. This is the result of many centuries of Christian humanism in Europe. The late Jesuit Henri de Lubac wrote on Christian humanism, a real reform and renaissance as different from other forms of humanism.  Before him, St. Thomas More was a great humanist too. They go back to the humanism and openness of Christ himself who was imitated by St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bernard, and St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus.

In the current polarized situation in the global village, there has to be a global political/ religious leader, that leads according to the intrinsic values of fairness and non-violence. If Christians unite under the leadership of one holy person - presumably the Pope of the Catholic Church, then at least some form of Christian unity can be realized. A balance between individual freedom and commitment to the community (ecclesia) must be followed according to Vatican II.

May be I am complicating things. I think the initiative has to come from the top and not only from the base. As I wrote to Pope Benedict XVI last October, the Pope may have to convoke an Ecumenical Council this year to which all Catholic and Orthodox bishops as well as other Christian leaders from the world are invited. The outcome is one Universal (Catholic) Church that includes all non-Catholic Christians together with Catholics and which can defend Christian values and promote the word of Christ in the "global village." If the Eastern Orthodox bishops do not agree, they can still make an alliance with the resourceful Church of Rome based on the Christian & human moral values. The world is slipping away before our own eyes. 

Money must be spent to help those Christians in need.  And above all perhaps you and I need to pray that God may save the world. After all, He created it and redeemed it. In God, we trust.

The Necessity of Unity

In addition to the threats discussed in previous posts, there is another type of violence that is subtle and looks friendly while it is in fact a threat to humanity. This threat is related to advances in information technology which will reduce the human workforce in the current generation and their children.

The advent of robots (computer machines) that can mimic and replace human workers is already here. Highly artificial intelligence products are already being marketed such as the car that drives itself, robots in manufacturing establishments, voice-recognition technology that receives your order and responds verbally in your language. Google, Amazon, Apple, and many other giant companies (based in the silicon valley in the U.S.) have already made advances in such technology.

An interesting discussion is found on The Agenda in an interview earlier this year with Andrew McAfee, economics Professor at MIT. You may wish to see it here:    

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/168810/andrew-mcafee-machines-are-coming

As an economist, McAfee co-authored a book “Race Against The Machine..” which exposes the misdistribution of capital and rising poverty everywhere as a result of an excessive neo-Capitalism.

Together with the above consumerist trend, materialist philosophies are behind most studies in universities and schools that aggressively deny the spiritual/religious needs of mankind and reduce man to matter and the mind to brain.

Based on the above frame, I ask Christian families to help their children learn the new technologies for their jobs and (more to the point) to come to Church and abide by her teaching.   You can refer to the Second Vatican Council, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. They are available here:

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/index.htm

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

I may be dreaming about achieving unity but we must always have hope. 

Let us remember that this month is dedicated to Mary Mother of God. Here is a hymn in remembrance of her devotion to Christ her Son:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRDIggpHL-w&feature=fvst