Eucharist holds past, present, future implications

Above: Archbishop-Emeritus Alfred Hughes urged listeners to “never approach Communion in a routine way” and offered tips on how to better prepare for the Mass. (Photos by Beth Donze, Clarion Herald)

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

A 13th-century antiphon written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi provides the most remarkable distillation of the Eucharist that Archbishop-Emeritus Alfred Hughes has ever encountered.

In the antiphon, in which the Eucharist is referenced as the “sacred banquet in which Christ is consumed,” St. Thomas observes that the sacrament has past, present and future dimensions, all rolled into one: In consuming it, “the memory of his passion is made present, the soul is now filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given to us.”

Archbishop Hughes, who learned the antiphon by heart as a seminarian preparing for his 1957 ordination to the priesthood, used St. Thomas’ eucharistic summation to guide the final talk of the 12-part archdiocesan lecture series coordinated in conjunction with the Year of the Eucharist and St. Joseph.

“Every Eucharist points to the future, and the church of the future will not be the church that Christ founded without the Eucharist,” he said, speaking to attendees inside Notre Dame Seminary’s Schulte Auditorium Dec. 15.

“The Eucharist is the mystery of faith – the mystery of our redemption. (It) encompasses the whole life, passion, death, resurrection, ascension of the Lord,” said Archbishop Hughes, noting that after the celebrant transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, he invites all to “pronounce, to proclaim” that mystery of faith.

“The redemptive mystery is made present!” he said.

God’s ‘living Word’ 

To participate more wholly in such a heady feast, Archbishop Hughes encouraged the faithful to become more active listeners of Scripture – both at home and during the Liturgy of the Word at Mass.

“Every time we pick up that word and pray with it, every time we hear that word proclaimed and try to absorb it, the Holy Spirit is active,” he said, recalling a passage in St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews characterizing the word of God as “alive” and comparing it to “a two-edged sword penetrating the human heart, separating marrow from bone, to unfold God’s message.”

To help Catholics enter into a more prayerful engagement with the word of God, Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 exhorted priests, bishops and deacons to teach their flocks the technique of Lectio Divina – or “holy reading.” Pope Francis continued this spotlight on God’s word in 2019 by establishing the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Jan. 23, 2022) as one on which homilists are asked to focus on how the faithful can better pray with and hear the word of God.
Sacred ‘food’ spurs action

To help explain Lectio Divina, Archbishop Hughes drew on wisdom offered by 12th-century abbot Guigo the Carthusian. The abbot said plumbing the depths of Scripture could be compared to the four stages of consuming food:

• First, we put the food in our mouths to ingest it. In the case of the word, this ingestion phase means that we “pick up the text and read it slowly, consciously allowing the words to be spoken by God to you,” Archbishop Hughes said.

• Secondly, we chew on the food. During the “chewing” phase of reading Scripture, we “meditate on the text to draw out its deeper meaning” – consider the spiritual meaning beyond the literal one, the archbishop said.

• Next, we digest the food to allow what we have read to move from our mind to our heart, and then respond to God accordingly. “So, we’re not just intellectually trying to understand, but we’re letting what has been understood permeate the deeper recesses of the soul,” he explained.

• Finally, we savor the food, or allow the word to “prime the pump for the way we’re going to live,” Archbishop Hughes said. In this way, we become “not just hearers but doers of the word.”

To become more engaged readers of Scripture, Archbishop Hughes suggested that Catholics purchase an annotated Catholic Bible that clarifies the social, historical and geographic context of sacred Scripture. He also encouraged the faithful to get into the habit of asking God for one word, phrase or insight to take home with them after every Mass that is “life-giving” to them.

God’s literal gift of self

Turning to the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the mystery of Real Presence, Archbishop Hughes wondered how anyone could read St. John’s teachings about the Eucharist in Chapter 6 of his Gospel and not come to the conclusion that Jesus intended to give us “his actual body and blood to enable us to enter into redemption, and in the future, be raised up to eternal life with him.”

“Five times in that chapter, (St. John) repeats, in different words, that message,” he said, noting that people walked away from Jesus when he spoke of his sacrifice for their redemption. Jesus asks his apostles if they will also leave him, eliciting St. Peter to respond, “Lord, to whom do we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

But the reality is that many still are walking away from the Eucharist, Archbishop Hughes said, noting that this “leakage” prompted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops last November to adopt a document on the Eucharist “to undergird a eucharistic revival for the United States.” The document ponders what might be triggering Catholics to leave the church and take for granted the treasure before them: Real Presence.

“How many people have walked away from the Eucharist without realizing what they have walked away from?” Archbishop Hughes asked. “We (homilists) need to do a better job of breaking open the richness of not only what is the central mystery of our faith, but the pivotal event in all human history” that is made present every time the Eucharist is celebrated.

COVID-19 also has taken a toll on full participation in the Eucharist, as many become accustomed to celebrating Mass virtually, he added. But unless one is legitimately confined – whether at home, in a hospital or prison – “nothing replaces in-person engagement with the Lord Jesus and sacramental participation in Communion,” Archbishop Hughes said.

When we fully participate in the Mass, “having heard some new word in the Liturgy of the Word – some new insight, some new invitation – and (then) entering into the sacramental re-presentation of the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, and the gifts of bread and wine are transformed into his body and blood, we’re bringing to the Lord what’s going on in our lives to offer with (Christ) to the Father his offering of himself for our redemption,” Archbishop Hughes said.

“We’re invited to be co-redeemers (who are) cooperative with Christ in redemption – our own redemption and the redemption of others.”

The lecture series was sponsored by Notre Dame Seminary.

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