The Eucharistic Renewal

Abbot Matthew Stark has shared many of the following passages in homilies for daily conventual Mass. He has provided in this collection for us here some of the highlights of our church’s rich spiritual history of meditation on the Mystery of the Blessed Sacrament. We reproduce them here for further reflection in our time of eucharistic renewal.

Divine Adoration

They abstain from the eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the eucharist is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, the flesh that suffered for our sins, and that the Father in his goodness raised this flesh up again. Those who thus reject the gift of God die amid in their disputes. They will profit from practicing charity, so that they too may rise. (7.1)

1. This food we call “eucharist”, and no one may share it unless he believes that our teachings are true, and has been cleansed in the bath of forgiveness for sin and rebirth, and lives as Christ taught.
2. For we do not receive these things as though they were ordinary food and drink. Just as Jesus Christ our Savior was made flesh the word of God and took on flesh and blood for our salvation, so too (we have been taught) through the word a prayer that comes from him the food over which the thanksgiving has been spoken becomes the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus, in order to nourish and transform our flesh and blood.
3. For, in the memoirs which the apostles composed and which we call “gospels,” they have told us that they were commissioned thus: Jesus took bread and, having given thanks, said: “Do this in memory of me; this is my body”; and in a like manner he took the cup and, having given thanks, said: “This is my blood,” and he gave these to them alone.

And let us praise Him and pray to him day and night (Ps 31:1), saying: Our Father Who art in heaven (Mt 6:9), since we should pray always and never lose heart (Lk 18:1).
        We must also confess all our sins to a priest, and receive from him the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who does not eat His Flesh and does not drink His Blood (cf. Jn 6:55, 57) cannot enter the kingdom of God (Jn 3:5). Yet let him eat and drink worthily, since he who receives unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself, not recognizing – that is, not discerning – the Body of the Lord (1 Cor 11:29) ….
       We must also visit churches frequently and venerate and show respect for the clergy, not so much for them personally if they are sinners, but the reason of their office and their administration of the most holy Body and Blood of Christ which they sacrifice upon the altar and receive and administer to others.
       Afterward the Lord gave me and still gives me such faith in priests who live according to the manner of the holy Roman Church because of their order. […] And I do not wish to consider sin in them because I discern the Son of God in them and they are my masters. And I act in this way since I see nothing corporally of the Most High Son of God in this world except His Most holy Body and Blood which they receive and which they alone administer to others.

Yours is the wonderful work, O Christ, whose power is without bounds in your faithful kindness. You yourself recall the memory of former wonders. You have in this sacred food and supersubstantial bread wonderfully found a means and the way for those who became ill by eating of the forbidden tree and lost thereby the unfading and imperishable crown of everlasting glory to be healed through eating the spotless, pure Lamb.
        Most truly wonderful and utterly praise worthy is God‘s goodness towards us. In his generous and untiring love he meets us and greets his children in the sacrament which is the goal and final realization of all acts of sacrifice: he abides among them ceaselessly until the end of the world. He provides us for our refreshment the bread of angels; he pours out for our drink (though we are only his adopted children, and not of his blood) strong wine, his Son’s Blood.
       Humility – which Christ so praised – we know pleases God. In this sacrament he truly preaches by the example of an incomparable humility which does not turn aside from any dwelling but consents to come as a guest to all and sundry, even unworthy hearts…
       In the breaking of bread, You are not broken nor divided. You are eaten, but like the burning bush you are not consumed. No, You remain whole and entire as that ancient meal and oil which wonderfully lasted without diminishing more becoming spoilt.

On the subject of the Blessed Sacrament. We believe that, the substance of bread being changed and transubstantiated into that of Our Lord’s body, Jesus Christ is really present in it: that is one of the truths. Another is that this sacrament also prefigures that of the Cross, and glory, and is a commemoration of both. Here we have the Catholic faith embracing two apparently opposing truths.
       Modern heresy, unable to conceive that this sacrament contains at once the presence and the figuration of Jesus Christ, and is both a sacrifice and a commemoration of a sacrifice, believes that one of these truths cannot be admitted without thereby excluding the other.
       They fix on the single point that the sacrament is figurative, and in this they are not heretical. They think that we exclude this truth, and hence raise so many objections about passages in the Fathers which attest it. Finally they deny the real presence and in this they are heretical.

Lenten Tabernacle

Our Lord not only offered Himself as a Sacrifice on the Cross, but He makes Himself a perpetual, a daily sacrifice, to the end of time. In the Holy Mass that One Sacrifice on the Cross once offered is renewed, continued, applied to our benefit. He seems to say, My Cross was raised up 1800 years ago, and only for a few hours—and very few of my servants were present there—but I intend to bring millions into my Church. For their sakes then I will perpetuate my Sacrifice, that each of them may be as though they had severally been present on Calvary. I will offer Myself up day by day to the Father, that every one of my followers may have the opportunity to offer his petitions to Him, sanctified and recommended by the all-meritorious virtue of my Passion. Thus I will be a Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedech—My priests shall stand at the Altar—but not they, but I rather, will offer. I will not let them offer mere bread and wine, but I myself will be present upon the Altar instead, and I will offer up myself invisibly, while they perform the outward rite. And thus the Lamb that was slain once for all, though He is ascended on high, ever remains a victim from His miraculous presence in Holy Mass under the figure and appearance of mere earthly and visible symbols.

(June 1940; during the early days of the Second World War)
Daily Mass and Communion are so necessary now that it is though we were neglecting to save our brothers, reach them a helping hand in their agony, when we omit going. . .Praying in unison with others, corporate prayer, ascending before the throne of God, is one great means we have in our power to bring relief. …
        …We have got to look for sacrifices we can make, we have to examine our consciences for self-indulgences each day, we have got to feel more and more the absolute necessity for daily Mass and Communion offered up for our brothers in agony.

On the feast of Corpus Christi we are asked to exult in the precious gift of the Blessed Sacrament. Our Lord is present in the liturgical gathering, present everywhere in the Spirit, present in each sacrament. Nevertheless we can see the Blessed Sacrament as His presence par excellence, a sign of the constant nearness of the Risen Lord.
        He is the immolated One, the One who gave, and gives, Himself. His abiding presence under the sacramental bread is a sign of our union with Him and His abiding within us. The Mass is the action whereby we make present the immolated, surrendered One, and enter into his self-offering.
         The Blessed Sacrament is this action “held”. It is always a window onto the Mass, onto the surrender of Jesus. The Blessed Sacrament is always inviting us “Take eat… My Body for you”. He is there to be eaten, to be the life whereby I live. He is always there to tell me that I cannot live my day out of my own resources but only in Him.

The Mass is the adorable sacrifice in which God himself is at the same time Victim, Priest and the divine Majesty to whom the sacrifice is offered, not merely the symbol of the sacrifice of the Cross but the sacrifice itself, mysteriously renewed and re-enacted forever, without the shedding of blood. It is an infinite sacrifice, the efficacy of which is restricted only by our own lack of fervor and devotion. All light in this world streams from the sacrifice of the Mass. There is no alleviation of the pains of Purgatory that is not distilled like balm from the overflowing chalice of the Eucharist; there is no increase of heavenly glory but through this Sacrifice. Moreover, and this is a much graver thing: no newcomer can enter heaven except through the sacrifice ever present in the Mass. It is impossible to find or imagine a closer bond between Man and God.

We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered sacramentally present on our altars. We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as before, is a true, real and substantial presence.
        Transubstantiation. Christ cannot be thus present in this sacrament except by the change into His body of the reality itself of the bread and the change into His blood of the reality itself of the wine, leaving unchanged only the properties of the bread and wine which our senses perceive. This mysterious change is very appropriately called by the Church transubstantiation. Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the Consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus that from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine, as the Lord willed it, in order to give Himself to us as food and to associate us with the unity of His Mystical Body.
        The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord glorious in heaven is not multiplied, but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on earth where Mass is celebrated. And this existence remains present, after the sacrifice, in the Blessed Sacrament which is, in the tabernacle, the living heart of each of our churches. And it is our very sweet duty to honor and adore in the blessed Host which our eyes see, the Incarnate Word whom they cannot see, and who, without leaving heaven, is made present before us.

The Church constantly draws her life from the redeeming sacrifice; she approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also through a real contact, since this sacrifice is made present ever anew, sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister. The Eucharist thus applies to men and women today the reconciliation won once for all by Christ for mankind in every age. “The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice” (Catechism 1367) Saint John Chrysostom put it well: “We always offer the same Lamb, not one today and another tomorrow, but always the same one. For this reason, the sacrifice is always only one... Even now we offer that victim who was once offered and who will never be consumed.” (In Epistolam ad Hebraens Homiliae)