Parishioners asked me over last weekend about our understanding of the Eucharist. I believe that it is of some pastoral importance to try to clarify this paramount concern.
I heard a programme on RTE Radio last Saturday afternoon, in which journalist Kieron Wood, speaking of Catholic belief in the Eucharist, pronounced a view which I have to say I consider somewhat misleading. He spoke of the "physical" change that takes place at the consecration of the Mass.
The word "physical", to me at least, suggests that which pertains to the chemical constituents of a substance, in this case bread and wine. Understood in this sense of the term "physical", no chemical change takes place in what we call the elements of the Eucharist.
Indeed, to pursue this kind of thinking would suggest that if only we had a microscope, or some laboratory instrument refined enough, it would show an observable change in the bread and wine. That would be to misrepresent Catholic teaching completely on what is ultimately, of course, the mystery of the sacrament.
By mystery we mean not something about which we can never know anything, but rather something about which we can never know everything. The kind of change which takes place in the Eucharist is what is called "ontological" change.
This adjective, though perhaps unfamiliar to many, is nevertheless both philosophically and theologically important. Ontological change means literally a change in being.
The Eucharist is a sacrament, and a sacrament is a particular or special sign which effects the reality which it signifies. The Eucharist, therefore, as a sacrament belongs to the order of signs.
We must not be afraid of the term "sign", especially the privileged sign known as sacrament.
If one were to object that speaking of a sign in the Eucharistic context is "reducing" the "real presence" to something "symbolic", this would actually betray an impoverished and, indeed, wrong understanding of sign or symbol as it is embedded in Catholic tradition and as construed by mainstream scholars.
Karl Barth, perhaps the most famous of modern Reformed Lutheran theologians, was fond of repeating the admonition: "Never speak of only a symbol!"
A sacramental sign conveys a reality, and nothing short of a reality. So it follows that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is, of necessity, a sacramental presence, and that in all its richness.
Thus, demoting symbols and signs in their sacramental usage to connoting merely inferior or shadowy agents of transformation denotes a flawed appreciation of their import and efficacy.
Bearing this in mind, the Catholic Church's historically most authoritative theologian, St Thomas Aquinas, has described the Eucharist as "Christ present in the sacrament spiritually, that is invisibly and by the power of the Holy Spirit". (Summa Theologica III, q.75, A.1. Obj.4).
In the Eucharist a change of what is classically called "substance" comes about. The word "substance" refers to the essential reality in question.
The physical appearance and, indeed, the chemical constitution of the bread and wine remain and are called the "accidents", in the traditional theological vocabulary.
The bread and wine become something else "substantially"; that is in their ontological reality, as faith acknowledges they are transformed as we worship. This happens through the mysterious action of God Himself in the Mass.
Incidentally, the sacramental presence of the Lord is effected not just by virtue of the words of consecration (which repeat the narrative of institution by Jesus at the Last Supper) but by virtue of the whole Eucharistic prayer which includes the invocation of the Holy Spirit, technically known in the tradition as the Epiclesis.
The Eucharist has a history in the Catholic Church, as have all other aspects of its life. Different emphases within a common tradition have surfaced throughout the centuries. The Christian community's earliest understanding of the sacrament is drawn from its liturgical texts rather than from an appeal to the very words of Christ at the Last Supper, which are often disputed.
How it is prayed formed its primitive theology; giving rise to the hallowed maxim, "The law of prayer is the law of belief".
The timeless understanding of Christians is, however, that at Communion in the Mass we meet and receive the risen Christ in the totality of His person. This encounter cannot be entirely unpacked by limited, human comprehension.
It is, in the last analysis, only embraced by our intellects incremented by faith. It remains God's free gift and therefore belongs au fond to the realm of our loving God's own doing.
Perhaps a last word on this intimate celebration of God's life as shared with his people goes to Patrick Kavanagh in his quatrain from The Great Hunger:
He [Maguire] read the symbol too sharply and turned
From the five simple doors of sense
To the door whose combination lock has puzzled
Philosopher and priest and common dunce.
Father Tom Stack is parish priest at Milltown in Co Dublin and a weekly columnist with the Irish Catholic