#REAL PRESENCE FULL#

To remember something was not simply to nostalgically recall it.

Whereas in the Hebrew concept out of which Jesus was speaking, memory, making ritual remembrance of something, implied much more than simply recalling something. It can stir deep feelings but it does nothing more. That’s a simple remembering, a passing recollection. It simply means calling something to mind, remembering an event like the birth of your child, your wedding day, or the game when your favorite sports team finally won the championship. But his use of the word “memory” and our use of that word are very different. We participate in the Eucharist not just to receive Christ in communion, but also to participate in the major salvific event of his life, his death and resurrection.Īt the Last Supper, Jesus invited his followers to continue to meet and celebrate the Eucharist “ in memory of me”. The Word of God, when celebrated in a church is, like Christ’s presence in the consecrated bread and wine, also the real presence.īut there’s a further element that’s less understood: The Eucharist doesn’t just make a person present it also makes an event present. Most churchgoers already recognize that when the scriptures are celebrated in a liturgical service God’s presence is made special, more physically tangible, than God’s normal presence everywhere or God’s presence inside our private prayer. It misses the fact that the real presence is not just in the bread and wine, it is also in the liturgy of the Word and in the salvific event that is recalled in the Eucharistic prayer, namely, the death and resurrection of Jesus. While none of this is wrong, the liturgy of the word, the music, and communion are important, something is missing in this understanding. Moreover, in Roman Catholic churches, we speak of the real presence only in reference to the last element, the presence of Christ in the bread and wine. Today our understanding of the Eucharist, in Roman Catholic circles and indeed in most Protestant and Anglican circles, is very much concentrated on three things: the liturgy of the Word, the music, and communion. They would have answered something to the effect of: “Aren’t they all the same!”

Now, he continued, if you had stood outside a Roman Catholic church sixty or seventy years ago and asked: “Was that a good mass today?” nobody would have even understood the question. If the homily was interesting and the music lively, most people would answer that it had been a good Eucharist.

#REAL PRESENCE FULL#

He was commenting on the Eucharist and our lack of understanding of it full richness when he highlighted this contrast: If you stood outside of a Roman Catholic church today as people were coming out of the church and asked them: “Was that a good Eucharist?”, most everyone would answer on the basis of the homily and the music. When I was a graduate student in Belgium, I was privileged one day to sit in on a conference given by Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels.