What’s Really Real

Details: 27 April 2012

As the Easter season progresses, we get a glimpse into the life of the early Church as we listen to the Scriptures that are proclaimed at Mass.

The weekend Mass readings since Easter have highlighted the veracity of the claims that Jesus truly had risen from the dead. Some of the disciples recognized Jesus by hearing His voice, others by touching His flesh and yet others by seeing Him break bread. Today’s disciples witness the very same things at the Eucharistic meal, which encapsulates all of these Easter experiences and celebrates for all time Christ’s saving actions that are contained in what we refer to simply as the Paschal Mystery.

In the Church’s Code of Canon Law, the section on the Eucharist is introduced in this way: "The Most Holy Eucharist is the most august sacrament, in which Christ the Lord himself is contained, offered and received, and by which the Church constantly lives and grows. The Eucharistic Sacrifice, the memorial of the death and resurrection of the Lord, in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated over the centuries, is the summit and the source of all Christian worship and life" (Can. 897). The next paragraph adds: "The faithful are to hold the Eucharist in highest honor, taking part in the celebration of the Most August Sacrifice, receiving the sacrament devoutly and frequently, and worshiping it with supreme adoration." (Can. 898).

When Catholics enter a Catholic church, they typically genuflect toward the tabernacle, if able, as an outward sign in their belief that Jesus is really and truly present—Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity—in the Blessed Sacrament contained therein. The gesture is repeated as Catholics depart from the church. This act of reverence acknowledging the Real Presence of Jesus in the consecrated host is always in danger of becoming routine, consequently sacrificing its potential to bolster our own faith and to attract others to a similar devotion.

One helpful way to avoid allowing this to happen is to make a concerted effort to make the usual sign of reverence in contexts during which Catholics often neglect to do so. Such occasions include: wake services held at church, Baptisms provided outside of Mass, wedding rehearsals, church cleaning, picture-taking sessions, choir practices, visits to unfamiliar churches, etc.

Many of these examples are the very times when there are non-Catholics present who might become intrigued, if not inspired, by our reverent genuflections and other forms of respect shown for the Real Presence of Jesus. We can help non-believers to discover, or even remind our fellow Catholics, what is really real about our Eucharistic faith. Jesus went out of His way after the resurrection to prove to His followers that what they were seeing was not a ghost. On the contrary, the visible Risen Christ was the very same Jesus with whom they had eaten and to whom they had listened earlier. That very same Jesus becomes present at the Mass and abides with us in our tabernacles. Nothing and nobody could possibly be more real!

By the way we act in our Catholic churches, especially as we approach a tabernacle or receive Holy Communion, we proclaim our belief in the Risen Christ hidden therein. In this way, we teach those around us not only what is really real in the visible world here below, but Who we will find to be the very same reality in the heavenly realm above.