Augustine’s Favorite Apologist Explains the Eucharist

St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine is one of the few Saints that both Catholics and (most) Protestants admire. Without a doubt, he is the most popular Saint among Protestants, and is the most-cited Saint in the Catechism. As such, he’s a good Saint for Catholics to cite to when explaining the faith to Protestants.

But who do you appeal to if you are St. Augustine? That is, during Augustine’s lifetime, who were the Saints that he could cite to, knowing that their authority and orthodoxy were nearly universally respected? Augustine actually answers that question in Against Julian, accusing Julian of going against the “many famous and brilliant holy teachers of the Catholic truth: Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Gregory, Basil, Ambrose, John, Innocent, Jerome, and the others.”

Of these eleven Saints, there is one in particular who Augustine cites for his outspoken orthodoxy: St. Hilary of Poitiers, a fourth century Gallic (French) bishop known as “the Hammer of the Arians.”  Augustine remarks, “Who does not know that the Gallic bishop Hilary is to be revered as the keenest defender of the Catholic Church against the heretics?”

And while Hilary is certainly less well-known than Augustine, he is revered as a Saint by Catholics and Orthodox, as well as by Lutherans and Anglicans.  Given all of this, it would behoove both Protestants and Catholics to listen to what St. Hilary has to say about issues like the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Hilary not only believes in the physical Real Presence, he treats this fact as completely obvious to any Christian.  In doing this, he sounds very much like St. Ignatius of Antioch, who used the Real Presence as proof back in the early 100s. That is, Ignatius didn’t feel a need to prove that the Real Presence was true. Instead, he started from the accepted truth of the Real Presence to prove that the Gnostics were heretics for denying the Incarnation.

We see the same thing here. St. Hilary’s opponents argue that the Father and the Son are only One in will, rather than One in Being. Hilary responds to them by showing, from the accepted fact of the Real Presence, that the union between us and the Son, and therefore between the Son and the Father, goes beyond a mere unity of wills:

St. Hilary of Poitiers

Now I ask those who bring forward a unity of will between Father and Son, whether Christ is in us to-day through verity of nature or through agreement of will. For if in truth the Word has been made flesh and we in very truth receive the Word made flesh as food from the Lord, are we not bound to believe that He abides in us naturally, Who, born as a man, has assumed the nature of our flesh now inseparable from Himself, and has conjoined the nature of His own flesh to the nature of the eternal Godhead in the sacrament by which His flesh is communicated to us? [....]

Now how it is that we are in Him through the sacrament of the flesh and blood bestowed upon us, He Himself testifies, saying, “And the world will no longer see Me, but ye shall see Me; because I live ye shall live also; because I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you” [John 14:19]. If He wished to indicate a mere unity of will, why did He set forth a kind of gradation and sequence in the completion of the unity, unless it were that, since He was in the Father through the nature of Deity, and we on the contrary in Him through His birth in the body, He would have us believe that He is in us through the mystery of the sacraments? 

Hilary’s point isn’t to prove that “we in very truth receive the Word made flesh as food from the Lord.” His point is that since this is true, we know that we’re dealing with a union of natures, not just wills. But in the process of making this point about the Trinity, Hilary happens to reveal quite a bit about what the early Church believed about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. And his point is all the more powerful in that he’s making incredibly Catholic claims about the Eucharist, without feeling much of a need to defend his views:

The Ordination of Saint Hilary (14th c.)

Hence, if indeed Christ has taken to Himself the flesh of our body, and that Man Who was born from Mary was indeed Christ, and we indeed receive in a mystery the flesh of His body—(and for this cause we shall be one, because the Father is in Him and He in us),—how can a unity of will be maintained, seeing that the special property of nature received through the sacrament is the sacrament of a perfect unity?

How should we understand our union with Christ in the Eucharist? Hilary shows us from Scripture:

Let us read what is written, let us understand what we read, and then fulfil the demands of a perfect faith. For as to what we say concerning the reality of Christ’s nature within us, unless we have been taught by Him, our words are foolish and impious. For He says Himself, “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him.” [John 6:55-56]

So in the Eucharist, we aren’t just aligned as part of God’s team. We take on the Body of Christ. We become what we consume. If there was any remaining ambiguity about whether or not Hilary understood the Eucharist to be Christ's literal, physical Body and Blood, there can be none after his next comment:

As to the verity of the flesh and blood there is no room left for doubt. For now both from the declaration of the Lord Himself and our own faith, it is verily flesh and verily blood. And these when eaten and drunk, bring it to pass that both we are in Christ and Christ in us. Is not this true? Yet they who affirm that Christ Jesus is not truly God are welcome to find it false. He therefore Himself is in us through the flesh and we in Him, whilst together with Him our own selves are in God.

So Hilary leaves room to deny the Real physical Presence of Christ in the Eucharist … but only if you’re ready “to affirm that Christ Jesus is not truly God.” If, on the other hand, you’re going to believe in Jesus Christ as God Incarnate, the Real Presence is an indispensable part of that faith.  It seems that Hilary can’t even imagine someone denying the Eucharist while claiming to worship Jesus Christ. He leaves no room for that position, since “no man shall dwell in Him, save him in whom He dwells Himself, for the only flesh which He has taken to Himself is the flesh of those who have taken His.”

Hilary then returns to showing how the Eucharist gives evidence of the relationship of Christ to the Father:

This is the cause of our life that we have Christ dwelling within our carnal selves through the flesh, and we shall live through Him in the same manner as He lives through the Father. If, then, we live naturally through Him according to the flesh, that is, have partaken of the nature of His flesh, must He not naturally have the Father within Himself according to the Spirit since He Himself lives through the Father?

So that’s it: that’s the Catholic belief in the Eucharist, according to the man who Augustine described as “the keenest defender of the Catholic Church against the heretics.” I’ll leave it to you to decide if Hilary was an idolatrous heretic, or if the Real Presence of Christ’s Flesh and Blood in the Eucharist is true.

The Church, the Bible, and the Trinity of Divine Persons

Did you know that the word “person” comes to us through Catholic philosophy and theology?

Theatrical masks of Comedy and Tragedy, Roman mosaic, (2nd c.).

It’s true, although the word existed before Christianity in a different context. Etymologically, the word “person” originally comes from a Latin word meaning “sounding through” (personare), which referred to actors speaking through a mask in the theater. In other words, the character in the play was a “person.” “Persons,” in the theatrical sense, weren’t just extras, but characters with speaking parts. From this, the word came to denote an individual of rank or dignity (a connotation still preserved in the word “personage”).

Later, this word would be expanded to all humans. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, since “subsistence in a rational nature is of high dignity, therefore every individual of the rational nature is called a ‘person.’” Put another way, our rational natures make each of us “persons,” in the sense of having been imbued with God-given dignity and nobility. We’re not stage props or even extras in the drama of salvation history.  Rather, each and every one of us is an important character (with “speaking parts,” if you will), and in whom the Director is keenly interested.

The word “person” took on all of its modern connotations during the Trinitarian and Christological debates in early Christianity. We needed some way to describe the distinction and relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we needed a way to describe the relationship of the Divine and Human natures in Jesus Christ. But all of this terminology is a theological development that took centuries. Aquinas acknowledged this, explaining why the word “Person” should be applied to God, even though it is not found applied to Him anywhere in  Scripture:

Although the word “person“ is not found applied to God in Scripture, either in the Old or New Testament, nevertheless what the word signifies is found to be affirmed of God in many places of Scripture; as that He is the supreme self-subsisting being, and the most perfectly intelligent being. If we could speak of God only in the very terms themselves of Scripture, it would follow that no one could speak about God in any but the original language of the Old or New Testament. The urgency of confuting heretics made it necessary to find new words to express the ancient faith about God. Nor is such a kind of novelty to be shunned; since it is by no means profane, for it does not lead us astray from the sense of Scripture. The Apostle warns us to avoid “profane novelties of words” (1 Timothy 6:20).

As Aquinas notes, we must use non-Biblical language, when the Biblical language is being interpreted heretically (the alternative being to define the Biblical word with itself). So, for example, a lot of Catholic-Protestant debates have important terminological disputes: what St. Paul means by “faith” and “works,” for example. By Aquinas’ logic, it may be helpful to clear up these disputes by using word other than “faith” and “works,” to try to get at what we mean in clear and precise language that hasn’t been clouded by heresy.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,
Pope St. Clement Adoring the Trinity (1738)

So why do I bring this up? Because it has important implications for how we understand the relationship of Scripture to the faith.  All orthodox Christians accept the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea that there is One God Who is Three Persons. But to accept this requires accepting the ability of the Church to develop doctrine and refine terms, even using non-Biblical language, in order to preserve the Biblical truth.

But this is a concession that quite a few Evangelicals stumble over. I’ve heard more than a few sola Scriptura-believing Protestants argue against Catholic doctrines on the basis that the wording or phrasing isn’t Biblical: some variation of the argument, “Where is the word ‘Purgatory’ in the Bible, anyhow?” But you cannot have it both ways: if “Purgatory” is out for lack of an explicit mention, so are the Three “Persons” of the Trinity.

With that in mind, consider the first two prongs of the US National Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith:

1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. 
2. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I mentioned on Monday how different these confessional statements are from the ancient Creeds, since “unlike every Protestant statement of beliefs that I know of, there are no references to Scripture in the early Creeds.” Both the Apostles’ Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed follow a basic pattern: they start with the Father, and proceed to the Son, then to the Holy Spirit, then to the Church, and then to any specific doctrines. That order makes sense. The Father sends the Son, who sends the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church, who defines and declares doctrines. It’s top-down, from God to the Church to us. We trust in the Church's doctrines because we trust in the Church; we trust in the Church because we trust in the Triune God.

In contrast, the above Statement of Faith begins with a declaration of faith, not in God, but in Scripture. The authority of Scripture, whose canon and authority cannot be proven but through the Church, is simply accepted as a starting assumption. This statement even goes so far as to describe Scripture, rather than Jesus Christ, as the only “Word of God.” Contrast that claim with John 1:1, 14, Revelation 19:13, Hebrews 11:3, etc.

But the point of the first prong of the Statement of Faith is to cut out a need for the Church: you can get everything you need from the Bible, so the Church needn't be infallible. But this exposes an absurd irony.The first prong undermines the authority of the Church, while the second prong relies upon the authority of the Church, and upon Her ability to develop, define, and refine doctrinal issues. Without that development, definition, and refinement, you can’t get to “there is one God, eternally existent in three persons.” It’s easy for the US National Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith, but only because the Catholic Church did the work for them.

In describing God as Three Persons, they’re using precise Catholic theological language, just as much as they would be if they called Him Three Hypostases in One Ousia. In trying to cut out the role of the Church (to affirm “the only infallible, authoritative Word of God,” Scripture), they end up cutting out the branch they're sitting on.

For more on the role of doctrinal development within Catholicism, check out this post: Su Doku and the Development of Doctrine.

Six Reasons to Reject "the Perspicuity of Scripture"

Near the root of what divides Protestantism from Catholicism is a question concerning the clarity (or, in technical parlance, the “perspicuity”) of Sacred Scripture. The Catholic view is that Scripture needs interpretation; the typical Protestant view is that Scripture is so clear that there are no ambiguities needing authoritative interpretation by the Church.

Rembrandt, The Baptism of the Eunuch (1626)

As classically articulated, this doctrine holds anyone guided by the Holy Spirit can come to understand everything in the Bible. In fact, Martin Luther argued that if you’re confused on the meaning of some part of the Bible, it’s because of your own sinfulness, since “if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth.” Here’s Luther’s summary of the doctrine:

The clearness of the Scripture is twofold; even as the obscurity is twofold also. The one is external, placed in the ministry of the word; the other internal, placed in the understanding of the heart. If you speak of the internal clearness, no man sees one iota in the Scriptures, but he that hath the Spirit of God. All have a darkened heart; so that, even if they know how to speak of, and set forth, all things in the Scripture, yet, they cannot feel them nor know them: nor do they believe that they are the creatures of God, nor any thing else: according to that of Psalm xiv. 1. “The fool hath said in his heart, God is nothing.” For the Spirit is required to understand the whole of the Scripture and every part of it. If you speak of the external clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that are in the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimed to the whole world.

I think that there are several things worth mentioning in response to this doctrine.

1. The Scriptural Case for this Doctrine is Weak. 

None of the passages Luther cites in his defense of this doctrine say anything remotely close to “the Scriptures are all so clear that they don’t need any interpretation.” The closest we get is Luke 24:45, where Christ explains the meanings of the Old Testament to the pair of disciples on the road to Emmaus. And when you think about that example, it’s striking that they’re in need of Old Testament exegesis, even after three years of Christ’s public ministry: that passage could just as easily be used to argue against the perspicuity of Scripture.  Which brings me to the second point...

2. The Scriptural Case Against this Doctrine is Stronger.  

Scripture itself presents itself as something to be read with the Church, not in lieu of the Church. Perhaps the quickest way of demonstrating this is the interaction between Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:29-31,

And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”

Note well that the Holy Spirit is at work in this Ethiopian man’s life, but not by internally inspiring him with the perspicuous meaning of Scripture. Rather, He sends him a representative of the Church to interpret Scripture for him (Acts 8:35). On his own, the man is humble enough to realize when he doesn’t understand what the passage is talking about.

Or take the question of the status of the Mosaic Law. In Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas engage in “no small dissension and debate” with “the party of the Pharisees” (Acts 15:1-2, 5). That is, from the earliest days of the Church, we see disputes periodically arising between Christians. And how is settled? Does each party pull out their Bible and show why they think they’re right, splitting into two churches when they can’t agree? No. “The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter” (Acts 15:6) at the Council of Jerusalem. When the Council announces its decision, it declares that its conclusions “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28).

3. The Early Church Did Not Believe in the Perspicuity of Scripture.

Traditionally (dating back to the earliest days of the Church), the Church’s role has been to declare which doctrines are authentically Christian, and which aren’t. She may point to specific passages supporting this, but She doesn’t always. After all, the earliest Christians didn’t believe in sola Scriptura, so it’s not surprising that the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed look very different from, say, the “statement of beliefs” found in many Protestant denominations.

Guercino, St Jerome in the Wilderness (1650)

For one thing, unlike every Protestant statement of beliefs that I know of, there are no references to Scripture in the early Creeds. For another thing, the Creeds are a statement of faith binding upon the whole Church.  In contrast, the Protestant denominations’ statement of beliefs are at most, in the words of the Southern Baptist Convention, a “statement of generally held convictions.” This is the difference between a Church governed by a visible authority, and a denomination governed by hoping everybody interprets a Book the same way.

Similarly, St. Jerome (one of the greatest Scripture scholars in the early Church) talks about his in his Dialogue Against the Luciferians:

We ought to remain in that Church which was founded by the Apostles and continues to this day. If ever you hear of any that are called Christians taking their name not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, for instance, Marcionites, Valentinians, Men of the mountain or the plain, you may be sure that you have there not the Church of Christ, but the synagogue of Antichrist. For the fact that they took their rise after the foundation of the Church is proof that they are those whose coming the Apostle foretold.  

And let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. Otherwise, if we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the Church.

Jerome is by no means the only Church Father to talk about the error of taking Scripture against the Church, but he is one of the clearest on this point.

4. Luther Proves this Doctrine False.

Luther changed his mind on all sorts of doctrines (e.g., Purgatory) after he left the Church. Many of these reversals and changes occur after 1524, when he wrote On the Bondage of the Will, the text in which he advanced the idea of the perspicuity of Scripture.

This seems to show that Luther was wrong ... or by his own argument, that he wasn’t guided by the Holy Spirit, since everything would have been crystal clear to him, if he had been.

5. Protestantism Proves this Doctrine False.

The easiest way to see that Scripture needs an interpretative authority is to look at the anarchy that has invariably resulted where that authority is rejected. If the perspicuity of Scripture were true, we should expect to see one more-or-less unified Protestant church. Everyone of good will, guided by the Holy Spirit and the clarity of Scripture, would be able to come to the same conclusions. But of course, the history of Protestantism has been the expect opposite of this.

Doctrinal anarchy erupted almost immediately after Luther launched his “Reformation.” Within Luther’s own lifetime, Calvin, Zwingli, and a whole litany of other Reformers arose who accepted the principles of Protestantism, while rejecting other key parts of Lutheranism (which, if Luther was right about Scriptural perspicuity, shouldn’t have been possible, if both men were guided by the Holy Spirit). Writing at the close of the 16th century, St. Francis de Sales compared the rapid collapse of the Reformation to the Tower of Babel (Part II, Article III, Chapter IV):

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel (1563)

What contradictions has not Luther's reformation produced! I should never end if I would put them all on this paper. [….]

You have not one same canon of the Scriptures: Luther will not have the Epistle of S. James, which you receive. Calvin holds it to be contrary to the Scripture that there is a head in the Church; the English hold the reverse : the French Huguenots hold that according to the Word of God priests are not less than bishops ; the English have bishops who govern priests, and amongst them two archbishops, one of whom is called primate, a name which Calvin so greatly detests: the Puritans in England hold as an article of faith that it is not lawful to preach, baptize, pray, in the Churches which were formerly Catholic, but they are not so squeamish in these parts. And note my saying that they make it an article of faith, for they suffer both prison and banishment rather than give it up. Is it not well known that at Geneva they consider it a superstition to keep any saint's day? — yet in Switzerland some are kept ; and you keep one of Our Lady. The point is not that some keep them and others do not, for this would be no contradiction in religious belief, but that what you and some of the Swiss observe the others condemn as contrary to the purity of religion.

Are you not aware that one of your greatest ministers teaches that the body of our Lord is as far from the Lord's Supper as heaven is from earth, and are you not likewise aware that this is held to be false by many others ? Has not one of your ministers lately confessed the reality of Christ's body in the Supper, and do not the rest deny it ? Can you deny me that as regards Justification you are as much divided against one another as you are against us : — witness that anonymous controversialist. In a word, each man has his own language, and out of as many Huguenots as I have spoken to I have never found two of the same belief.

St. Francis explained that because the dispute is over the meaning of Scripture, Protestants are incapable of ever resolving these issues, if they refuse to submit to the authority of the Church:

But the worst is, you are not able to come to an agreement: — for where will you find a trusted arbitrator? You have no head upon earth to address yourselves to in your difficulties; you believe that the very Church can err herself and lead others into error: you would not put your soul into such unsafe hands; indeed, you hold her in small account. The Scripture cannot be your arbiter, for it is concerning the Scripture that you are in litigation, some of you being determined to have it understood in one way, some in another. Your discords and your disputes are interminable, unless you give in to the authority of the Church.

That prediction - that the disputes would prove interminable - was made over four hundred years ago.  Would anyone today deny his point?  Does Protestantism seem any closer to solving these exegetical disputes? Quite the contrary. Protestantism has spent five hundred years slowly imploding into an ever-greater number of warring denominations. We are as far away from having a unified “Protestant church” as we’ve ever been, and the situation is only getting worse, like a universe spiraling towards heat death.

6. This Doctrine Risks Making you a Jerk. 

I hesitated to include this one, for fear that it would seem like more of a potshot than an argument, but hear me out. Even ignoring all the disputes Protestantism has with historic Christianity (and with modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy), there are innumerable Protestant denominations feuding with one another over the proper interpretation of Scripture on a whole litany of doctrines. Are we really to believe that all but one of these denominations are arguing in bad faith?

John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli (1874)

If you really believe that the meaning of Scripture is just obvious to anyone guided by the Holy Spirit, you’re essentially left with three options:

• Option A: Your opponent is ignorant, and just needs to be shown the proper Scriptures.  Once he sees those, he will convert.
• Option B: Your opponent is godless, and that is why he can't understand Scripture.
• Option C: Your opponent is a liar, and that is why he pretends he can't understand Scripture.

I would suggest that this is at least one factor in the ugliness of so much inter-Christian dialogue (although by no means the only factor), and the speed in which non-Protestants are accused of acting in bad faith.  Again, we need look no further than Luther's own life, to see how toxic this doctrine turns out to be in real life.

The logic is clear enough: if your opponents disagree with you (and in the case of the Protestants holding this position, this includes the entire Church prior to 1500 A.D.), they must be ignorant, godless or liars. Otherwise, they would “see the all-perfect clearness of the truth.”  Just look at how Luther treated the Jews once they weren't convinced by his version of the Gospel.

Conclusion

To clarify, there are two things that I’m not saying: (1) I’m not saying that early single passage of Scripture is so cryptic that someone has to spell it out for us; and (2) I’m not saying that the Church’s primary task is to exegete individual Scriptural passages.  But what I am saying is that the doctrine of the “perspicuity of Scripture” is contrary to Scripture, Tradition, Protestant history, and is generally a bad idea.

Jesus, Remember Me: The Good Thief and the Eucharist

At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Eucharist, and called us to “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Here’s how St. Paul records the account :

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

St. Luke provides a similar account in his Gospel (Lk. 22:19-22).  From the point of view of many modern Evangelicals, this line is critical, because they think it proves that the Eucharist is merely symbolic: “The Supper is a remembrance of Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the cross. It is not the sacrifice itself.” It’s just a “memorial,” a way to remember Someone Who is not around. This view more or less dates back to the radical Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531):

The idea that Christ's "once for all" sacrifice on the cross was repeatedly "re-presented" in the Lord's Supper was rejected by all the major branches of the Reformation. Zwingli’s view is the closest to the modern evangelical view, though upon close inspection, it could be the case that he is somewhat misunderstood. Nevertheless, Zwingli is understood by many as teaching that the supper is a “memorial” to Christ’s death upon the cross. The issue of presence in the Supper is played down (at least in comparison to other reformers). The analogy of a wedding is used. The Lord's Supper is a visible reminder of something accomplished in the past, whether the person is present or not.

There are a few major problems with this interpretation, though.  First, if “Do this in remember of Me” really is the critical line for understanding the merely-symbolic nature of the Eucharist, it’s striking that this line isn’t mentioned at all in either Matthew or Mark’s account of the Institution (see Matthew 26:26-29 and Mark 14:22-25).  How could both Matthew and Mark (whose Gospels are likely written in between 1 Corinthians and the Gospel of Luke) have failed to include the most important detail?  

Nor was it just those two Apostles: from the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, student of the Apostle John, it’s clear that John’s students believed the Eucharist to truly be the Body and Blood of Christ. So the Apostles who were actually at the Last Supper didn’t seem to think “Do this in remembrance of Me” was the most note-worthy part of the Institution.

Anamnēsis: Memorial Sacrifice

The second problem is that this interpretation assumes that the English word “memorial” has all the same connotations of the Greek word that Scripture uses. It doesn’t, particularly not for a Jewish audience.  For them, the Greek word used, anamnēsis, had sacrificial connotations, in direct opposition to what the merely-symbolic view claims about the Eucharist.

Hans von Tübingen, Crucifixion (1430)

So, for example, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the memorial sacrifices described in Leviticus 24:7 and Numbers 10:10 are translated as anamnēsis, and this is the same word used to describe the sin offerings in Hebrews 10:3.   But a memorial sacrifice is a very different thing from a “memorial service” done when someone is gone.  The Bishop Helmsing Institute has a great post explaining the nuances of the word, including this fascinating entry on ‘Remembrance’ from a Protestant Bible dictionary, Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (1996):

Not a few modern liturgists insist that the eucharistic memorial or remembrance is an objective act in and by which the person and event commemorated is made present or brought into the here and the now. So for the early Fathers it is the recalling before the Father of the one and once for all, as well as utterly complete, sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ, in order that its power and efficacy will be known and operative within the Eucharist and thus received by those present.  

In contrast to this it has been argued that the meaning is “that God may remember me” Jesus asks the disciples to petition the Father to remember Jesus and come to his rescue. Also, it has been suggested that to remember is to proclaim and so in the celebration of the Supper the church proclaims Jesus who died for us. The further suggestion that the remembering is merely to meditate on the past death and future coming of Jesus, the Lord, seems to be inadequate because it does not emphasize that he who is remembered is very much present at the memorial/remembrance.

This last point is the most important, because it shows that the issue here isn’t simply grammatical, but theological: the merely-symbolic view of the Memorial Offering of the Eucharist ultimately treats Christ as if He’s dead and gone, the way we might have a memorial for a deceased friend. But as we are about to see, “remembrance” works very differently when we’re dealing with the living God.

What We Can Learn from the Good Thief on the Cross

To see how Jesus treats “remembrances,” look to His interaction with the Good Thief on the Cross (Luke 23:39-43):

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The good thief prays that Jesus will “remember” him. And Jesus grants the good thief’s prayer, but not by passively recalling that that dying thief was a nice guy. He remembers him by making the thief actually present with Him in Paradise.

Now, the good thief uses a different word for “remember” than Jesus uses at the Last Supper, but this point is theological, not grammatical. It’s an answer to the erroneous idea that treats “the Living God” (Daniel 14:25), the God-Man who makes Himself present in the midst of two or three gathered in His Name (Matthew 18:20), as an absent artifact from the past.  The notion that we even could treat Jesus in this way is obviously wrong, and an affront to the immanence of God.

At every Mass, we call upon Jesus Christ: yes, we call Him to mind, but we do much more than that. We invite Him to be physically present, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, at the Mass. And He, being the Living and Incarnate God, does just that.

Kudos to fellow KCK seminarian Dan Morris for the connection between the Good Thief and the Eucharist.  

Five Senses in which the Eucharist is the Host

Pope John XXIII elevating the Host

Ever wonder why we refer to the Eucharistic species as “the Host”? The Latin hostia means “sacrifice,” and it is from this definition that the Eucharistic Host takes the name, as a reminder that in the Eucharist, Christ is the Sacrifice for our sins.

But the Latin word hostia comes from hostis, which has a fascinatingly wide range of meanings, from “victim” to  “guest,” from “host” to “enemy.” Why this range of opposing (even contradictory) meanings? Because it arose from a word meaning “stranger,” and strangers can either be treated with hostility (as a threat or potential victim), or hospitality. And this complex word neatly captures several dimensions of our relationship with Christ, so it is worth exploring in greater detail.

Leon Kass explains the etymology of the word “host” on page 101 of The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature:

The English word host - one who lodges and entertains another in his home – stems from an Old French word (oste, hoste) that means both “host” and “guest,” primarily because it also means “stranger” or “foreigner.” (The original Latin root, hostis, from the Indo-European ghostis, means “stranger” and “enemy”; this meaning lies behind our use of host to mean an armed company of men, presumably hostile to us.) 

A similar dual meaning of “host” and “guest” (and also “stranger” and “foreigner”) attaches to the Latin root hospes, source of our words hospital and hospice (originally a “house of hostel [italics added] for the reception and entertainment of pilgrims, travelers, and strangers”), hospitable (originally “affording welcome, entertainment, and generosity to strangers and visitors”; now “disposed to receive or welcome kindly), and hospitality, the practice of welcoming and tending generously to the needs and desires of stranger-guests. Much of the transformation of host from stranger and would be enemy to provider of hospitality is the work of often-elaborate custom. But such custom in fact gives expression to the natural human ability and willingness to recognize natural sameness despite and beneath conventional otherness.

So “Hostia” means, at once, (1) “Victim,” (2) “Host” (in the sense of “one who lodges and entertains another in his home”), (3) “Guest,” (4) “Stranger,” and (5) “Enemy.” In the Eucharist, we can see our relationship with Christ through all five of these lenses.

1. Christ as Victim

First, and most directly, the Eucharistic species is called the Host because Christ is Hostia, Victim. One of the most beautiful Eucharistic hymns, O Salutaris Hostia, literally means “O Saving Victim.”  The lyrics to the hymn, in English:

O saving Victim, open wide
the gate of heaven to man below;
our foes press on from every side;
thine aid supply; thy strength bestow.  

All praise and thanks to thee ascend
for evermore, blest One in Three;
O grant us life that shall not end
in our true native land with thee.

The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Calvary, and it was there that Christ offered Himself up to the Father as Sacrificial Victim, in Atonement for our sins.  This role of Christ-as-Victim is referred to repeatedly in Scripture (see, e.g., 1 Corinthians 5:7; Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 9:26).

Of course, Jesus is also the High Priest, so He is not the Victim in a helpless way, but in the sense of voluntarily offering up His life (Hebrews 7:27).

2-4. Christ as Our Host, Stranger, and Enemy

Christ is the Host, in the more conventional English usage of “one who lodges and entertains another in his home” in the Eucharist.  We must never forget that He invites us to the Eucharistic banquet, and that the Mass is “the Lord’s Supper” (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:20).  Ultimately, the Liturgy is not something that we offer to God, but something that He invites us into.

Likewise, the Church is “the House of God” (Hebrews 10:21; cf. 1 Peter 4:17). When you come to the Church, you are a guest in His House, eating His Heavenly Food, which He offers us gratuitously. In doing so, “you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19).

As noted above, the words for hospitality and hosting seem to arrive from the practice of taking a stranger (and potential enemy) and welcoming him in.  Christ is the apex of hospitality in this sense: as Host, He takes us from being hostis, strangers (Eph. 2:19) and even enemies (Romans 5:10) of God, and He transforms us into His guests, going so far as to make us members of His Household.

5. Christ as Our Guest

Christ is also Host in the sense of being our Guest: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Christ remains the active party : He comes to us. Yet we still have the option to receive Him or not. Whether He enters our lives to Commune with us at the Lord’s Supper depends on whether or not “any one hears [His] voice and opens the door.”

So there is a sense, at Mass, in which are Christ’s guests. But there is another sense in which He becomes our Guest, which is why we pray, right before Communion (in words based off of the centurion's prayer of Matthew 8:8), “Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” Hostis refers to both host and guest, and Christ is both. And much more.

Bonus: Christ as Host in the Heavenly Banquet

In the traditional Jewish wedding ritual, a crucial lens for understanding the relationship between Christ and the Church, the wedding occurred in two phases separated by as much as a year’s worth of time:

• First, the bridegroom would marry his bride, which Christ did during His time on Earth, creating the Church, and offering Himself up for Her entirely.
• Then, because “bachelor pads” weren’t a thing in ancient Judaism, the man would be permitted as much as a year to go off and prepare a home for his new wife. It’s during this year that the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive and bear a Son, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which we celebrate today. Mary and Joseph are wedded, but not yet living together.

Like the Virgin Mary, this is the same place we find ourselves today.  The Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ, has gone before us to Heaven to prepare a place for us, as He promised (John 13:1-3):

Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

We see this in a beautiful way in the consummation of all things, when He invites His Bride, the Church, to the “wedding feast of the Lamb,” as Revelation 19:6-9 prophesies:

19th century Jewish nissu'in in Eastern Europe.
The nissu'in was the second (and final) stage of the wedding.

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying,

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.”

So Christ invites us into His Home, both to dine with Him, and to live with Him forever.

Earlier, I described the earthly Communion with Christ as “the apex of hospitality,” but I should modify that somewhat: the eternal and heavenly Eucharistic Banquet is the truest apex, in a such that it’s not even possible in this lifetime. The closest we can come in this life is in receiving the Blessed Sacrament at Mass.

The Gospel and The Poor: Léon Bloy and Pope Francis

One of the things that has most impressed me about Pope Francis is that he talks about sin, and about the devil as if he actually believes that sin and the devil are real. In his first homily as pope, Pope Francis made this stunning claim:

When one does not profess Jesus Christ - I recall the phrase of Leon Bloy – “Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.” When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.

That’s a bold first impression to make as pope, and it lead me to pick up Léon Bloy’s Pilgrim of the Absolute at the seminary library. It turns out, the quotation Francis selected is characteristic: Bloy doesn’t mince words, and is radical in his commitment to the Gospel, and to the poor (which he would describe as one commitment, not two).

I. Bloy on the Poor (and the Rich)

Bloy doesn’t hold back against anyone who he views as impeding or ignoring the Gospel or the poor. You are never left wondering what he really thinks, either: one chapter of this book is fittingly called “The Hurler of Curses.” Some of his strongest criticisms are against the sweatshops of his day (pp. 181-83):

The sweatshop system! It is hard to believe these infamous words could have been written

Heinrich Hofmann, Christ in Gethsemane (1890)

even in English. Yes, even in English, it is unbelievable. But what sweat? Good Lord! It is impossible, after such a word, not to think of Gethsemane, not to think of Moses who wanted all Egypt to stream with blood in order to prefigure the Death Throes of the Son of God. Did He who took upon himself all imaginable sorrows and all unimagined sorrows then sweat blood after this fashion? The Bloody Sweat as a system! Jesus’s Bloody Sweat intended to be the silent partner of famines and massacres! … It might be thought that men have gone mad from having leaned over the edge of this gulf … 

[…] 

The Evangelist Saint Luke heard Jesus Christ’s Bloody Sweat falling upon the ground, drop by drop. That noise so slight, unable to awake the sleeping disciples, must have been heard by the most distant constellations and singularly have altered their wanderings. What are we to think of the sound, slighter still and much less listened to, of the countless steps of those poor little ones going to their task of sorrow and wretchedness demanded of them by the damned, but all the same without knowing it and without other knowing it, moving thus towards their elder brother in the Garden of the Agony, who calls them and awaits them within His bloodied arms? Sinite pueros venire ad me. Talium est enim regnum Dei (Suffer the little children to come until me. For such is the kingdom of God).

Poverty, he said, “is nothing less than the Spouse of the Son of God, and when her golden wedding takes place, the barefoot and the starvelings will come running from the ends of the earth, to witness it” (p. 184).  In running from poverty, Bloy suggested that the rich were running from the Cross (pp. 175-76):

Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat.

What they (or we) don’t want, Bloy argued (p. 176), was the true Cross: “The base and black Cross, in the midst of a desert of fear vast the world; no longer shining as in children’s pictures, but overwhelmed under a dark sky not even brightened by lightning, the terrifying Cross of Dereliction of the Son of God, the Cross of utter Misery and Destitution.”

II. Bloy on Modern Christians

As you might have deduced from the last section, Bloy has strong words for his fellow Christians, who he
grimly suggested are the closest thing that the saved will experience of Hell (p. 216):

The damned in the abyss of their torments have no other refreshment than the spectacle of the devils’ hideous faces. The friends of Jesus see all around them the modern Christians, and thus it is that they are able to picture hell.

Bloy took the life of sanctity very seriously, and it bore great fruit: for example, he was responsible for the conversion of the great French Thomist, Jacques Maritain.  And it seems to have been an endless source of frustration for him to see Christians simply drifting along, without taking their own sanctification seriously.  

Léon Bloy (1887)

But Bloy’s critical assessments were born out of charity, not ill will: he sincerely loved the people he criticized. And even if he couldn’t understand their often-frivolous lives, he could recall that they were souls beloved by God, and could hope for their salvation.  A priest wrote a friendly letter to him that included the line, “I do not have the soul of a saint.”  The priest undoubtedly meant this as humility, , but Bloy corrected him, and reminded him that (p. 223), “There is a deceptive form of humility that resembles ingratitude.”  Authentic humility recognizes the startling reality that we each do have the souls of Saints (pp. 222-23):

Well, then I answer you with certainty that I have the soul of a saint; that my fearful bourgeois of a landlord, my baker, my butcher, my grocer, all of whom may be horrible scoundrels, have the souls of saints, having all been called, as fully as you and I, as fully as Saint Francis or Saint Paul, to eternal Life, and having all been bought at the same price: You have been bought at a great price. There is no man who is not potentially a saint, and sin or sins, even the blackest, are but accident that in no way alters the substance.

This, I think, is the true point of view. When I go to the café to read petty or stupid newspapers, I look at the customers around me, I see their silly joy, I hear their foolish nonsense or their blasphemies, and I reflect that there I am, among immortal souls unaware of what they are, souls made to adore eternally the Holy Trinity, souls precious as angelic spirits; and sometimes I weep, not out of compassion, but out of love at the thought that all these souls, whatever may be their present blindness and whatever the apparent acts of their bodies, will all the same go invincibly to God who is their necessary end.

All of us, by the grace of God, are capable of being Saints, and if we fall in this endeavor, it is not because we were created with an inferior kind of soul.

III. Bloy on the Priesthood

As critical as Bloy was of the Christians of his day, he was scarcely less critical of the bishops and priests, particularly those he saw as indifferent to the poor, or (worse) as cheerleaders for the lifestyles of the rich.  For example, he says that such worldly priests are of less worth than Judas, who at least returned the money (p. 213):

The sum total of fifty worldly priests would not even amount to as much as one Judas, a Judas who returns the money and hangs himself from despair. Frankly, such priests are appalling. Through them it is that the rich are confirmed in their wealth, as ice is solidified by sulphuric acid.

Nor do worldly bishops escape his criticism (p. 219):

Msgr. Bolo belongs to a different school and makes me think of one of our bishops, he too of the fireside brand, who, with his feet up before a good fire and smoking a fat cigar after a copious meal, would merrily belch these truthful words: “To think we are the successors of the Apostles!”

From this, you might expect Bloy to be anti-clerical, but this wasn’t the case at all. Quite the opposite, in fact: he wrote one of the finest defenses of the priesthood that I’ve read, in a (scathingly anti-Protestant) letter he wrote to a mathematician friend (pp. 221-23):

Your letters inform me of nothing, unless it be of the bankruptcy of your reason. So, my dear

friend, you have doubts concerning the Church because there exist priests and faithful who are unworthy, whose true reckoning, moreover, you cannot know. In other words you have doubts about mathematics because you have known one professor – or three hundred and seventy-seven professors – of algebra or trigonometry who were swine. Really, that’s too stupid, permit me to say it to you with love […]

You say you do not know “any priest who could have won your obedience.” Why say that to me of all people, my dear friend? […] I think you cannot have written those words without a little shame. I have known priests who were admirable men, I still know some, and I shall know others who have in mind nothing but the Glory of God, the Salvation of Souls, the Evangelization of the Poor. So low have we fallen that these words have become grotesque; but I am not afraid to write them…

Sentimental objections are of no value. Does or does one not have the duty of obeying God and the Church? The whole question lies there. From this very simple point of view, the priest is nothing more than a supernatural instrument, a generator of the Infinite; and one must be [a fool] to see anything else, for all this takes place and must take place in the Absolute. For over thirty years, I’ve been hearing masses said by priests unknown to me; and I go to confession to others who may, as far as I know, be saints or murderers. Am I then their judge? and what a fool I would be if I proposed to find out their condition! It is enough for me to know that the Church is divine, that she cannot be anything but divine, and that the Sacraments administered by a bad priest are precisely as efficacious as those administered by a saint.

Isn’t it enough to make one weep, my dear friend? I am here among brutes, suffering tortures, and I must write you, you, a Catholic, these rudimentary things which an informed heretic has no right not to know. It’s appalling.

Here is a very simple comment which ought, I think, to make an impression on you, for there is something mathematical about it. The Protestant world surrounding me is beyond dispute ugly, mediocre, as devoid of the absolute as is possible. What is the character peculiar to that world? It is this: the Supernatural is excluded from it: the Supernatural is excluded from Christianity, which amounts to the most illogical and unreasonable idea that can ever have entered a human head. The consequence: contempt for the Priesthood, the cheapening of the priestly function, outside of which the supernatural cannot be made manifest. Without the power to consecrate, to bind and to loose, Christianity vanishes, to give way, in the stables of Luther and Calvin, to an abject rationalism, certainly inferior to atheism. A Catholic priest possesses such an investiture that, if he is unworthy, the sublimity of his State shines forth all the more brightly. Here, for instance, is a criminal priest liable, if you like, to the fullest damnation, and yet who have the power of transubstantiating! … How can you not perceive this infinite Beauty?

So Bloy loved and defended the Church, and the priesthood specifically. This love didn’t require him to be silent in the face of clerical abuses: in fact, it likely motivated him to call clergy (and all Christians) to greater holiness.