Faith and the Eucharist

Faith in the Real Presence is a gift, as all faith is. However, we also must do our part in working with the gift: being open to it and ultimately accepting it, even though we cannot fully see or understand what this gift is.

Think about the Gospel of John, Chapter 6. Jesus tells the crowd that "the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh" (John 6:51), but after some explanation, many of Jesus' disciples respond "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?"(John 6:60). This teaching caused many of the disciples to stop following Him: "After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him" (John 6:66). Jesus then turns to His most trusted disciples, the Twelve. He asks them: "Will you also go away?" But Peter responds for them: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6:67-69).

Peter and the rest of the Twelve did not understand what Jesus was telling them any more than those disciples who left Jesus. However, what Peter and the Twelve did understand better than those other disciples was who Jesus was and the reliability of His word. Whereas the disciples who left sought to use understanding as the criterion for whether or not they would follow Jesus, Peter and the Twelve instead based their decision to follow Jesus on faith. Not that faith and reason are opposed. They are not. Faith without reason allows one to be easily led astray. However, reason without faith causes one to believe only what one's senses tells him or her.

St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote a treatise called The Death-Rate (ca. 252-253). Although he wrote this work in response to a plague and used the occasion to get Christians to think about their attitudes towards death, the passage can help us understand the attitude we should take towards the Eucharist, especially in light of John 6:

If a staid and praiseworthy man should promise you something you would have faith in his promise, and you would not believe that you would be cheated or deceived by one whom you knew to be steadfast in his words and deeds. God is speaking to you, and do you waiver faithlessly with your unbelieving mind? God promises that when you leave this world you shall have immortality in life eternal, and do you doubt? This is to know God not at all. This is to offend Christ, the Teacher of belief by the sin of disbelief. For one established in the Church, this is not to have faith in the house of faith. (The Faith of the Early Fathers by William A. Jurgens, Vol. I, #562, p. 224).

Peter and the Twelve (except for Judas Iscariot) understood that Jesus was "steadfast in his words and deeds." To doubt that what Jesus promises is true "is to know God not at all."

Later, St. Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033-1109), building on writings of St. Augustine, stressed the importance of faith as foundational to understanding. Anselm wrote, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia, nisi credidero, non intelligam." ("Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this, too, I believe, that, unless I first believe, I shall not understand.") If we are open to faith, we come to understand certain things that are not available to us outside of faith.

We will never understand the Eucharist this side of Heaven. It is indeed a hard saying. However, we must trust the One saying it, for He is steadfast in His words and deeds.

More from St. Cyprian of Carthage - Union with Christ in the Eucharist

St. Cyprian has a number of passages regarding the Eucharist which are worth exploring. Here's another one from William Jurgens' Faith of the Early Fathers (Vol. 1, #583, p. 232):

Because Christ bore us all, in that He bore our sins, we see that by the water, people are signified, while in the wine, indeed, the Blood of Christ is shown. And when the water is mixed with the wine in the cup, the people are made one with Christ, and the multitude of believers is coupled and joined to Him in whom it believes ("To a Certain Cecil," 63, 13).

The mixing of water with the wine is a way of representing the idea of "communion," of how through the Eucharist we become united with Christ, of how we are given grace, which is a share in Christ's divine life.

St. Cyprian was very concerned with unity with the Church, especially through the bishops and ultimately through Peter and his successors (although, apparently, St. Cyprian had some changing thoughts on the primacy of Roman bishop). He was also concerned about disunity arising from the Roman persecutions; he insisted on the need for reconciliation for those Christians who renounced the faith to avoid martyrdom.

Fr. Edward McNamara has a couple of interesting articles at Zenit News Agency on why water is mixed with the wine at the Consecration.

St. Cyprian of Carthage - Matter Matters

I have been reading more of William Jurgens' Faith of the Early Fathers. St. Cyprian (ca. 200 -258) was bishop of Carthage; he survived the Decian persecution but ultimately was martyred by beheading. Among his writings are passages about the Eucharist. One of his letters ("To a Certain Cecil," 63, 9) indicates the nature of Catholic sacramental theology in which a certain form and matter is necessary. The form is the words or actions being said or performed, and the matter is the material used in the sacrament. For example, in baptism the form is the Trinitarian formula: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (That is why last year the Vatican re-affirmed the teaching that baptisms not using the Trinitarian form are not valid.) The matter in baptism is the water.







In the Eucharist, the form is the Eucharistic prayer, and the matter is the bread and wine (mixed with water). Cyprian addresses a practice of using water instead of wine, rather than wine mixed with water:





We find that the cup which the Lord offered was mixed; and that what was wine, He called Blood. From this it is apparent that the Blood of Christ is not offered if there is no wine in the cup; nor is the Sacrifice of the Lord celebrated with a legitimate consecration unless our offering and sacrifice corresponds to the passion... I wonder, indeed, whence this practice has come, that, contrary to evangelic and apostolic tradition, in certain places water alone, which cannot signify the Blood of Christ, is offered in the cup of the Lord. (Faith of the Early Fathers, Volume 1, #582, p. 232).


Because the matter used does not conform to the matter required (no wine is used) in accord with the "evangelic and apostolic tradition," the sacrament does not take place. We cannot simply make it up as we go along. The power of the sacraments comes from the One who instituted them, and the One who instituted them knew that the physicality of the sacraments (and thus how the sacraments signify what they effect) matters. When we are tempted to think that the Church has too many rules about things, it is important for us to remember the reasons why she has such rules. Again, we see the truth of lex orandi, lex credendi (literally, "the law of praying, the law of believing"). What the phrase means is that the way we worship affects how we believe, so orthodox worship leads to orthodox belief and theology. It is also true that heterodox worship leads to heterodox belief and theology. So in our liturgy and in our sacraments, what we say and do has far-reaching consequences.