The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friend,

And the doors were shut. And remaining still shut His glorified Body entered by penetration through the doors as He did at His Resurrection. Calvin was the first to deny this against the belief of all the ancient fathers and interpreters who called this a miracle of divine power. The same power which could bring Christ's whole Body entire in all its dimensions through the doors can without the least question make the same Body really present in the Sacrament. Though both the one and the other be above our comprehension.

It is therefore a want of faith to limit the power of Christ by the ordinary rules of place and to deny that He can be in the Blessed Sacrament and on as many altars as He pleases. We do not believe with those who maintain that the humanity of Christ is in every place where His divinity is. This is contrary to faith. But, everywhere Christ's humanity is, there is likewise His divinity.

God is all present. The Sacred Body of Jesus Christ is not all present. Our Lord's presence in the Blessed Sacrament is very different than God's omnipresence.

Though God is everywhere, Jesus Christ's Body is only sacramentally present upon the altars where a true priest consecrates.

Though this is a mystery beyond our comprehension, there are likewise many errors which we must avoid in our belief of this mystery.

Our Lord is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament Body, Blood Soul and Divinity. He is truly God and truly man. Completely God, and completely man. And this presence in the Blessed Sacrament is different than the omnipresence of God. The physical Body of Jesus Christ is really and truly present in our tabernacle. God does see and hear us no matter where we are, but we can only be near Christ in His humanity in the Blessed Sacrament. Not only in this Blessed Sacrament can we come near to our Lord's physical Body to have our petition heard, but our Lord is actually willing and ready to come to us in Holy Communion.

All that our Lord requires of us, to hear our prayer, is that we come in the state of grace and with a contrite heart.

Christ's presence in the Mystical Body of Christ is likewise very different than His presence in the Blessed Eucharist. All true Catholics make up the Mystical Body of Christ and Christ is truly present in this Mystical Body. We must be very cautious to avoid the Modernist interpretation of equating the Mystical Body of Christ with His sacramental presence in the Holy Eucharist.

According to the Council of Trent: "If anyone says that in the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist Christ, the only begotten Son of God is not to be adored with the worship of latria, also outwardly manifested, and is consequently neither to be venerated with a special festive solemnity, nor to be solidly borne about in procession according to the laudable and universal rights and custom of Holy Church, or is not to be set publicly before the people to be adored. And that the adorers thereof are idolaters let him be anathema."

Thus it is clear that we must worship God in the Holy Eucharist. But it would be most inappropriate to worship God, in other human beings. This would surely become idolatry. Though God may live within us, we do not thereby become God. When God becomes present in the holy Eucharist through the mystery which we call transubstantiation, the substance of the bread and wine are no longer present. Only the accidents remain. Christ is truly and substantially present, the bread and wine no longer remain. This cannot be said to take place when Christ lives within us as the Mystical Body of Christ.

Pope Pius XII condemned this in the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, June 29, 1943: "There are some who, not sufficiently considering that the Apostle Paul speaks here with terms employed in a figurative sense, and not distinguishing, as it is absolutely necessary to do, the peculiar and proper senses of physical, moral, and mystical body, introduce a false notion of unity, when they make the Divine Redeemer and the members of the Church fuse and coalesce into one physical person; and while they attribute divine attributes to men, they make Christ the Lord subject to error and to a human inclination to evil. It is not only Catholic faith and the teaching of the Fathers which repudiate absolutely this false doctrine, but also the mind and the whole teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who, although he joins Christ and His Mystical Body in a wonderful union of persons, at the same time opposes them one to the other as Spouse and Beloved."

Therefore "the people of God" are not God, and are not to be worshiped as God. It is God who is to be worshiped. Our worship is to be directed toward the God of the people, not toward "the people of God." Just as we must avoid the error of pantheism, so too must we avoid the error of panChristism. We are not all Christ just because Christ may come and dwell within us.

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