In the first part of my series on the biblical roots of the Mass, we examined how Jesus’ one sacrifice of Calvary didn’t end on the cross, but rather culminated in everlasting glory in the heavenly sanctuary. In part two, we saw how Christ’s one selfsame sacrifice becomes present here on earth through biblical remembrance. In part three, we showed how Jesus is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, and thus how he enables his Church to make present—and offer anew—his one sacrifice under the appearances of bread and wine, carrying out the ritual he instituted at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:26-28; see Gen. 14:18-20).
In this final essay of the series, we will address the miracle of how Jesus can make his finite human body present in innumerable places—i.e., whenever and wherever the Church offers anew his one sacrifice in a sacramental manner, fulfilling Christ’s command, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
By virtue of his triumphant resurrection, which we celebrate especially during the Easter season, our Lord Jesus Christ has attained “a glorious body—that is, one “not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] 645).
The Wonder of a Glorified Human Body
Thus, Jesus can pass through closed doors (John 20:26) and make sudden appearances at will (Luke 24:36). St. Paul calls the resurrected body a “spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44). Here we understand how Jesus is “made perfect” (Heb. 5:9; see 2:10)—not in his divine personhood, which is necessarily omnipotent and therefore perfect, but in his human nature, which does admit of perfective change (even though Christ is sinless), and which Jesus attained in redeeming the world through his one sacrifice of Calvary.
Consequently, Jesus’ human nature is not automatically perfected in the Incarnation, but the Incarnation—through which Christ’s human nature is united to his divine Person—makes that humanly possible (see CCC 460, 470, 474).
Further, what happens in the Eucharist is something far more profound than the glorification of Christ’s natural body. Christ’s body cannot be in more than one place by the power of that same human nature. In other words, a limited human body can never be in more than one place by virtue of its own human power. Also, as noted above, being joined to Christ’s divine Person via the Incarnation does not mean that his human nature will thereby automatically partake of his divine power to be present throughout the world. But the Incarnation does make wondrous things possible for Christ’s body, blood, and soul—namely, the sacrament of the Eucharist, in which the substance of the bread and wine offered is transubstantiated into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ at Mass (CCC 1376).
The Miracle of the Eucharist: Finite Body, Divine Personhood
So how does Jesus Christ become humanly present in the Eucharist around the world and yet remain in heaven? Though his body never ceases to be human, let us first consider that Christ enables it to be present after the manner of a spirit in the Eucharist. That is, Christ is present in the eucharistic elements like how our human souls are diffused throughout our bodies: in a whole and undivided manner, not in a carnal, cannibalistic way. So Jesus’ body remains a body, but, like a spirit, his body becomes miraculously present in a whole and undivided manner in each and every eucharistic host, and thus in each and every part of each host, “in such a way that the breaking of the bread does not divide Christ” (CCC 1377).
In the Eucharist, Jesus wills his body to go beyond its limited human nature and become a participant in his divine attributes, all the while retaining its substance as his human body and blood.
To be clear, Christ’s body does not become omnipresent through the sacrament of the Eucharist, but Christ does omnipotently enable his body to have “a share” in his divine omnipresence. Specifically, Jesus enables his body to become sacramentally present wherever the sacrifice of the Mass is offered and wherever he—our eucharistic Lord—is reposed in a tabernacle and worshiped in adoration.
Fr. Matthias Scheeben helps make the Eucharistic Mystery more accessible:
Because the body of Christ is the body of the Son of God, it receives through the power of the divine Person inhabiting it the unique privilege, similar to the prerogative of the Person himself, but in limited measure, of being present indivisible and undivided in many places and in the innermost recesses of things. Not formally through the hypostatic union, but still because of it and on the basis of it, the Son of God raises the body he has assumed to a share in the simplicity, universality, and pervasive power of his divine existence (The Mysteries of Christianity, 474).
According to the natural mode of existing, Jesus always sits at the right hand of the Father. Yet, through the miracle of the Eucharist, his body becomes sacramentally present everywhere the sacrifice of the Mass is offered, as the Council of Trent affirms in its Decree Concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.
This concept is not a simple one to grasp. Christ helps us understand the Eucharist through his other miracles, specifically the multiplication of loaves and fish, which he performs early in John 6. Some Christians who affirm this miracle will counter that the crowd ate many different loaves, not from one. Still, we must remember that the many loaves that fed thousands had their origin in a mere five loaves (John 6:1-15). That is, Christ temporarily suspended the laws of physics and divinely ‘‘stretched’’ the five loaves to become many so that the crowd could be fed.
Human Communication as a Means to Better Understand the Eucharist
If Christ can do that with regular bread, why can’t he do something much more extraordinary with his glorified body, so that he can feed the world supernaturally? Scheeben sheds additional light on the Eucharistic miracle by means of an analogy. Similar to how a single thought can become present to many people through the means of sound waves, so too God can make himself present in many eucharistic hosts in the sacrifice of the Mass. Here Scheeben cites the work of Guitmund of Aversa, an eleventh-century bishop and theologian:
We are aware from everyday experience that our thought, that is, the word of our mind, can in a certain way be clothed with sound, so that the thought which was concealed in our mind and was known to us alone can be uttered, and thus manifested to others. Even while it remains wholly in our own mind, it can be wholly made known to a thousand persons through the agency of the sound it has assumed, so that it not only simultaneously illuminates the minds of them all, but at the same time, still whole and entire, strikes the ears of all with the sound in which it is embodied.
If, then, God has conferred such power on the human word that not only the word itself, but the sound wherewith it is it clothed, can at the same time reach a thousand people without any cleavage of its being, no one ought to refuse to believe the same, even if he cannot understand it, of the only and omnipotent and co-eternal word of the omnipotent Father, and of the flesh in which he is clothed, so that the Word himself may be known to us [in the Eucharist].
Neither can we understand the matter as regards the tenuous and fleeting word of a man, and the sounds which scarcely hover in existence for a second, and yet we accept it on the basis of daily experience (Mysteries of Christianity, 515-16).
Scheeben wrote in the late nineteenth century, before the invention of radio and television. The analogy he cites becomes even more compelling when we consider the worldwide impact broadcast technology can have on a single uttered word.
In summary, the body of Christ can be both in heaven and on earth because the omnipotent Christ wills it for our salvific benefit. Although Christ’s human body is limited in itself, it can share in God’s divine power by Christ’s will.
Afterword: In the Eucharist, the various properties of the bread and wine, including the wine’s power to intoxicate, remain even though the fundamental substance of the bread and wine have become the sacramental body and blood. And thus the admonition not to abuse the Precious Blood.
In addition, eucharistic miracles—which can rightly be termed “a miracle upon a miracle,” or a secondary Eucharistic miracle—are visible affirmations that the Eucharistic consecration is true (see CCC 156). Further, these miracles illustrate that the Eucharist includes the materiality/physical realm of Christ’s body and blood; however, again, considered as a sacrament, these realities exist after the manner of a spirit—i.e., in a whole and undivided manner. Finally, for how Jesus is substantially present in such visible Eucharistic miracles, despite their outward appearance, see this article by Roberto Coggi, O.P., which elaborates on St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching in the Summa Theologiae (ST, III, Q. 76, art. 8, resp.).