Holy Sacrament

EWTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Peace be to you. The whole world really has a hunger for God. As Augustine put it, our hearts were made for thee, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee. When our blessed Lord saw a very hungry crowd, he said, I am sorry for the multitude. They have nothing to eat. What he gave them on that occasion is the subject of this lesson. And it brings us to the sacrament of the Eucharist. In order that we may keep the parallel and the analogy between the natural life and the supernatural life, it will be recalled that in order to lead a physical life, we must be born to it. In order to lead a supernatural life, we have to be born to it, and that is the sacrament of the baptism. Then once we are born, we must grow physically, spiritually too. We must achieve maturity and accept responsibilities. That is the sacrament of confirmation. Now we come to the new element in life. If life is ever to live, it must nourish itself. If divine life is to live, it too needs its nourishment. That is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the greatest of all the sacraments, because it contains the person of Christ who is the author of life. It is the one sacrament to which all of the other sacraments look. Imagine six arrows in a circle, all pointing to a center. The center is the Eucharist, the six arrows of the other sacraments. The Eucharist is the sun around which the other sacraments revolve as planets. All the other sacraments share in its power, and they perfect themselves in the celebration of the Eucharist. It is a sacrament that is so sublime that human reason could never guess at it. Divine love is far deeper than we know. Now the aim of this spoken encyclopedia is not to tell you what you must believe, but to explain the faith to you. So we begin describing and explaining the Eucharist through the analogy of biology. All natural laws are reflections of spiritual laws. It is not the other way around. The spiritual is the voice, and the natural is the echo. Take for example the law of gravitation. That is a physical law which describes the way that all material objects tend toward the earth as its center, and as their center. But in addition to that, there is the spiritual law of gravitation, by which all things are drawn to God. Material gravitation is really a reflection of spiritual. Now we come to another law, not in the physical order, but in the order of biology. And that law is very simple. It is the law of communion. To live, we must eat. All life lives through communion with some other form of life. There is nothing on this earth that does not obey that law in some way or other. You take for example plant life. Though it does not commune on another kind of life, nevertheless it is dependent upon something else for its existence. So the plant life will go down to the earth for water and for phosphates and carbonates, and it also draws much life from the sun. If these chemicals were blotted out and the sun were blotted out, so as to deprive plant life of communion, it would perish. You take plant life. That is, as we said, a communion with lower life, but when we get to animal life, the law becomes far more clear. There is still a greater need of nourishment. It needs, of course, nourishment from the mineral order like sunlight and air and so forth, but the nourishment of the animal comes from plant life. From the very moment the animal comes into being, there is a quest for nourishment. Its fundamental instinct is to seek food. The animal roaming in a field, the fish swimming in the ocean, the eagle in the air, all are in search of daily bread. Without ever knowing it, they acknowledge the law that life is impossible without nourishment, that life grows only by life, and the joy of living comes from communion with another kind of life. Now when you come to man, the same law applies. He has a body just as animals, and that body clamors for food and more delicate food. Our body is not content as the plant to take its food from the ground raw, uncooked, and unseasoned. It seeks the refinement that comes from a higher creature, and in doing so it acknowledges that universal law of life, that every living thing must nourish itself. Life lives by life, and the joy of living is enhanced by communion with another form of life. But here we come to a difference. Man has a soul as well as a body. Does not his soul demand food? And since his soul is spiritual, does it not require some spiritual food? There's nothing on this earth that can completely satisfy this soul hunger of man, simply because it is an unearthly hunger. Everything in this universe demands a nourishment that is suited to its nature. A canary does not use the same kind of food as a boa constrictor, because its nature is different. Man's soul is spiritual, and therefore it demands a spiritual food. Now what will that food be? That question was answered by our blessed Lord in the plains alongside of the shores of Galilee. And the occasion was, too, when men were hungry. Our blessed Lord saw thousands passing in a Passover caravan, hurrying on to Jerusalem. He marked that they were toiling up the hill in small groups. Some of them were very spent from long walks, particularly mothers bragging their children and old who longed for the refreshment of life. And our blessed Lord's heart goes out to them. He proposes to feed them. Andrew the apostle pointed to a boy who had five barley loaves and two fishes. These our blessed Lord took. Notice the way the gospel describes what our Lord did. Notice also the parallel between this description and the Last Supper. We are quoting the gospel of Mark. And he took up the five loaves and two fishes, and blessed, and broke the loaves, and gave to his disciples. With these five barley loaves and two fishes, our blessed Lord fed the multitude of thousands. It was indeed a miracle of multiplication. The grain of wheat multiplies in the ground, so the bread and fishes, by a divinely hastened process, are multiplied until, the gospel says, everyone had his fill. Do you suppose that if our blessed Lord gave out money instead of bread, the gospel would have said that everyone had his fill? Well, the effect of this miracle was stupendous, because they saw the bread and the fishes increasing. And the people saw the possibility of making our Lord a King that would bring prosperity and plenty. So they sought to make him King. That's what people want, even from God that walks this earth, economic prosperity. It was almost like the temptation of Satan on the mountain. Remember Satan asked our blessed Lord to turn the stones into bread, to make himself an economic provider. And so the people now wanted our Lord to be a King, an economic, political King that would fill their gullets and their stomachs, and if he did that he would have power, according to them. And our Lord, knowing that they wished to make him King, fled into the mountains alone. They could not make him King. He was born a King. It could very well have been that this flight from political kingship disillusioned Judas. Do you know that the first record that we have of the fall of Judas takes place when our blessed Lord here announces and promises the Eucharist? And the fall of Judas comes when our blessed Lord gives the Eucharist at the Last Supper. It was the Eucharist that disillusioned Judas. We said that our blessed Lord left the multitude and they sought to make him King. And then the next morning he is found at Capernaum by the people. They were curious how he got there, and when they asked him, his answer was to reprimand them because they were identifying religion with soup kitchens. And he said, and we quote the Gospel of John, Believe me, if you are looking for me now, it is not because of the miracles you have seen, it is because you were fed with loaves and had your fill. By these words our Lord indicated that they had not taken the miracle as a sign of his divinity. They were looking for him instead of to him. Our Lord continues then to reproach him, and these are his words, You should not work to earn food which perishes in the using, work to earn food which affords continually eternal life, such food as the Son of Man will give you. Our Lord the Father has authorized him. Our Lord is here setting in contrast two kinds of bread. The bread that perishes, the bread that endures to life everlasting. And he cautioned them against following him as a donkey following a master who holds a carrot. To lift their carnal minds to eternal food, he suggested that they seek the food that the Heavenly Father had sealed or authorized. This refers to Oriental bread, which was often sealed with the official mark of the name of the baker. In fact, the Talmudic word for baker is related to seal. Just as hosts used in the mass have a seal upon them, such as a lamb or a cross, so our Lord was implying that the bread that he would give them was sealed or affirmed by his Father, namely himself. They were not satisfied, and so they protested that maybe this miracle was not as great as it seemed. There was some further proof that the Father had authorized him. He gave them bread, yes, but that was not stupendous. They argued, had not Moses given them bread from heaven in the desert? Their argument now was, what proof is there that you are greater than Moses? They minimized his miracle, you see, by comparing him to Moses and by comparing the bread to the manna that was given in the desert. Our Lord had indeed fed the multitude only once, and Moses had fed the multitude for forty years in the desert, so they made light of the gift. Our Lord took up the challenge. He said that the manna that they had received from Moses was not heavenly bread, nor had it come from heaven, furthermore it nourished only one nation for a brief space of time. And it was not Moses who gave the manna, it was his Father. And finally the bread which he would give would nourish unto everlasting life. Then he told them that the true bread comes down from heaven. And they said, Give us this bread. And he answered, It is I who am the bread of life. Now he makes the shadow of the cross appear. Bread must be broken. You who came from God must die on the cross as a result of the sins of the world. These are his words. And now what is this bread which I am to give? It is my flesh given for the life of the world. Then the Jews fell to disputing one with another, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Whereupon Jesus said to them, Believe me when I tell you this, You can have no life in yourselves unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood. Notice that he is picturing himself as one who gives himself, that is to say, gives himself in death. And the flesh and blood that he will give them is not just that flesh and blood that they see, it will be the flesh and blood that will be glorified, sent into heaven at the right hand of the Father. And he said that he would give it for the world. Now they begin to understand that these lambs that they saw were going up to Jerusalem to lose their blood were only a symbol of the Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of God. Then he said to them that they were to live by him as he lived by the Father. His words were, As I live because of the Father, the living Father who has sent me, so he who eats will live in his turn because of me. Our blessed Lord is here saying that the life that passes from Father to Son is now the life that will pass when he passes into his glory from himself to us. Was there anything strange about it? They knew that it was strange. They all knew what he meant, that he was the bread of life and that we would have to nourish himself ourselves on his life. They understood that as the reason Judas broke. Some of the disciples left and walked with him no more, saying, This saying is hard and who can bear it? Then it was that our blessed Lord turned to Peter the Rock and said, Will you also go away? And Peter the Rock answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou alone hast the words of eternal life. He meant what he said. They knew it. Our Lord would never have permitted his disciples to have left if they had misunderstood him. Now what he promised that day, he fulfilled the night of the Last Supper. We will have occasion to talk of that at great length, but it suffices for the moment to recall that this particular night he gathered all of his apostles round about him. The next day he will die. He institutes a memorial of his death and of his resurrection and ascension. He was said that he was the bread of life. He now, in the words of the gospel, took bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them saying, This is my body given for you. Notice he said over the bread, This is my body. He did not say, This represents my body. This symbolizes my body. This is a token of my body, but this is my body. Notice that he also said, Given for you. Given on the cross. And then taking wine into his hands, the chalice, he said, Drink all of you of this, for this is my blood of the New Testament, shed for many through the remission of sins. Over the chalice of wine he said, This is my blood. Not this represents, but it is. And as the old covenant or testament was ratified with blood, so now he ratifies, as he said, the New Testament with his blood. Did our Lord mean what he said? We believe it. What makes our faith unique is this, that we do not pick and choose among the words of our blessed Lord. We do not fool around with them. When he said, Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, we believe it. That is why there is the sacrament of penance. When he called Peter the rock, we believe it. And now when he said, This is my body, this is my blood, we believe it. And so the law of communion continues through the universe. If the plants could speak, they would say to the animals, Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you. If the animals could speak, they would say to man, Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you. And Christ speaks to us and says, Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you. The law of transformation holds sway. Animals are transformed into plants, plants into animals, animals into man, and man into Christ. Christ, the divine pelican. According to the legend, the pelican wounds itself in order that it might nourish its young. So he gave his life to sustain our life. And the greatest joy in the world is communion with the very life of God. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio. 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