by Margaret Birth, OFS
“Here on Earth, I see nothing of the Son of the Highest God, except his most holy body and blood.” These words from St. Francis of Assisi explain his devotion to the Eucharist.
As someone who came to Catholicism as an adult, the first time I read these words, it felt revelatory to me. This one segment of a sentence captures the heart of why belief in the Real Presence is so important to Catholics.
I had already been open to the possibility of the Real Presence. After all, in the biblical story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), Jesus performs his first miracle — turning water into wine. Then, at the Last Supper, he says of the bread that he gives to his disciples, “Take, eat; this is my body,” and of the wine he gives to them, “This is my blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:26-29; see also Mark 14:22-25 and Luke 22:14-22).
Whether he turned water into wine or bread into his body and wine into his blood, Jesus Christ had the power and the divinity to do it.
Part of the Last Supper narrative, though, is Christ’s directive that believers regularly re-create that sacred meal in memory of him. That re-creation includes proclaiming bread to be his body and wine to be his blood.
So it is, in the Mass, that the priest, taking on the role of Jesus Christ, consecrates ordinary bread and wine, and Catholics believe that, as the Holy Spirit works through the priest at the moment of Consecration, those species become the Lord’s true body and blood (Catechism 1374-1377 and 1380-1381).
The Bible gives numerous examples of the Holy Spirit (also sometimes called the Advocate or the Paraclete, among other names) working through regular human beings. The second chapter of Acts relates a dramatic account of the Holy Spirit’s making his presence known among believers in the early Church. But perhaps my favorite story about the Holy Spirit’s power at work in a person is the angel Gabriel’s exchange with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Luke 1:25-38.
“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,” he tells her. “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”
A no-doubt-stunned Mary questions this, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God,” Gabriel explains, then adds, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”
It makes sense, then, that through the power and divinity of the Holy Spirit working in the hands of a priest and the words of the Mass, God can and does affect the seemingly impossible — transforming bread and wine into the Real Presence of Jesus Christ’s body and blood.
If you believe in the Real Presence, those words of St. Francis of Assisi take on extra-special significance. We can see the Host and Chalice with our own eyes at every Mass we attend — they are solid, visible, tangible reminders of the bread (“my body”) and the wine (“my blood”) that Jesus gave to his disciples at the Last Supper.
When we encounter his Most Precious Body and his Most Precious Blood in the Eucharist, then we are also directly and immediately encountering our savior, himself.
Could anything matter more to a believer than having a personal encounter with Christ?
That sounds like the pinnacle of Christian faith to me.
Margaret Birth is a wife, a mother, a freelance writer, and the current minister of the St. Michael fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order.