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Question

Dear Father Angelo, 

My name is Alessio, I wonder what happens during the absorption of the eucharistic species. What happens when we have consumed the Body of Christ?

Thank you for your reply. As a matter of fact, I am interested in finding out how we can be in communion with Christ, thus becoming His Mystical Body through the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Answer

Dear Alessio,

1. The presence of the body of Christ is tied to the accidents of bread, namely its color, taste and quantity.

When they vanish, the Lord’s presence ceases as well.

2. During the process of absorption the accidents of “bread” are not there anymore, but there are the elements it was made up of, and that now are blended with saliva and acids.

These elements – that are not anymore the Body of the Lord – are absorbed like any other food.

3. This notwithstanding, there is another reality we ought to bear in mind.

Actually, it is the most important. It is the union with Jesus’s soul.

Jesus  becomes united with us through His Body in order to form a tighter union with our spirit, namely with our thoughts, with our will, with our feelings.

Saint Thomas writes: “it is proper to friendship that a man reveals his secrets to his friend […] that he should share his belongings with him; It also belongs to friendship that a man delight in the presence of his friend, and rejoice in his words and deeds; also, that he find in him consolation in all his troubles” (Contra gentes, IV, 21-22).

The union of Jonathan’s soul with David’s (1Sam 18:1) is just a pale figure of the union between Jesus and whoever nourishes himself with Him. They can repeat the words of the Song of Songs: “My lover belongs to me and I to him” (Song 2:16)

4. No presence, no union is so sweet, agreeable, discreet as Jesus’s.

Other presences, although appreciated, become sometimes boring.

Jesus’s presence, on the contrary, is always humble, pleasing…

Saint Thomas (and the liturgy of the Church with him) exclaims: “How kind and gentle you are, O Lord”! (First Vespers of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi). 

5. There is a special effusion of grace in this union, because this sacrament works in our lives “the effect which Christ’s Passion wrought in the world” (Summa Theologiae, III, 79, 1). As a matter of fact, this sacrament is none other than the application to a single man of the Lord’s Passion. 

6. The effects are those that are represented by the symbols: bread and wine.

As a matter of fact, “the effect of this sacrament is considered from the way in which this sacrament is given; for it is given by way of food and drink. And therefore this sacrament does for the spiritual life all that material food does for the bodily life, namely, by sustaining, giving increase, restoring, and giving delight” (Ibidem).

“Hence it is that the soul is spiritually nourished through the power of this sacrament, by being spiritually gladdened, and as it were inebriated with the sweetness of the Divine goodness, according to Cant 5:1: Eat, O friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved”.(Summa Theologiae, III, 79, 1, ad. 2).

7. Father Garrigou-Lagrange comments: “First of all, it sustains. He who in the natural order does not take food or who takes insufficient food, declines; in the spiritual order the same is true of the man who refuses the Eucharistic bread which the Lord offers us as the best food for our soul. Why deprive ourselves, without reason, of this “supersubstantial bread,”which is the daily bread of our souls?

As material bread restores the organism by repairing its losses, the results of labor and fatigue, so the Eucharist repairs the gradual loss of strength which results from our negligences. As the Council of Trent says, it frees us from venial sins, restores to us the fervor which we lost because of these sins, and preserves us from mortal sin.

Moreover, ordinary nourishment increases the life of the body in a growing child. Now, from the spiritual point of view, we ought always to grow in the love of God and of our neighbor until death; thus we advance in our journey toward eternity. That we may grow in this way, the Eucharistic bread always brings us new graces. Thus supernatural growth does not stop in the saints as long as they continue on their way toward God: their faith becomes daily more enlightened and more lively, their hope more firm, their charity more pure and ardent. Little by little they advance from resignation in suffering to the esteem and love of the cross. Through Communion all the infused virtues grow with charity; and through ever more fervent Communions, they may reach a heroic degree. The gifts of the Holy Ghost, being permanent, infused dispositions connected with charity, also grow with it.

Lastly, as material bread is pleasant to the taste, the Eucharistic bread is sweet to the faithful soul, which draws from it a comfort and sometimes a spiritual well-being that is more or less felt”. (R. Garrigou-Lagrange, The three ages of interior life, vol. II, pp. 180-181).

I wish you that all of this may happen in an ever increasing way in you, I remember you to the Lord in prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo