(1/3) This is My Body: Pattern for the Mass, the Sacraments, and the Church

This is the first of three sermons delivered on the occasion of the annual Forty Hours Devotion of Saint Nicholas Parish in Walnutport (Northampton County, Diocese of Allentown). The collection is called, This Is My Body: Pattern for the Mass, the Sacraments, and the Church. The contents are presented 99.8% as-delivered.

For the sake of the original audience, by the third night I had developed an outline of the schema which I printed on ticket paper; the smaller portion of the ticket contains a memento of the occasion. I display it below for your own clarity.

Knowing that these sermons are hereby available to a larger audience, I welcome, and preemptively resent, any critique.

Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Eucharist are considered the “Sacraments of Initiation,” because they make Catholics of their recipients. These Sacraments involve the invocation of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. In Baptism, the priest or deacon extends his hands to sign the child with the Cross. In Confirmation, the Bishop extends his hands over the Confirmandi to beg for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon them, which he seals by applying Sacred Chrism on their foreheads.

When it comes to the Eucharist, the priest extends his hands over the gifts, calling down the Holy Spirit to transform them into the Lord’s Body and Blood in a moment called the epiclesis, the “calling-down-upon.” Often this has been marked by ringing of bells, previously to alert the faithful and the musicians it was taking place. What the General Instruction of the Roman Missal calls the “Consecratory Epiclesis,” “implores the power of the Holy Spirit, that the gifts offered by human hands be consecrated, that is, become Christ’s Body and Blood” (79).

There is a second moment in which the priest invokes the Holy Spirit: it takes place after the Consecration, and is called the “Communion Epiclesis.” His hands are extended throughout the Eucharistic Prayer, from after the Consecration onward. Here, the same Holy Spirit Who has incarnated the Divine Son in the womb of the Virgin Mother, the same Holy Spirit Who has transformed man-made bread and wine into that very Divine Son, now descends again so that “the unblemished sacrificial Victim to be consumed in Communion may be for the salvation of those who will partake of it” (79). 

Salvation is shown to be more than a divinely weighted blanket being thrown over us; it is, rather, our being born from above and from within, by the same Holy Spirit. He makes us a “new creation” restored to unity with the Triune God, with the Communion of Saints, within ourselves, and with all of creation.

As Our Lord makes bread and wine His Eucharistic Body by the Holy Spirit’s power, by that same Power He makes us members of His Church: “Believe what you see, see what you believe and become what you are: the Body of Christ” (St. Augustine).

Only once in a lifetime can one receive the first two Sacraments of Initiation—only once can one be baptized and confirmed. Note for anyone who became Catholic after having been “confirmed” in another Christian denomination: no other church save the Orthodox consider Confirmation a Sacrament, which is why we confirm converts. The Orthodox do chrismate converts from Catholicism, though as a sign of unification with them and not as a repudiation of the validity of our sacraments—at least depending on who you talk to. The Catholic Church does not re-confirm converts from Orthodoxy.

As for the Eucharist, of course, one should receive that Sacrament of Initiation worthily and often. Perhaps only the first reception of Holy Communion is an “initiation” as such, while every subsequent worthy Communion serves to deepen our identity. Hence our ongoing need to keep clean the Temple that would receive God Himself as its Guest—which is where we will pick up tomorrow.