1

Notes on Disc 1 Bishop Barron The Eucharist

Disc 1 Part 1 Introduction

Bishop Barron remembers serving the Eucharist in St. Peter’s Square three different times, and typical of the Italians, all those experiences were a bit out of order. Those receiving the Body and the Blood would rush forward and thrust their hands out to the priests pleading, “Padre, Padre…per favore, per favore” as if they were starving. In some sense, that picture of those hands being thrust out is so right to reflect on as we begin our study of the Eucharist. Without the Eucharist, spiritually speaking we Catholics would starve. That scene in St. Peter’s square reminds us of starving populations in Africa, and other third world countries when emergency food finally arrives. Hands thrust out, pushing and shoving, as starving people rush the trucks bringing them food.

He next mentions a conversation with his sister about how many are leaving his home parish for a Congregationalist church a few blocks away. They discuss why that might be happening, and then he asks something like this, what about the Eucharist, won’t they miss the real presence of Jesus, the Body and Blood of our Lord. Her response was very hard to hear, she told Bishop Barron, I don’t believe most of those leaving, would even know what you are talking about. Later on, he would give this statistic, 75% of Catholics do not know what Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist really means. That is a shocking reality that must change.

2

Disc 1 Part 2 Sacred Meal – Sacrum Convivium

Think of the most lavish banquet you have ever been a part of, a real blow out of a banquet party that spared no expense. The kind of banquet with great food and drink, with festive fellowship, the kind of party you do not want to end. Jackie and I have not been on a cruise yet, but talking to many who have, they throw some swank parties on some of those floating five-star hotels. This understanding of a joyous lavish banquet is very important as we look at the Eucharist.

First Bishop Barron asks a very important question, why does God create, why did he create the universe or you me for that matter. He didn’t need all that, and he certainly did not need you and me…so why go to all the effort. The Church throughout the ages has answered that question, He does not create out of need, God is perfect, and He has no needs. Thomas Aquinas put it this way, “the good is diffusive of itself”. God who is goodness is naturally diffused, His life and the very force of His life bubbles over and creation happens. He did not make this world out of a “have to” mentality, He created just because He wanted to, He wanted to create the goodness of the universe and this world, He wanted to create you and me. God who is love, let His love bubble over, and you and I were loved into existence. True love means to will the good of the other, with no thought of

3

gaining anything for yourself. God was not thinking of Himself when He created the universe, He was thinking only of the good of all of us.

And God always, always does things “plenty too much”. All that He does is over the top, not just enough or barely enough, it is always plenty too much. Look at all the diversity of life out there, some of which we are still discovering yet today. You would think a couple dozen species of birds would be plenty, oh no God does way more than that, thousands upon thousands of bird species, and then He creates millions and millions of birds within each species. Why…. He bubbles over with His life plenty too much…millions and millions of starlings for example. God let Adam name them, the word in Hebrew is the one we use for catalogue, he was naming them by intelligibility, classifying and cataloguing them and the Church teaches that Adam before the fall was the prototype of all scientists and philosophers.

God gave them dominion over all creation, but the real essence of this word is stewardship. And Adam is the first priest, the same Hebrew word used for Adam tilling the ground in the Garden, is used later in the Old Testament describing what a priest does in the Holy Temple. What does the priest do in the Holy

4

Temple, he takes what God has given us, and offers it back to God in right praise, and God takes and multiplies with His limitless grace back to His creatures and His creation. God gives, we receive and offer it back to God in worship, and then God multiplies it over and over, resulting in the sacred banquet, sacrum convivium.

God gave Adam and Eve plenty too much in the Garden of Eden for their banquet, any tree and any plant was freely theirs to enjoy. They could have gone on forever receiving all that God was providing and then giving it back to Him in praise and worship, only to have God multiply it even more in sacrum convivium. So, what went wrong, Adam and Eve decided to set their own table, instead of receiving the goodness that God is, and then giving it back to Him, only to have it multiplied empowering them to share it with us, they decided to receive God’s goodness for themselves thinking it would make them like God.

They set their own table with food that was not good for them, and they became fatally sick with sin. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represented deity, they wanted to know that knowledge for themselves, to be their own gods. They disrupted the perfect circle of grace, and tried to snatch grace and keep it for themselves. Grace by its very definition is not for ourselves, it is not selfish. It is received freely, to be given back to God freely, and then multiplied by God’s grace to be given to others creating a sacred banquet that becomes our way of living this life to its fullest, attracting all sinners to come to the banquet of God.

5

Noah offered up to God the sacrifices of the clean animals provided by God as mankind once again occupied dry land. The ark had saved their lives and in Noah’s obedience to God in the blood covenant sacrifices he made on that simple stone altar, came the blessing of Shem’s family. One of Shem’s descendants was a man named Terah living in the city of Ur, and he then had a son he named Abram. God’s perfect circle of grace continues and grows with His blood covenant with Abram, renaming him Abraham. God gives to Abram his son of promise, Isaac, and in turn Abram is tested by God as he offers up Isaac, giving him back to God in faithful obedience. What does God do, he not only provides a substitute ram in the nearby bush, He makes a covenant oath with Abraham that every family on earth would be blessed because the father of our faith was willing to offer up his son, how is that for multiplication?

The perfect circle of grace always transforms the one who receives the grace, giving it back to God in right praise and worship, and then receiving even more multiplied grace that God uses as a magnet drawing more and more sinners into this circle of grace, calling then to come to the sacred banquet. Later, God would use the Passover Feast as the means of establishing once again a blood covenant circle of grace.

Bring me a spotless lamb, take the blood and apply it to the doorposts of your home, eat the flesh of that spotless lamb, all of it, dress for journey, and I in turn

6

will save your lives and give you freedom from slavery, so that my new nation of Israel through this Passover Feast will become a magnet to draw the whole world to come and worship the God of Moses, and of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and sit down at God’s banquet table, sacrum convivium. What is God doing, restoring the sacrum convivium lost in the Garden of Eden. Then the prophet Isaiah begins to prophesy of a New Covenant unlike any other that has preceded it, on the “mountain of the house of the Lord”.

Isaiah 2:2–5 (RSV2CE) 2 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, 3 and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.

Verse 2 tells us, “all the nations shall flow to it”, what is going on here, God is using His people as a living magnet drawing all nations to His Holy Mountain. Instruction and teaching shall come forth from the mountain, God Himself teaching His ways to the nations. Righteous judgement will come forth from the mountain, and the people will beat the swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, the separation and disorder of sin will be destroyed, and the peace of God shall rule and reign, “neither shall they learn war anymore”.

But then look at what God does next up on the Holy Mountain. Isaiah 25:6–8 (RSV2CE) 6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of choice wines—of fat things full of marrow, of choice wines well refined. 7 And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. Does that

7

prophecy by Isaiah sound anything at all like the restoration of the Sacrum Convivium? Is this a picture of the Sacred Banquet, the Holy Eucharist, the covenant meal of the New Covenant that will take place in the Upper Room at the Last Supper. Look how Jesus came to us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, in the tiny town of Bethlehem. Bethlehem means literally, “house of bread”, and then they laid Him in a manger, what is a manger, but a feeding trough. The Christ child came to us born in the village known as the House of Bread, laid out in a feeding tough, as the bread of life come down from heaven to feed the whole world.

There was a tradition of the shepherds tending their flocks near Jerusalem providing spotless lambs for the Holy Temple to be sacrificed. The tradition was to wrap those lambs in swaddling clothes and lay them in a manger to keep them

8

from injury, so they would remain spotless for the Passover sacrifice. Some 30 years later, Jesus would hold up bread and say to His disciples, “this is my body, and then the cup, this is my blood…what blood…the blood of the New Covenant which is shed for your, do this!

Now consider Jesus, the very Incarnation of God, as He comes to usher in the New Covenant, the last blood covenant between God and man. But this is no ordinary man, this the God-man Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and fully man. Tell me, who is better qualified to represent both God and man at the Sacred Banquet sealing the New Covenant initiated during the Last Supper? What are the odds that this blood covenant will be the first one to be successful and not voided by sin and death and the grave? Man was always the weak link, God always kept His covenant promises, man never kept his…until now. Jesus the Man enters into blood covenant with God…who is also God. Both God and man will keep their covenant promises for this covenant that swallows up all those that have come before, and the blood of the Lamb of God will destroy the power of that sin over the previous ones, and ratify for all eternity the New Covenant, sealed with the Holy Eucharist.

Where did Jesus’ first miracle happen, the wedding feast at Cana. Throughout His ministry He continually sat down at meal after meal with sinners, and the scandal of that turned the Pharisees against Him. He became the intimate companion with sinners, and the very word companion means “with bread” …He shared “bread with” them. Jesus is the Holy Mountain of God that Isaiah prophesied, Jesus is Himself the bread come down from heaven, food for world. He is the pure embodiment of grace who proclaimed to the world, if I be lifted up I will draw all men to me, and here He is the Holy magnet of God.

9

The Bible story that makes this image so clear is Jesus multiplying the loaves and the fishes, feeding the multitudes. Here He is up on this mountain, and what is He doing? He is teaching, the Word of God is giving instruction about His Father’s kingdom. And many, a very large number of people have gathered from all over, drawn to the mountain by the pure grace of God embodied in this man from Nazareth.

It is so interesting that his disciples want to send them away, the very picture of sin still in operation since the fall of Adam and Eve. God wants to gather His people to His Holy Mountain and sin wants to send them away, to scatter them, to divide them and keep them from gathering into oneness. There is no way they can feed all these people, and what does Jesus do? Tell me what you have, says Jesus and they respond, just a few loaves and some fish…not nearly enough to feed the disciples let alone this massive crowd in front of them. Jesus asks them to give them to Him, and once again the pure grace of God receives our meager offerings, and God who does not need them blesses them and gives them back to us elevated and multiplied, “pressed down, shaken together and running over” once again showing that He is the God of plenty too much with twelve huge baskets left over. Christ is the only one that can fill us up, the goods of this world cannot do that, the more we eat of the goods of this world in a selfish and scattered way we can never be filled, never fulfilled. But when we take to Jesus

10

what little we have, and He blesses what we give Him with praise and thanksgiving, He then gives them back to us as the miracle bread come down from heaven, able to feed the whole world.

Finally, in the fullness of time, Jesus comes with His twelve, to the Temple Mount, and once again, and for the last time before He would die on a cross for His friends, He sits down at a meal. This is a very special place, and this is a very special night, and this is a very special meal. This is the restoration of the Garden of Eden, this is Isaiah’s Holy Mountain, this is the place that sinners are invited by to come to the banquet and eat with God…and every time we gather for Mass we are in this place. You and I and the whole Body of Christ, are in that place.

11

Think about how we gather for Mass, saints and sinners, of course. Are there rich and poor, no doubt, and educated and uneducated, and what are the words we say together at the very beginning of Mass, “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy”. Then what happens, we bring what little we have to the Priest who is represents Jesus to us, and then what does he do, he offers them up to God, what pitiful little there is, certainly not enough to feed all of us. And what does God do, He certainly doesn’t need them. God blesses them, as the priest breaks the host, as they now as they become Jesus’ very body and blood, multiplied and elevated, enough to feed us all, and the whole world out there.

He is the only food and drink that can possibly satisfy our deepest needs, and as we are blessed and dismissed from the Sacred Banquet we become the magnets of God, calling to all the nations to come to the Holy Mountain and eat with God. From His first hours on earth, the babe placed in a feeding trough, to the Wedding Feast at Cana, to the feeding of the five thousand, and finally the Last Supper taking our simple gifts and giving back to us elevated and multiplied in the Holy Eucharist, giving us His very own Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity we now have an open door to gather and come in to the Sacred Banquet, the Sacrum Convivium. And when this life is over on the earth, all of us we will gather once again around a great table in heaven with all the nations, on the Holy Mountain of God, at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Let God be praised forever. Amen.

12