What difference does it make?

Question: Does believing in the ‘Real Presence’ make any difference?

Answer: I believe that it does. It determines how we approach the great sacrament of the Eucharist, how significant participation is and what is at stake when we receive the sacrament in holy communion.  It also matters, I believe, because the bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ transforms our worldly way of seeing things and living.  We cannot, simply, walk away and continue living as we did before. We have met the Risen Christ in an altogether special and unique way that demands a complete surrender of our wills and conversion of life. This is why it is a good and wholesome thing to receive as often as we can provided that we are properly disposed.

How do you know?

There follows a brief personalised Question and Answer blog series about the Eucharist. Today I consider the following question:

Question: How do you know that the bread and wine after the consecration are not 'substantially' bread and wine but the Body and Blood of Jesus?

Answer: I ‘know’ this because I am convinced that this is the consistent teaching of the catholic church since the earliest times and is consistent with the scriptures. 

Strictly speaking, I do not ‘know’ this in the same way that I know that 2+2=4 or that Australia exists as a place.  I ‘know’ it based on trust, understanding and – above all – gift.  At baptism, confession, communion and confirmation we are, each of us, given particular gifts compatible with our age, development and experience.  Like when I switch on a computer in the morning I do not understand the internal workings, codes and complicated interactions that occur. I trust that the machine will boot up and give me a view of windows and whatever programme or application I run. 

The sacrament of unity

Pope Leo met Margaret Karram, President of the Focolare in September 2025. Source: here

Last weekend we had the opportunity to attend the annual summer ‘Mariapolis’ of the Focolare movement in Ireland.  ‘Mariapolis’ means ‘City of Mary’ and stems from the initial annual holiday retreat gatherings of the developing Focolare movement founded in Northern Italy in the 1940s by Chiara Lubich and her  companions. The movement spread across the globe in the following years.  I was actively involved for some years as a lay person in the Movement here in Ireland and stay in touch with it still.  A key emphasis of its spirituality is that unity for which Jesus prayed:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  (John 17:20-21)

The central importance of mutual love as the basis for building the ‘City of Mary’ echoes a theme of St Augustine in ‘The City of God’ and which has been taken up recently by Pope Leo XIV in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas,:

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. 

Pope Leo sums up the role of the Eucharist in helping us to build a civilisation of love in this fragmented world (#88):

For the Christian community, solidarity finds its source in the mystery of Christ and is nourished by the Eucharist. Solidarity emerges from communion in faith and the Sacraments: Baptism and Confirmation unite us in Christ, so that we may become one Body and one Spirit, one heart and one soul (cf. Eph 4:4; Acts 4:32). The Eucharist, which is the sacrament of unity, nurtures our belonging to the Body of Christ and teaches us how to share. The diverse sensibilities present in the Church and the strong convictions that animate each person are a source of richness if they remain anchored in the certainty that unity is a gift received and a responsibility to be fulfilled.

United in Christ – the eucharistic witness of Saints Peter and Paul

Today is the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles. St Peter, the first among the Apostles, was the rock on which Jesus built his Church. Saint Paul was the Apostle who, in a particular way, brought the Gospel to the Gentiles. Both ended their lives in Rome, where they were martyred.

Tradition recognises Peter as having oversight of the early Christian community, and as the first Bishop of Rome, the beginning of a line of bishops who would lead the Church there and exercise a ministry of unity and oversight among all the churches throughout the world.

No longer common bread

Today, the 13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time in the church’s calendar supersedes the memorial of Saint Irenaeus (130-202A.D.) in the Latin church.  

The Eucharist was understood by him as with the key early Christian writers as linked to incarnation and resurrection.  Belief in the incarnation – that God had truly become a man in Jesus Christ – is inextricably bound up with belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. In his work, Against Heresies, he writes:

For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.

Soaked in the divine nature

Source: ChristianB

Today we commemorate St Cyril of Alexandria who lived from 376-444A.D. in what is, today, Egypt.  He was no stranger to controversy and if some accounts are to be believed he did not suffer heretics gladly.   He presided at the Council of Ephesus which affirmed Mary as the Theotokos or God-bearer (or Mother of God).  For one particular overview of some of these controversies refer to here. 

Cyril made an important contribution to theology in helping to deepen the Church’s understanding of both the human and divine nature of Christ. The joining of these two natures is so mystically powerful that Cyril uses images of fire to describe how the divine nature spreads out from the body of the God-man into the human race transforming iron but never destroying it.  Human nature is ‘divinised’ or transformed and transfigured.

The use of holy water in preparation for Mass

The font, which dates to pre-penal times is outside the Church of the Annunciation in Rathfarnham, County Dublin, where I brought to mass every Sunday as a young infant. My parents would have blessed me on the forehead with holy water on the way into the church.

The present heatwave is taking its toll on humans, animals, and the natural world—on land, sea, plants, buildings, and machinery alike. The conservation, purification and responsible use of water within the cycle of nature are vital to human life. That precious gift we can so easily take for granted – clean, safe and drinkable water - now seems scarce or hugely valued.

It is customary to bless ourselves with holy water when entering a church. This is a reminder of our baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The baptistry – the large font where infants and adults are baptised - is often deliberately located near the entrance of the church, highlighting the central importance of baptism at the beginning of the Christian journey—a journey along which we are nourished by the Eucharist.