What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

The Eucharist: The Real Presence

The Eucharist: The Real Presence

            I would like to ask a question to any non-Catholic readers out there.  Have you ever walked into a Catholic church and seen the red candle?  Have you ever wondered why it was there and what it meant?  The red candle is always located right next to the tabernacle.  Which leads to the question, what is a tabernacle?  The tabernacle is the place that holds any unused consecrated Host.

            As I have written before, once the bread and the wine are consecrated by the priest, they become the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, they must be handled with the greatest respect.  This is taken so seriously that there are very specific rules that must be followed for handling the species, what to do if something should spill, and what to do with any extra Hosts, or Precious Blood.  At my parish, any unconsumed Precious Blood is consumed by the Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist (these are the people that assisted the priest and deacon in serving the communicants.) 

            Any unconsumed Hosts are placed into the tabernacle.  These will be brought out at the next Mass, after the consecration.   As long as that tabernacle door is open, the people should be kneeling out of respect for Jesus, made really present in the bread and wine.  And that is what the red candle means.  As long as that red candle is lit, it means Jesus is really present in the form of the consecrated host abiding in the tabernacle.  The only time that red candle goes out is on Good Friday, when the Blessed Sacrament is reposed to another location, which memorializes the time Jesus’ body was in the grave.  Any other time, any other day, Jesus is really present in the sanctuary always.

            “The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique.  It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as ‘the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.’  In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.  This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.” (CCC 1374) 

            Because Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man “makes himself wholly and entirely present” in the Eucharist, even the smallest crumb or least drop contains the fullness of Christ himself.  The breaking of the Host doesn’t mean Jesus is broken and there is more of him in one piece and less of him in another.  That is why the consecrated host is called, “the Body of Christ” and why the consecrated wine is called, “the Blood of Christ”, because that is what they are, what they have become.

            If you only receive the Precious Body, you don’t receive “less” Jesus than if you receive both the Precious Body and the Precious Blood.  If you receive both, you don’t receive “more” Jesus either.  Both are complete.  Both contain the real presence of Jesus Christ.

            Just in case we should forget Who is abiding in the tabernacle, we have the red candle.  As long as that red candle is lit, Jesus is really present in the tabernacle.  He’s really present in the sanctuary.  When we receive him in the Eucharist, he is really present in our lives, body, blood, soul, and divinity; the whole of Jesus, Son of God and Son of man.