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The Real Presence and Perpetual Adoration

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Errors regarding the Real Presence crept into the Church starting in Europe about 30 years ago. By now it has had a devastating effect all over the world. The work of the Evil Spirit has been phenomenally successful during this period. Re-conversion by natural means is not just inadequate, but absolutely impossible. The more convinced we are that human beings cannot solve the problem, the more we will wake up to the truth that God became man to help us cope with, and like St. Michael the Archangel, conquer this evil. What do we mean by that? Let's hear it from a mind that is confirmed in the truth, Fr. Hardon. Suppose we start with a prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Seat of Wisdom, pray for us. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our conference this evening is on the Real Presence and perpetual adoration. Although I have said this before, I wish to emphasize that what I have been doing in these teleconferences, and surely in today's, is carrying out an explicit order of Pope John Paul II. The order is to do everything in my power to restore faith in the Real Presence where it has been lost. Strengthen that faith where it is weak. In the plainest language, Pope John Paul II declares, I repeat, unless faith in the Real Presence is strong, stronger than it is now, I fear for the survival of the Catholic Church in many dioceses in the United States.

We ask ourselves why. Why has there been such massive weakening and loss of faith in the Real Presence? The reason is because errors have crept into Catholic circles, originally in Germany, Holland, and France. But by now these errors have penetrated into the whole certainly Western world. Many who call themselves Catholics openly disclaim that Jesus Christ, the son of God who became the Son of Mary, is physically, corporally present in the Blessed Sacrament. Without identifying a widely circulating Catholic magazine in our country, I never dreamed that a manuscript on the Blessed Sacrament that I submitted would be drastically changed. The Diocesan censor officially removed every place in the manuscript where I identified Christ's presence as real, corporal, physical, bodily. After some fifteen years of writing for this, otherwise good Catholic periodical, I sadly had to tell the editor I will never again submit a manuscript for publication in your magazine until that Diocesan censor is changed and the new one allows me to express my Catholic faith without reservation.
Notice our subject for this evening's conference is the Real Presence and Perpetual Adoration. Even 30 years ago I don't believe it would have been necessary to address ourselves to this topic. As long as people believed in the Real Presence there was Perpetual Adoration. But what a difference, what a mountain of difference between believing in the Real Presence and having men seduced by one after another of shrewd, very shrewd Eucharistic heresies. For generations in our own country there were holy hours and forty hours. There were flourishing religious institutes whose members vowed themselves to worship our Lord in the Holy Eucharist during the day, and not a few, even throughout the night. Every Catholic Church was considered the home of Jesus Christ. Tabernacles were at the center of every Catholic Church. From childhood, Catholic parents taught their offspring to genuflect before Jesus, really present in the Holy Eucharist. Bells were rung announcing the Mass. Bells were rung during the Mass. Processions of the Blessed Sacrament, was an all but universal practice. No one except a priest ever gave Holy Communion or carried with him the Blessed Sacrament. So the litany could go on illustrating the assumed faith of loyal Catholics in the Real Presence of Jesus, present on earth the same identical Jesus who Mary conceived at Nazareth at the Annunciation. That's the prelude.

Now the warning of Pope Paul VI, there are two documents of Pope Paul VI's that by any calculation are historic. I dare say 100 years from now, 300 years from now, those two documents will be recognized as historic in the doctrinal history of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1965 Pope Paul VI published the document Mysterium Fidei, which in a literal translation reads, The Mystery of Faith. Three years later the same Roman pontiff issued Humanae Vitae. We'll say more in future conferences on the close relationship between faith in the Real Presence and the practice of Christian chastity as I've just said. In 1965, before the Second Vatican Council closed, Pope Paul VI did what I honestly believe was absolutely unique. On his own Papal authority, he issued the document we've just identified the Mystery of Faith. It was all on the Real Presence. Pope Paul expressed, and how prophetic this was, the fear that the document on the liturgy, the first of the sixteen documents issued by Vatican II, would not only be useless but would be positively harmful to the Catholic Church unless professed Catholics believe in and understand the meaning of the Real Presence. He could not have been more prophetic.

In the last 30 years one professional theologian after another, as I've said, beginning first in Europe, and now penetrating our own continent, the United States and Canada. Theologians have now reinterpreted what has been for 2000 years the Church's unchangeable doctrine on the Real Presence. The Real Presence is being reduced to mere symbolism. These theologians, how well I know, I have lived with too many of them not to know what I'm talking about. They might continue using the words Real Presence, but they have drastically changed the meaning of these words. At root has been the claim that nothing really happened on Holy Thursday night when Jesus took bread and pronounced the words, "This is my body." Took the Chalice, not cup, not cup! The Latin word is Calix. Chalice. The Latin word for cup is poculum. No poculum in the Church's official teaching. As a consequence we know priest who pronounce these same words of Jesus, nothing really happens. Bread remains bread and wine remains wine. They will tell you often in thick books and sadly with big shining Imprimaturs, they will tell you what we call the Eucharist inspires our faith in Christ's love for us. Thanks, but I can be inspired by Christ's love by a beautiful picture or a crucifix. Or again, same word, Eucharist, an almost universally lowercased Eucharist, reminds us, so we are told of Christ's generous love for us by dying on Calvary for our redemption. Eucharist, and this is in book after book, and not a few of these are textbooks used in seminaries. The Eucharist we are told is a symbol of our union with one another, but it is emphatically not a reception of the Living Christ, of his Body and Blood, of his Soul and Divinity being received by us in Holy Communion thought this introduction was necessary, why? Because much more is at stake, I assure you, than meets the eye. Let us be clear, Adoration of the Real Presence is not in competition with the sacrifice of the Mass, or with Holy Communion. On the contrary, Adoration of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is a profession of faith in what the Blessed Sacrament really is, or rather, who is the Blessed Sacrament. It is Jesus Christ. As Pope Paul VI makes so clear, without faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, there could be no sacrifice of the Mass. There can be no Holy Communion, there can be no priesthood, and there can be no Catholic Church. This is one reason for the widespread removal of even the words Mass or even more so the sacrifice of the Mass, to combine Eucharist and Sacrifice. These words almost 2000 years in use in the Catholic Church have been removed from the Catholic vocabulary of millions in so-called developed countries like our own.
Thus, it is the explicit teaching of the Catholic Church that a person except in the state of grace may not receive Holy Communion. But, what's the story in our country, to name just one nation? As the present Holy Father on his first pilgrimage to the United States, speaking to the combined American hierarchy, in Chicago, he pleaded with them in the name of God, have your people receive the Sacrament of Penance. I'm told that on a Sunday just about everybody goes to Holy Communion, but during the week almost nobody has gone to Confession. To receive Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin is a sin of blasphemy. All of this is a precondition to what? Again, Pope Paul VI was most deeply concerned about…He saw the faith in Christ's Real Presence being weakened by widespread erroneous ideas under the guise of "the new liturgy." It is in this context that Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament becomes so indispensably not just important, but imperative in the Catholic Church today. Those who adore our Lord in the Holy Eucharist believe he is really present on earth.
And this, this, this, is the mystery of faith, which as long as people have this faith, they are still Catholic. What is it? That Jesus Christ is on earth. Notice and notice carefully, the issue at stake is not liturgical preciseness. It is the survival of the whole Catholic faith. It all depends, what a statement… The whole gamut of the Catholic faith depends on faith in Christ's Real Presence. Is Jesus Christ present in the Holy Eucharist, or is he not? If he is, but notice, if he is, then we have the Mass and we have Holy Communion. Only then as Paul VI tells us, only then do we have the Eucharistic liturgy. Without faith in the Real Presence, the liturgy is a minstrel show. Dare I use the words, it is a comic opera.

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