St Mary Catholic High School - Marathon Yearbook (Marietta, OH)

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The Marathon 1926 eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting lifeg and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. I-Ie that eateth this bread, shall live forever. After this many of His disciples went back and walked no more with him. QSt. John 6:47 and following verses.J Accepting the words of promise in their literal and exact meaning, and granting the divinity of Christ, who uttered them, we, on our part, must readily agree that the fulfillment will infallibly follow, unless we wish to question the infinite truth and fidelity of God Himself. The Catholic Church, speaking with authority through the Council of Trent, teaches that in the Most Holy Eucharist the whole substance of bread and the whole substance of wine are changed into the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ-the species or appearances of bread and wine alone remaining. The operation whereby this is eHected, the Church has aptly and definitely named transubstantiation, or a change of one substance into another. By transubstantiation is meant a miraculous and astounding change of the elements of bread and wine into the sacred Body and precious Blood of Jesus Christ by the words of consecration in Holy Mass,-a prodigy efected by divine omnipotence through the ministry of validly ordained priests. To understand the real meaning of these terms, which even a child meets in his catechism, we must observe that in all bodily objects about us there are two things to be carefully noted and distinguished,-the outward form or sensible appearances which they exhibit to the senses when applied, such as figure, color, and taste, and the inward matter or substance, in which all these sensible qualities reside. These sensible qualities are the proper objects of our knowledge, of which we are absolutely certain, on account of the testimony of our senses, but the inward matter or substance, or the nature and structure of the thing are imperceptible to us and hidden from our eyes. Now the Church teaches that this inward matter or substance of the bread and wine is, at the consecration during Holy Mass, entirely taken away by the almighty power of the great, eternal God and changed into the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, who is substituted in its place, so that now Jesus Christ, is present instead of the bread and wine, exhibiting or showing Himself to us under the very same appearances and outward qualities which the bread and wine had before the change. Such is the doctrine of the Church, which is supported by the unanimous testimony and evident authority of Holy Scripture and Apostolic tradition. The Evangelist Matthew 126:26-293 tells us that Jesus, on the night before He died, while at supper with the Twelve, took bread into His holy and venerable hands, and having given thanks, he blessed and broke and gave to them, saying: Take ye and eat, this is my body. In like manner, having taken the chalice He gave thanks and blessed and gave to them and said: Drink ye all of this, this is my blood of the new and eternal testa- ment, which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins. Taking these words as they are in themselves, we must admit that there can be no doubt as to their meaning, for when Christ took b1'ead into His hands, it was then bread, but when He gave it to the desciples He expressly declared that what He then gave them was His body, for by declaring it to be His body, He made it His body, seeing that it is wholly impossible that His words be false. Consequently, since what before consecration was bread, became after consecration the body of Christ, the bread must undoubtedly have been changed into the body of Christ, and as is evident to our senses that no change has taken place in the outward form or sensible qualities, the substance of the bread must have been changed. 48

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1926 The Marathon herself did: to be made one with Him, as the food we assimilate becomes one with and part of ourselves. For as really and as truly as the eternal Son of God lit up and cheered His poor, humble home in Nazareth, so really and so truly is He here present in this holy Sacrament of Love, the food and nourishment of our immortal and undying souls. As certain as once His omnipotent voice quelled the stormy sea of Galilee, so certain is it that from this Tabernacle He speaks to our hearts and stills within them the raging storms of sorrow, fear, temptation and passion. The object of the Incarnation, or the Second Person of the Ever-Blessed Trinity assuming flesh was briefly this: The establishment here on earth of a visible kingdom, wherein the Creator should receive from the creature an adequate Worship, and the creature in its turn should be raised to the highest possible union with the Creator. VVe say that the Church is this kingdom, whose members we are made by Baptism, an outward, visible, seeable rite or ceremony, and that the two-fold end of worship and union is accomplished by the perpetuation of the Incarnation as a sacrament and sacriiiceg-a sacrament, because it sanctifies the soul of its own efficacy or power: a sacrifice, inasmuch as it is an oblation or offering of a visible gift to God's honor and glory, a sacrifice in which we offer to Almighty God a Divine Victim, the only adequate worship that God can receive-God being offered to God and in a created nature: a sacrament, in which the divinity of the second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity is personally united to the humanity of Christ and is made to blend with our nature in a union so close as to render us partakers of the divine nature through grace. This Sacrament is the Holy Eucharist, or the Sacrament of the true Body and true Blood of Jesus Christ, under the humble appearances of bread and wine. Therefore, to all, who by grace of faith understand this Incarnation, or Christ becoming Man, and its object, the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament is its supplement, and we behold in the Church with the Blessed Sacrament on her altars, the mystical Mother of God with the divine Babe on her lap, and when we kneel to her and ask her to give Him to us, we have no more feeling of unreality than the shepherds and the Magi had in the cave at Bethlehem, for we are asking for one and the same Lord and God. Before dealing with the question How our blessed Lord becomes present in the Holy Eucharist, We must first grant the Real Presence Itself, of which Sacred Scripture gives ample proof, which cannot be overlooked without destroying the very integrity of the Sacred Books. Passing over the familiar types and figures which in the Mosaic dispensation foreshadowed the Blessed Eucharist, we find the greater part of St. John's Gospel, sixth chapter, giving in detail the clear and explicit promise of Christ that He would give His real flesh and blood as food and drink, and that, in the ordinary economy of God's providence, eternal life would depend upon the use that men would make of it. Even some of the disciples joined the people in expressing indigna- tion at the idea of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Him who addressed them. Nevertheless, he reiterated His previous statement, and with much emphasis, when it would have been I-Iis plain duty to set the people right, had He known that they had misunderstood Him, Moreover, in the same discourse Our Lord foreshadows or hints at the manner in which He will give Himself as food. I am the living Bread which came down from heaven, CSt. John 61515 indicating thereby not a figurative but a real substantial presence under the form of bread. Amen, amen, I say unto you: He that believeth in me, hath everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that if any man eat of it, he may not die. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the World. The Jews, therefore, strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you. He that 47

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1926 The Marathon llllllllllllllllllllllllIlllllllIlllllllllllllllIlllllllIlllllllllllllllIlllllllIlllllllIIllllulllllllllIlllllllllIlllllllIlllllllIllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllnllll The Apostles taught this doctrine and they taught and wrote what they had heard from the lips of their Divine Master. St. Paul incorporates into his first Epistle to the Corinthians: ll-23-a noteworthy and notable account of the Institution, and as a concluding reflection, he warns all that would approach to receive the body and blood of Christ, that they must approach worthily, lest they be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, for 'the that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not disceming the body of the Lord. He thereby teaches the Real Presence of Christ, under the form of bread and wine, because he accepts the words of institution in their proper and literal sense. On this point, the tradition of the Fathers of the Church is unmistakable, for very often among them we find such expressions as these: Before the consecration there are bread and wineg after the mystical words are pronounced there are no longer bread and wine, but the body and blood of Christ. The bread is changed, is trans- muted, passes over into the body of Christ. St. G1'egory Nazienzen says: Change these offerings, O Lord, into the body and blood of our Liberator. St. John Damascene: If the word of the Lord is living and efficacious, and He hath made all things, why has He not the power to make the bread His body and the wine His blood? St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: After the movement of the Holy Spirit, the bread becomes the body of Christ. From the pages of the Old and New Testament we glean many foreshadowings of the Blessed Eucharist, showing it is possible. Almighty God took care to prepare the people and to dispose the world for believing in this most majestic mystery by doing, on different occasions, in a visible manner, what He does invisibly here. By the hand of Moses He changed the waters of Egypt into blood, He changed the rod of Aaron into a serpent. The miracle of Cana shows the power of Jesus to transform sub- stances, equal to the power which created them. The healing of the officer at Capharnaum from a distance, proves that the word of Jesus is mighty and distance does not alter its power. The multiplication of bread shows His creative power: His walking on the waters and calming the storm, His absolute authority over nature, the curing of the man sick of the palsy at Bethsaida declares that the most inveterate disease cannot resist Him, the man born blind attests that Jesus is the origin of light, and the resurrection of Lazarus proves Him the Master of life and death. At the marriage feast of Cana He changed the substance of water into the substance of wine and He did this in a visible manner, which shows that it is perfectly easy for Him to change one thing into another, when and where He pleases. It is a noteworthy fact that the very first miracle whereby our dear Lord manifested Himself to the world, had for its object the changing of one substance into another. The wine fails and Jesus will satisfy the desires of the guests by changing the ignoble into the noble, the water into wineg by one simple action our blessed Lord gave the water a higher substance. If the marriage of Cana was so great and so wo1'thy of the power that made it, what, let me ask, shall we find, into which the wine itself shall be changed? There is only one change possible, the wine itself must be made a living How from the Heart of our Divine Lord, only thus shall the feast of the Last Supper surpass that of the marriage of Cana. Such, my dear friends, is a brief outline of the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist as it appeals for the assent of every true believer. We have seen it is the chief means whereby Almighty God has made the Incarnation a permanent reality for the children of men. How great a void there would be in the Christian life had not our Divine Redeemer blessed His Church with so great a Sacrament. On our part it calls for firm and unwavering belief. Our faith ought to be like that of the Apostles, whom when Jesus interrogated: Will you also go away? contented themselves with answering in the words of St. Peter: Lord, to whom shall 49