Presence does not deny physical reality.
I don’t know if it is the same at your church, but in my local parish, the tabernacle is off to the side, although still within the sanctuary. I have noticed that lectors, servers, and even the priest will reverence the altar of sacrifice as they are getting ready for Mass, but they rarely genuflect towards the tabernacle.
When I am at adoration outside of Mass (the Blessed Sacrament is not exposed, but reposes in the tabernacle) if the pastor, or any parish worker, such as the music director/liturgist, enters the church or walks across the sanctuary, they rarely, if ever, reverence the Blessed Sacrament. I’ve seen the same conduct at other churches.
Crisis of faith.
I always wonder why. I think that there is an ongoing general confusion as to what the real presence means to contemporary Catholics. I think there is still a crisis of faith as regards the Eucharist. I found this from a conference by the late Fr. Hardon:
“There are those who laudably emphasize the subjective aspect of Christ’s presence, but at the expense of the objective reality. Let me not be misunderstood. There is great need, even crucial need, to talk about and act upon the awareness of Christ in the Eucharist, and to raise our sentiments of love towards Him; but this cannot be at the expense of ignoring the prior fact that Christ is actually in the Eucharist, that in the words of the Church’s solemn teaching, “He is contained under the perceptible species of bread and wine.” What was bread and wine, after the words of consecration are no longer bread and wine but the living, physical, bodily presence-in a word, the real Jesus Christ. To believe in the Real Presence means to believe in the real absence of bread and wine after the consecration.
In the Eucharist there is present the “totus Christus” (the whole Christ) just as truly as He was present on earth in Palestine and as He is now in Heaven. It is the total Christ in the fullness of what makes Christ Christ, with no real difference between who He was in the first century on earth and who He is now in the twentieth century on earth. Jesus Christ is in Jemez Springs as He is also everywhere where a duly ordained priest has changed bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Savior.
How this needs resaying in today’s Catholic world. But we are not yet finished. As so often happens, error arises among men because they have been neglecting the truth. The hydra of Communism is partly God’s visitation for the neglect by Christians of their practice of community love. So too with the Eucharist. Too many Catholics, including priests, have taken the Real Presence for granted. They complacently assume that Christ is in the Eucharist, and they proceed to leave Him there, in empty churches and empty chapels, with seldom a worshipper before the tabernacle and seldom a eucharistic thought among millions of believers, who would be offended if they were told that they ignored the greatest reality in the universe right in their midst. - Christ In the Eucharist, Fr. John Hardon
Despite the fact adoration chapels spring up across the country, and many more people commit to a regular schedule of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, I get the impression that not a few people - those who ought to know better - regard the real presence of Christ in a sort of ”out of sight, out of mind” fashion - especially when the Sacrament is reposed in the tabernacle.
In addition, I think there is an incomplete understanding, (by a highly theologized laity), as to what the real presence actually means. Very traditional priests will sometimes say, “The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not a physical presence, but a sacramental presence.” Fr. Neuhaus referred to this terminology in a post last Christmas on First Things; he wrote:
“Theologians of an orthodox persuasion sometimes say that the Real Presence does not mean physical presence. This is to guard against the debased notion of a cannibalistic consumption of a portion of human flesh and blood. That is indeed a gross distortion of our being encountered by, and receiving body and soul, the living Christ in his humanity and divinity. Yet I have come across people who are deeply troubled when they hear it said that the Real Presence is not a physical presence. They misunderstand that to mean that his presence is less than physical, when the point is that his presence is more than physical. The physical is part of the finitude of space and time, which is both embraced and transcended in the wonder of God become man. Finitum capax infiniti.” - Fr. John Neuhaus
I don’t know, but I think a few creative theologians and some of their students, along with some RCIA instructors, just might be complicating doctrine when it comes to instructing the faithful about the Eucharist and the real presence of Christ. I think this problem runs deeper than the issue of Communion in the hand, although that practice seems to have certainly contributed to a lack of reverence. One cannot teach that Christ is not physically present in the Eucharist, yet insist that he is truly and really present, body, blood, soul, and divinity. It is like saying, “I believe in the Eucharist as presence but not as reality, or as reality that is only presence and not objective actuality.” (Fr. Hardon)
Nevertheless, I think many contemporary Catholics must suffer from this type of misunderstanding. What other reason could there be for such a lack of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament?
The Physical Reality of Christ’s Body and Blood
in the EucharistTo avoid misunderstanding this sacramental presence which surpasses the laws of nature and constitutes the greatest miracle of its kind we must listen with docility to the voice of the teaching and praying Church. This voice, which constantly echoes the voice of Christ, assures us that the way Christ is made present in this Sacrament is none other than by the change of the whole substance of the bread into His Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into His Blood, and that this unique and truly wonderful change the Catholic Church rightly calls transubstantiation. As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new meaning and a new finality, for they no longer remain ordinary bread and ordinary wine, but become the sign of something sacred, the sign of a spiritual food. However, the reason they take on this new significance and this new finality is simply because they contain a new “reality” which we may justly term ontological. Not that there lies under those species what was already there before, but something quite different; and that not only because of the faith of the Church, but in objective reality, since after the change of the substance or nature of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and wine but the appearances, under which Christ, whole and entire, in His physical “reality” is bodily present, although not in the same way that bodies are present in a given place.
- Pope Paul VI in Mysterium Fidei
Photo credit: Roving Medievalist
Anyway - from now on, I’ll certainly hesitate before self-righteously calling other people “lukewarm” or “Sunday Catholics,” simply because I cannot know their level of faith, their interior life, or even if their faith is so strong they do not need to go to Church as often as I do. Instead, I can keep the fact that I am much worse than others, ever before my eyes.