Jesuit On Hearing The Real Presence

I led the singing of "O Sacrament Most Holy" and an opening prayer and then asked them if they knew what the "Last Supper" was. Each class, from 1st to 8th grade, was able to answer that one. 

Then I read Luke's account of the Last Supper and asked them to listen for words that we hear many times even when we're not reading the Gospel. They were able to immediately recognize those words--"This is my Body"--and to place them in the Mass. 

I told them that when the priest says those words at Mass he isn't talking about himself; rather, Jesus is speaking those words through the priest and changing the bread and wine into his Body and Blood. Then with each class I went through something that St. Thomas Aquinas says: that when we come to the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament, we can trust only one of our five senses. 

Even the 1st graders knew the five senses. I asked: which of those five senses is the only one that St. Thomas says we can trust when we approach the Eucharist? 

It took most of the classes a little thought and a few wrong answers, but eventually I was able to help them see that the one sense that can be trusted is our hearing. When we see, taste, touch, or smell the Eucharist it will appear to be bread and wine. Many Catholics and most other Christians rely on those senses and conclude that the Eucharist is a symbol for the Body and Blood of Christ. But relying on the sense of hearing, we believe differently. We hear the words "This is my Body ... This is my Blood" and we believe what we hear because Jesus said it. I think this teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas spoke across the intervening seven centuries to the hearts of the young Catholics with whom I met today.

Link (here) to the blog Offer It Up! Author by Fr. James Kubicki, S.J.

The Plato Of The Society Of Jesus

Gabriel Vasquez, S.J., 1551-1604, taught at Rome and Aleali, mainly theology, which he has bequeathed to us in a great commentary on the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, with philosophy interspersed. If Francis Suarez was the Aristotle of the Society of Jesus, Vasquez was the Plato. He and Suarez were rivals in the schools. Vasquez is always good reading, brilliant, suggestive, more lively, too, than Suarez, but less sure-footed. By this time the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas had replaced the Sentences of Peter Lombard as the text-book in the schools. At the opening of his commentary on the Summa, Vasquez has an interesting defence of scholastic theology against the allegations brought against it in the sixteenth century. Many of his remarks may serve as an apology for scholastic philosophy in our time.

Link (here) to book entitled Scholasticism  by Fr. Joseph Rickaby, S.J.

Jesuits In Residence At Berkeley

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Professor At Jesuit Institution Leading An Ugly Movement Against The Church

Sandra M. Schneiders, a member of Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Mich., is a professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California.

This is a short portion of an op-ed piece by the disgruntled nun who teaches the brightest young Jesuits.

The exciting theologies of liberation and lay ministerial empowerment in the church were being repressed in favor of a renewed clericalism and centralization of power. From a strictly human standpoint it was a bleak time for those who had come of age in the joyous, Spirit-filled enthusiasm of the Council when community, equality of discipleship in the church, commitment to the building of a better world, deepening spirituality, inter-religious dialogue, feminist empowerment were the very air they breathed. From every angle hope was being crushed and old world narrowness, neo-orthodoxy, and Vatican re-centralization were replacing the Spirit-filled, world-affirming, humane spirit of John XXIII and the Council.

Link (here) to the full opinion piece in the counter productive National Catholic Reporter.