JESUS IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
JESUS IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
In what sense is Jesus available to us in the Eucharist? Can anyone understand it? And why is his presence in the Eucharist central to our salvation? Father Hugh Barbour explains.
It’s Jesus Week, and we talk about Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament with Father Hugh Barbour next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host and it’s Jesus Week here at Catholic Answers, like shark week only better. And as we prepare for the Feast of Christ the King during this Jesus Week, what better topic to put in front of our good friend, Father Hugh Barbour than the topic of Jesus in the blessing sacrament. In many ways, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the point of all of this, and so it’s a great opportunity to have Father Hugh talk about it. I was very interested that he took the tack of explaining how the Eucharist itself, the fact that Jesus has given us this means of communing with Him by feeding on Him, flesh and blood, is actually a revelation of the person of Jesus, of His personality, of what He is like. So please enjoy the following conversation with Father Hugh Barbour.
Father Hugh, thank you first of all for joining us for Jesus Week.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Thank you for inviting me.
Cy Kellett:
And everything that we do this week is about Jesus. I mean, we hope even when it’s not about Jesus, it is about Jesus, but because we’re heading towards the Feast of Christ the King.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Great feast, yes.
Cy Kellett:
And one of the things about Jesus, and perhaps the strangest thing about Jesus is that He offers himself to us as food. What is that about?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It tells us, our Lord’s giving His own flesh and blood as a sacrifice and food for our salvation, it tells us a lot about His personality.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I think that if you consider, and I think this is something that Catholics or people that have a devotion to the Blessed Sacrament or are developing one, they get it by intuition, but they may not explicitly get it. That is, that He devised this means of uniting Himself to us.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Of course you can say and give nice theological reasons is because that’s the way human nature works, we need to have sensible material things and nourishment and things that are visible and can be touched and smelled and seen and all that. And that’s all very true and that’s part of the picture, but what it says about His own intentions or desires regarding us is what’s most interesting is it tells us what His principle concern is.
Cy Kellett:
Which is?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Which is, well, look at it this way. Jesus created us for our own good. He’s God. But then He took upon Himself our human nature, and so while remaining God in person, He lets that divine mentality govern the actions of a human being, but in a human way. Now Jesus came for our salvation and our salvation consists essentially in the love of Him above all things and of our neighbor for His sake. As He says, “A new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you.” Now, what Jesus wants most of all is to be loved by us. Very interestingly, though, very differently from you might say the need love, someone that wants you to love them.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Please, please love me.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Please love me. Which is perfectly understandable and very normal and human necessary. That’s how we start as babies. But our Lord has a kind of need love, which is the need for us to love Him because He desires our happiness, because He knows that He alone can offer us the delightful perfection of happiness.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And so feeding someone is you might say the archetype of giving them what they need and fulfilling their desire with something good that you can offer and they cannot get for themselves, which is what little children have.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So when He feeds us, He feeds us with His very self so that we might be able to return love for love. He gives us a means of loving Him, which is really worthy of Him.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
He makes us immediately His equals in love, because we possess His life, His very body and blood, the very things that He offered for our salvation, and those are the things that knit our heart to Him through the faith and love that we have with which we receive Him. So it’s not a physical bodily union in the sense that we digest His body and blood, no, but our faith and love possess the reality that’s presented to us in the Eucharist in such ways that we are able to be fed by Him and to return to Him the life which He has bestowed upon us, just as children also return the love of their parents.
But this is much more intense, because He actually gives His very self, not anything else, but Himself, but under the appearances of ordinary food or ordinary for most people, bread and wine.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And this is a sign of His inventiveness, His genius, but of the depths of His love that He devises a way that He can give Himself to everybody completely and utterly and give them the means whereby they have something to offer back, because we don’t need to feed Him, but He wants us to give a return on His love that’s not just some feeble attempt of a poor sinner, but is actually with the very power of the blood and flesh that were offered as a sacrifice on Calvary.
So He raises us up to the level of friends in the fullest sense. Friends, not just friends, but spouses, lovers, because we are united completely and utterly, body and soul, through His feeding of us by His very flesh. But He feeds us by faith and love principally and so we can always feed on Him. The fact that our Lord is present in the Eucharist everywhere in the world, in all the tabernacles of the world, at every celebration of Holy Mass is something that we can always direct our hearts and minds to, and we can feed on Him by faith and love anywhere and all the time, and that is a particularly powerful thing.
He comes into the appearance as a food to remind us that He’s our spiritual nourishment, but by our faith’s acceptance of His real and substantial presence, just as real as my presence is to you and yours to me here in this room and even more so, and our desire to be united to Him, He brings about great things for our souls. There’s nothing that can compare to it.
And so this tells us of the intensity of His desire in our regard, how much He wants us to be happy. And as He said before the Last Supper, using the Semitic repetition, He said, “With the desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And so it tells us everything about what sort of personality He has, His generosity, His delicacy, His leaving nothing out.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And the individual love He has for each one of us, because with the sacred host, the precious blood, we can say what Saint Paul said, “He loved me and gave Himself up for me.” There’s not some kind of modern theology, where it’s the global salvation, everyone’s saved by the fact of the incarnation, which is true in a sense, but it’s not especially inspiring to know that a metaphysical fact that establishes salvation. You want to be personally involved and you want to know the savior and be friends with Him and not just a beneficiary, but a co-heir.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. But the Eucharist is both the means of our salvation and the actual salvation, the communion with Jesus is salvation. That’s what it means to be saved.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you should not have life within you.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And He promises salvation [crosstalk 00:08:48].
Cy Kellett:
But that life with Him is the thing He’s saving us into.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Is what I’m saying.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
So it’s the means of our salvation, but it’s also the thing that we’re saved into.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
“The one who feeds on me will live because of me,” He says.
Cy Kellett:
Some of what you’re saying you’re taking from the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, which is very, very intense. And I’ve actually spoken to Protestant people who said, “I just never really got into the sixth chapter John’s gospel.”
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well neither did the people in that reading that went away and didn’t follow him anymore.
Cy Kellett:
Because it’s so odd. It really is very… I mean, it’s… I’m not saying this in a pejorative way, but-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s unapologetic.
Cy Kellett:
It’s very… Yeah. It’s so-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Even in apologetics ministry, we can say John 6 is unapologetic. He has no complexes. He’s not worried about being mistaken because he’s speaking the literal truth, and if they don’t like it, they can do what they did. They went away and no longer followed him.
Cy Kellett:
Right. But even the… He’s speaking the literal truth, but even those who want to take him at his word don’t know quite what he’s talking about.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
No.
Cy Kellett:
Because it’s so far above what you are expecting, that this God has come to us as a man, the man will give us His flesh for our communion with Him, both divine and human. It’s all so…
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah. Well, they asked how can this man give us his flesh to eat? [inaudible 00:10:18] explains that he’s not speaking in physical terms, but he is speaking about a real and substantial presence. That’s what he doesn’t give in on. He could have just said, “It’s just a symbol.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, no, no. He doesn’t…
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
He doesn’t say that.
Cy Kellett:
Not even close to that.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It is a symbol, but it’s a symbol that’s not just a symbol.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. So in what sense then when we receive the Blessed Sacrament, in what sense is He present? Because from my childhood as a Catholic, I’m instructed to understand that He is truly physically present.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
And I’m 56 now and I’m not that far forward in understanding it from where I was when I was seven and the nuns taught it to me. So in what sense is He present there?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, He’s present in an objective way substantially present in the Eucharist both before and after you receive. But you lay hold of His presence by your faith and your love for Him.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s how you… So you feed on Him by faith and love that you feed on and love the presence, which is real and substantial. We say substantial, meaning everything about you, like I’m here and you’re here and we’re in each other’s presence, but if you started to whittle away all the different aspects of our appearance, none of them would be us.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, yes.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
If you pare them away, the essence of who we are, the substance of who we are is what’s conveyed in our bodily presence, but none of those outward signs, those accidents as we would call them, are exactly same thing as the one who is present.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, gotcha.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And so our Lord can choose by His sovereign divine power and through a marvel called transubstantiation to make His natural body present under the appearances of bread and His natural blood present under the appearances of wine. This is something God can do so that He takes the sign, or the symbol of the sacrament, and actually makes it convey not just a grace like the other sacraments, but the actual reality of Christ’s person and not just person, but the constituents of His humanity. And then along with, of course, especially after the resurrection, His divinity, His soul and divinity. So it’s all of Him, His body and His blood together with His soul, and Godhead or divinity.
But principally the mystery is revealed as a presence of His body and His blood, because that’s what actually the bread and wine become directly in the transubstantiation of the consecration and then because His body and blood are united to His soul and to His divinity, those things are there also. We would say also, indeed, also.
So His presence, if I could give an image to kind of speed forward to modern times, we’re so used to the notion that something which is very, very far away can be conveyed to us even to the palm of our hand to examine that will talk at us, talk back to us. We can talk to people on different types of apps and whatnot, I’m not advertising for any of them so I won’t mention them, but in groups or as individuals everywhere, and their presence in an accidental and technical way is conveyed to us with more and more of the aspects of the actual substantial or physical presence, even though the person is not really there, but there’s a real causal connection between what’s happening between you and them, and it goes through the satellites and comes back down.
Invisibly, we don’t see the connection, but there’s a real relation between that person’s body and the sounds and expressions that are being emitted or expressed and what you yourself perceive and hear on the other end. There is something between those two things, invisible to us but not invisible to a technician for this type of advanced communication technology. And that’s been true for years.
Well, just consider something which is beyond any technique or technology that is something that only God can do, that there is a relationship, if you will, mysterious and impenetrable and can only be seen by a mind given the beatific vision of God. That’s why it’s called the bread of the angels, because the angels can see how this works. How our Lord’s natural body can be in one place and yet it be present in a potentially infinite number of places under the appearances of bread and wine. They actually see how that works. And there is a way, it’s not just… we don’t say it’s a mystery. It’s not a mystery to them anymore, they see it.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But they see it precisely as a sacrament as the way that His natural body in its glorified state or before in its natural state of the Last Supper, is so related to those outward appearances that wherever they are, He is there. That connection is what constitutes kind of like the mystery part, the part we don’t see and in which we believe, because we have God’s word for it. But modern people with modern technology know that… it’s not that it comes close, but for our imagination, we can easily see the image of something being very effectively present to us, someone being effectively present to us, without our seeing how it works.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That’s helpful.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And the sacrament is so much… People say it’s so hard to believe all this, and you go like I said in the church, I said, “People say it’s hard to believe in the Eucharist, that it’s a real presence.” And yet we all believe that right here in this room, we all have devices that could bring to us any kind of information we want about anything whatsoever right away.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Either by live speaking or by hearing or just by reading, and we know that all that information is somehow in the air. It’s there in the air.
Cy Kellett:
It’s there somewhere.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
As the saints say, the air is full of angels or it’s full of devils. Well, this is the point that even if human art, human technology can accomplish these things and we find that customary nowadays, well what must the power of God be able to accomplish? And how real and intense is the relationship and the presence that is brought about by our Lord’s Eucharistic presence, which doesn’t depend upon an apparatus out in the skies, but is by His direct power, as an instrument of His sacred humanity?
So if our Lord were to reach out and visibly touch you or embrace you, that would be no more real than the fact that in front of the Blessed Sacrament, you are there with a substantial presence. He’s really there. And when you receive Him, you really receive Him. Now we find it easy enough to believe well so-and-so said to me the other day on my app, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you wouldn’t say, well, it wasn’t really that person. It was just an image of the person that was reproduced technologically, but it wasn’t really the person. And there’s some truth to that, but that’s how they can make fake images to see people. But that’s true technically speaking, that what’s talking to you is that little mechanism and it conveys something that happened somewhere else and is not happening in your room, not really, not really.
But with Eucharist, He really, really, really is there, not just by artifice, not by some contraption, but really and truly because He as God can do it and He uses sacred humanity as the instrument. Now that presence is most importantly in the Blessed Sacrament in the Mass. The Mass is the principle reason for our Lord’s presence. The bringing about of the presence of His body and blood and offering of it up in sacrifice, it’s a principle. The Blessed Sacrament is most of all principally the sacrifice of the Mass, the offering we make, giving back to God a gift worthy of Him, which He puts into our hands and our hearts so that we can offer Him something that’s worthy of Him.
But, as though that were not enough, His present [inaudible 00:18:30], it continues after the Mass between the Masses as a fruit of that sacrifice so that we can always come into His presence and receive the consolation of His presence. If we can’t get to the foot of the tabernacle, we can direct our attention to wherever there is one somewhere in the earth. And the angels are there because angels love to look upon this mystery, which they actually understand. But of course it remains always a sacrament. It will not always be a mystery to us in heaven, but it will always be a sacrament. That is, we won’t just… For example, Jesus’s natural eyes which see in the resurrection could never see His body in the sacrament of the altar. His mind can see it in beatific vision, but His bodily presence in the sacrament is a sacrament. It’s a sign.
Cy Kellett:
I see, I see. Which means it’s not accessible to our senses.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s not accessible to our senses, that’s exactly it. The sign is assessable, but the reality behind it is not accessible to the senses, not even the senses of Jesus Christ. What they’re accessible to is the mind enlightened by the light of glory that sees God face to face and understands how it is that something so beyond the normal workings of nature could occur as it does, that some body that’s locally present in one place can be substantially present in a multiplicity of places. And that’s a great mystery that should delight us.
Cy Kellett:
Really, yes.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And it shows how much our Lord loves us. He’s everywhere and He’s willing to be treated shabbily, terribly, horribly just in order to deliver Himself to us, and this is the great tragedy today is the way the Blessed Sacrament is treated and discounted.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And that’s the worst of it. So we should make reparation by loving His real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. We can always be reverent in the presence of the tabernacle.
Cy Kellett:
In the modern times, there’s this almost affliction of the mind of this distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith and all of that, and I do feel it’s an affliction in the sense that there’s some way in which the modern person, maybe it was always this way, I don’t know, but that Jesus who walked in Nazareth, who healed and exorcized and taught and all that and multiplied the loaves-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
They didn’t have to exercise back then, they had enough work to do.
Cy Kellett:
That’s probably true, huh? Nobody… But I meant it in the sense of-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I know, I’m joking.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So that Jesus is contiguous with the Jesus in every tabernacle-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
The very same one.
Cy Kellett:
It’s the very same man.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Very same man.
Cy Kellett:
Same person, divine person.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
The same one that was born in Bethlehem and that was working in Nazareth that fled to Egypt that fasted in the desert, that preached, that healed, that was persecuted and was crucified. He’s all there. Although the appearances in the sacrament are those of His sacrifice, because only in His sacrifice on the cross that his body and blood are separated.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And that separation of His body and blood in the Eucharist is the symbol of the sacrifice.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I see. Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
The mystical death of our Lord is that His body and blood become present sacramentally separate. The end of the change in the transubstantiation of the bread is His body. The end of the change in the transubstantiation of the wine is His blood. And so they are separated mystically to show forth in the sacrament His sacrifice, although now that He has risen, of course, along with the body comes the blood and the soul, the divinity along with the blood comes the body and the soul and the divinity. So He’s completely present under both kinds, but sacramentally He’s represented as giving Himself in sacrifice by the two separated things.
So when the priest consecrates the bread and the wine separately, we can be very attentive like between the consecration, the host, and the chalice, you recognize this is the moment of this mystical separation. This is where we sacramentally have present the sacrifice, the cross.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Which isn’t going back into time. People like to say that, you can say that poetically, but no, this is today’s Mass for today in which we as the church with the sacrament institute by Christ offer up the very same things that He offered on the wood of the cross, the manner of offering alone being different as the Council of Trent says, that is we offer under the appearances of bread and wine, but it’s not as though… Sometimes you get this with Pius preachers, they’ll say, “Well, God is outside time so He can make the past be present,” but that’s not exactly true because in the physical order, if it’s past, it’s past, not even God can make the past not the past. He can make it not have any bad influences on the present or whatever, He can do whatever you want with it-
Cy Kellett:
But it’s the past.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But the past is the past. But this is the present offering, that’s why the church offers the Mass every day and often from the rising of the sun to the setting, because it really matters. We’re just not psychologically going to the foot of the cross like Evangelical Protestants where it’s the one time only and it’s an historical event and they take advantage of it by their faith in Christ. But their faith in Christ would be much strengthened if they also believe that He left us a memorial of that sacrifice that is real and not simply a nude or bare symbol as the old language used to be. It was a mere symbol.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Okay. Okay, so then the primary… I mean, in a certain way as you speak about Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus present to us in the Blessed Sacrament, my… I don’t know, impression or sense is this is the purpose of all of it. That in a certain sense, this is the point of all that Christ has done is this meeting of me and Him so that I can love Him, so that I can… I mean, I suppose-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
[crosstalk 00:24:40] and rise with Him.
Cy Kellett:
Or be His friend as He says in John’s gospel. That entry into friendship with Him is the purpose of His whole ministry, the Eucharist is. So then the question is that then is how to avail oneself of what’s being given? Because the receiver is the one that is the problem here, not the giver. The giver’s giving everything 100%, and so how does the receiver become able to complete the action? I could go to Eucharist unworthily or I could go to Eucharist just stupidly or casually and then I assume that that thwarts even God’s gift to some degree, yes?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s why the Eucharist is offered for us daily, because our dispositions shifts in time and so consequently the church offers that sacrifice for everyone, whatever state they’re found in. And so consequently, and if we look at the way the church prays at the Mass, we’ll see that. We begin the Mass immediately with a confession of sins, my fault, my own fault, my most grievous fault, and then we immediately sing Lord have mercy and then if we’re doing the Gloria, it says, “Have mercy upon us. You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” And then the Collect gives us the [inaudible 00:26:23] but then remembrance of the sins, the priest says after reading the gospel, by the words of the gospel may our sins be blotted out. He says that quietly that is continual. In the offertory he says in the spirit of contrition and humility of heart, may this sacrifice be found acceptable to you this day. That’s also said quietly. And then there’s mention of the need for pardon and salvation in all the Eucharistic prayers.
And then we have forgive us our trespasses [inaudible 00:26:55] and then we say, “Lord, I’m not worthy. Lamb of God have mercy on us.” I mean, the point could not be made more over and over and over again that we dispose ourselves through repentance of heart, but it’s one that’s ordered towards our union with the Lord. And we’re doing that not because we want to beat ourselves up, but because we want to remove any obstacle towards receiving Him fruitfully.
So there’s a lot of focus on that, and I’m just talking about the New Mass. The Old Mass had even a little bit more of this. So we prepare ourselves by repentance. That’s what it says, repent and believe the gospel. What’s the good news? That Christ has died for us and risen and will bring us to life with Him in the resurrection. And how does that come about? To the sacrifice of the cross, which is offered in the sacrifice of the Mass by Christ. And what does He promise to those who receive that sacrifice? He promises them life and resurrection in Saint John’s gospel. And so it’s all contained there. That’s why in the Ambrosian Rite of the Old Mass, that’s the one used in Milan, and also in the new rite of the Roman Mass, we remember or recall His death and resurrection and coming again after the consecration, because it’s all there. And so we want to be ready for all of it and so we repent continually, but it’s all present. It’s all present because He is present. He’s there. He’s already come in the Eucharist and He’ll come again.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But we will already have met Him many, many times.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. But not with the direct sensory experience that we want to have, that is to see Him with our eyes, to touch Him with our hands.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So great is that that Saint Thomas makes this very poignant observation that in the general resurrection, even the damned will find the sight of Christ delightful.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, how beautiful.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It is.
Cy Kellett:
That is beautiful.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It gives you a little hope for them.
Cy Kellett:
But I suppose I don’t want to conclude without going back to something that you have always stressed with us in your time as our chaplain, and I’ve often heard you stress in other circumstances that the key to all of what Christ is doing is His desire that we return His love to Him [crosstalk 00:29:23] And that it really is enough to love Him back, in a sense that nothing else is enough. No sacrifice, nothing else is enough in the way that simply loving Him back. And that’s what all this is about is making us into the person that can love Him back.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And when He is to the Eucharist, since the Eucharist is the sacrament of peace and unity, it’s also the most quintessentially the sacrament of our love of neighbor. Right at the Last Supper, the Lord says, “The new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you.” And that’s because He wants us to follow His example because His offering of His body and blood is an act of love for His brethren, and so our receiving the Eucharist, offering it up, should make us disposed to imitate that. And so we should show our love for our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, which gives us the power to love our neighbor in such a way that we’ll be able to fulfill that commandment of the Lord and really please Him and love Him more [crosstalk 00:30:23]
Cy Kellett:
Is that why John puts the washing of the feet there at the Last Supper? He tells us about that happening, but none of the others, because Jesus literally says, “I’m giving you an example.” I can’t remember the exact words.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. He says, “I’ve given you an example.”
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so I did get the exact words.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, right, and that’s a key there. If we had maintained a foot washing rite like some denominations do before the Eucharist, people might be reminded of that, but we do it only on Holy Thursday.
Cy Kellett:
Oh. Some places… some rites have it?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Some denominations. Some non-Catholic denominations. But in the Catholic Church, both East and West, it’s at least repeated on Holy Thursday before the Mass itself to remind us that that’s what we’re doing.
Cy Kellett:
Well, thank you for talking with us about Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, which is, I mean, everything else is a help to the mind and the soul, but this is the moment of physical contact, spiritual contact, but physical contact with the Lord above all others.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And everything that Jesus is and does, and everything that ever happened in order to lead up to Jesus before He came and everything that happened after He ascended to heaven up to His second coming, it’s all there because He’s governing all that and that’s why it’s a good preparation for the Feast of Christ the King, because He is ruling and reigning in the Blessed Sacrament, not just waiting there not doing anything. He’s doing a great deal, even though He’s very silent and patient.
Cy Kellett:
And good. The goodness of Him is… It’s like, I think even the greatest saint meeting Jesus face to face is surprised by the goodness of Him, even having known the goodness of Him his whole life, Francis I’m sure, or whoever the greatest saint is since the apostolic time. I know the apostles and Mary come first, but the goodness of Jesus present to us in the Eucharist is… you just cannot exhaust it. It goes beyond.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It can’t be spoken, right.
Cy Kellett:
May we have your blessing before we go, Father?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
[foreign language 00:32:44].
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Oh sacrament most holy, oh sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine. Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Amen. Thank you, Father.
Cy Kellett:
I love to talk to Father Hugh Barbour about just about anything, but talking with him about Jesus is a delight and I’m always thrilled when we get the chance. This understanding that in the Eucharist we meet Jesus in the way He wants to be met. He created the whole universe. He invented this so to speak this whole, all the systems within which we live, and all of that is created with the idea in mind that He would feed us, that He would feed us on His own flesh and blood. And there’s reason for that, He wanted us to have a means, forever, a perpetual means for as long as this world will last to have physical contact with Him and to share in His spirit so that we can love Him as He loves us and also love one another as He loves us. It’s pretty good deal, this Catholic faith.