He will return with his immense heart, with his heart of fire, his poor man's soul
and his smile. He will return! And the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph!

THE RESTORATION OF THE DIVINE LITURGY

« It was the High Priest Simon son of Onias who repaired the Temple during his lifetime and in his day fortified the sanctuary... How splendid he was when he would raise his hands to give the Lord’s blessing from his lips. » (cf. Si 50)

In order to restore the holy, the divine Eucharist, a major concern of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, it is necessary to have recourse to good metaphysics. At the time when he was only the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr Bertone, today Secretary of State, in fact emphasised « the necessity of a sound philosophical formation, which must at all costs include metaphysics, a pursuit which one feels is sadly lacking today in various centres of study. » (“Concerning the Reception of the Documents of the Magisterium and Public Dissent”, in CCR n° 298, p. 24)

Metaphysics is, of course, the least commonly shared thing in the world, yet it is the most accessible to human intelligence, when it is purified and enlightened by meditation on Holy Scripture, and thus liberated from the veils that its sinful flesh and weak reason places on its eyes.

THE PROFOUND METAPHYSICAL POVERTY OF A GREAT EXEGETE

The remark of Cardinal Bertone strikes directly at the Jesuit « Centre of Studies » in rue de Sèvres, in Paris, where Rev. Fr. Xavier Léon-Dufour shines. His last book, “The Bread of Life” (Seuil, 2005), shows a total deficiency in this field of metaphysics and, in consequence, a « public disagreement » with the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the Holy Eucharist.

This learned Jesuit begins by claiming to be a follower of Béranger de Tours, a heretic of the Middle Ages who reduced the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist to a “spiritual” presence. He was condemned in 1054, and had to sign a profession of Faith according to which « the true Body, the true Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, such as our senses perceive them, not only in the Sacrament but in truth, are manipulated and broken by the hands of the priest and then crushed by the teeth of the faithful. »

Fr. Xavier Léon-Dufour waxes indignant: « Thus they believed they were defending the real presence of the Lord in the Eucharist; in reality they only extended the “physicist”, almost “materialist” theories, in order to affirm the presence of Christ » (pp. 10-11).

For his part, after a long « detour through some linguistic and semantic notions » (p. 66), and a scholarly exegetical investigation, the Reverend Father states, as a perfect modernist, his « faith » in the « real presence » in the sense of a « symbolic » presence, given that « the symbolic does not in the least contradict the real, he says, it is its profundity » (p. 147) Therein he proves himself to be a good disciple of Bérenger de Tours, and thus absolutely heretical.

After the consecration, he explains, « the bread conserves its function of bread, and in this sense, it is not the body of Christ ». Yet he believes that he remains Catholic by adding: « The bread, however, also becomes the body of the Lord and, in this sense, it is no longer ordinary bread », which worsens his case, because, whether “ordinary” or “extraordinary”, there is really nothing more than “bread” before, during and after the consecration, according to his theory.

Whereas according to the Catholic Faith:

Before the consecration, “this”, that the priest holds in his hands, is bread.

After the consecration, “this” is no longer bread; “this” is My Body, Jesus says through the voice of the priest.

And during the consecration? There is “transsubstantiation”, the Council of Trent tells us.

In order to explain this term, Fr. Xavier Léon-Dufour begins by recognising that « the formulation, “the consecrated Bread is and is not the body of the Lord” [according to his own formulation], is paradoxical and must be interpreted.

« It seems contradictory, expounding two viewpoints on a single reality. The bread is successively interpreted, positively then negatively: it is either an earthly food [as bread], or a heavenly food [as the body of the Lord]. In order to overcome this difficulty one was able [“one” designates St. Thomas], to distinguish, based on Aristotelian philosophy, between the substance and the accidents, declaring that the Lord is, “substantially”, present in the appearance, and that the accidents of the consecrated bread remain: this is the theory of transubstantiation. » (p. 70)

For want of a « metaphysical quest », however, our Jesuit is unable to explain transubstantiation without falling into heresy. Before refuting him, let us begin by conducting our own « metaphysical quest ».

TOTAL METAPHYSICS

Metaphysics is the science of being as being. It is enough to quote the Abbé de Nantes in order to enter into the familiar universe of this queen of the sciences:

« In the beginning there is being; existence comes first. It is of course necessary that some being exists, in order for there to be different sorts of being, or essences, and systematic knowledge of natures and laws. »

Already, this simple, commonsense remark overthrows all the doctrine of Emmanuel Kant.

« The intuition of being is a very real and very rich intuition. It is an initial and spontaneous intuition, and not the conclusion of a process of reasoning as with Descartes: “I think, therefore I am!” » What a sickness is this Cartesian doubt, analogous to that of the madman who goes out into the yard to check from outside whether he has shut off his bedside light!

« We immediately grasp the existence of objects and of ourselves, even before having understood what it is to think, and to perceive that we think!

« The intuition of existence is thus the first act of metaphysical reasoning. It is also its constant nourishment, the attention constantly returning to being, to the fact of being, at first with a simple wonder and bedazzlement, then rising above all routine, comforting the mind in its sublime audacity, its discovery of the metaphysical mysteries. » (Total Metaphysics. II. Being and Creation, CRC n^o 173, January 1982, p. 3)

This intuition of existence magnificently opens our natural knowledge to the relationship of origin the relation of the creature to God as filial, with a power of indefinite renewal of metaphysical and religious meditation.

« It is being that first stares us in the face and gives us the idea of God. There is nothing more natural, limpid and rapid than this metaphysical elevation. »

The mind then focuses on this pure Being, this absolutely necessary Being, obviously infinite; it adores Him and calls Him “God”.

God is sure and simple, an ineffable light, an indescribable life, without any mixture of death or darkness. He is (Yahweh), without confusion of any kind with what is not He, but which is not without Him either:

« The beings of our experience are not God, any more than they can be mistaken for one another: the cat for the clock, the child for the stuffed bear.

« Our mind perceives pure, simple unique and infinite existence deep down in its original intuition of beings and calls it “God”. Yet the mind also perceives Him in these other plural, multiple, divided and contingent existences, and this is where it stumbles, not grasping how this can be, even though it is so. »

Anyone who experiences the strong and spontaneous feeling of the certainty of divine existence and, on the other hand, the impression of the « surprising paradox » of all other being, begins to be a true philosopher.

« God is, before all things, before my frail coming into existence. When I come into the world, You are already there, o my God, most certainly, most necessarily! We only come afterwards, much later, and as a consequence of Your almighty and good Being. » (Georges de Nantes, Letter to My Friends n° 222, 2 February 1966, p. 3)

PHYSICAL SCIENCE

Physics is the science of substantial being, i.e. of being as an object that is distinct from its environment, indivisible in itself, a “substance” that the intelligence perceives and defines: mineral substance (this pebble, this flint), plant substance (this flower, this tree), animal substance: this cat. Our Father always attached great importance to Misou, the house cat… Like Aristotle, who was an enthusiast of natural science and above all of the observation of animal behaviour. Let us speak, however, about man, a rational animal substance. At least, in principle… « Essentially » rational. Yet « accidentally » more or less intelligent, it all depends…

The particular determinations of our substantial being are in fact called “accidents”. For example, that we are of such and such a race, height, and weight. Jesus was 1.80 m. tall and weighed 80 kg, according to His imprint left on the Holy Shroud. The accidents are to the substance what the branches and foliage are to the trunk: they cannot exist without the substance that bears them. “Whiteness” does not exist. It is the aspirin tablet that exists and is white, or Mont Blanc…

That we enter into relationship with one another is an “accident”! Fortunate or unfortunate, it is up to each one to decide… but it is an accident. Relationship, at least according to Aristotle, is an “accident”.

Nonetheless, there is at least one relationship that is not “accidental”, it is my relationship to my father and my mother who gave birth to me. Without them, there is no “substance” and no “accidents”, that is, no weight, no colour, no height, no strength, no intelligence of the interesting being that I am. I am beholden to my parents for everything.

This “procreative” relationship precedes me and brings me into existence. « Thus it is the relationship of origin that is everything, that says everything, that envelops essence and existence, the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete […]. This relationship, which comes from God and which affects His creatures in their innermost being, is a marvel greater than all essence, than all existence. What is it then and what does it say? »

It brings us into being, it gives us existence, which is the object of an immediate, enthralling intuition, as long as we welcome it with attention: « That a tree, a bird, or a human being exists, that is quite ordinary and yet prodigious. »

Let us recapitulate: « It is Misou that I see, but it is the Divine Being who reveals Himself there, who proves that He is there without, however, showing Himself. As for Misou, he paradoxically poses a problem for me; I wonder what he is doing there, and how it can be that he is there, that he is now amusing himself in existing, between two immensities of time and space where he is not. »

How clear it is! How obvious it is! All these beings receive existence, and they receive it from God. They are creatures.

Thus there is a pure Being, an Act, limitless, endless, unique and perfect Existence, I am, in which our spirit is naturally immersed and where it rests. There are myriads of existences in the world, following one another in the course of the millennia, who are beholden to Him, God, for all that they are: their stable and intelligible substance, as well as their accidents – details and particularities.

Nevertheless, it remains true that « we Catholics owe the conservation of the true meaning of God to the Eucharistic Presence. He is there, before me in the Tabernacle as an Object, a nearby and distinct living Being. This divine Matter, this Body of God, can, moreover, come into me and unite Himself to me more than any other, but He remains dazzlingly different from me. At the same moment, multitudes are welcoming Him and He is in them all, really, and without dividing or multiplying Himself. The magnificence of the Eucharist surpasses our understanding because it bears an incomparable lesson on the grandeur of God. This thing that shines there before my eyes, a white Host, is my infinite God. I can never again forget this otherness, this proximity, this ubiquity of God. He is as real as this Host is real, but He is as detached from all form, from all time, from all space, as is this Eucharist unceasingly and everywhere renewed. » (Letter to My Friends n° 222, p. 4)

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

The Catholic Faith affirms the “true”, “real” and “substantial” presence of the Body and Blood of Christ after the consecration of the bread and wine of which the appearances alone, called “accidents” in accordance with the philosophy of Aristotle, remain. In order to respond to Protestant negations or interpretations, the Council of Trent describes this singular and admirable conversion of bread into the Body of Christ, of wine into the Precious Blood, as a transubstantiation, that is to say a change of the substance that nevertheless allows the appearances of the bread and the wine to persist, unchanged. « The Substance of the bread is not annihilated, it is not chased elsewhere, but it is changed or converted into the substance of the Body and likewise with the wine. It is an unheard of change, the like of which there is no other example in nature, but a change that results directly from Christ’s words and is therefore enjoined by faith. »: “This is My Body.” – “This is My Blood”. The whole being of the bread down to its fundamental reality gives place to the Body, and that of the wine gives place to the Blood. (The Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord, New Theology of the Eucharist, CCR n° 96, March 78).

Can it be further explained? St. Thomas attempted to do so by relying on the first definitions of Aristotle as well as on his philosophical postulates, distinguishing the substances and the accidents. The substance “bread” changes, but the Accidents of the bread remain.

« This is evident, the Abbé de Nantes acknowledges, and not contradicted by faith. » It must indeed be admitted that no change is observed at the level of the phenomena.

« The moderns have pushed scientific analysis to its utmost and have noted that all the laws of organic chemistry subsist unchanged. » The quantity [the weight], the qualities [colour, taste], and all the physico-chemical structures [the atoms of iron, nitrogen, potassium, the organic molecules of alcohols or carbohydrates, water, salt, tannin] that determine them remain in place.

Well then, a question arises: « How can these accidents, which are to the substance what the branches and foliage of a tree are to the trunk, subsist... without the substance that bears them? For the Aristotelian to say that they become the accidents of another substance is absurd and unthinkable. Man has the accidents of man, dog those of dog, bread those of bread. The body of man cannot have the accidents of bread - an elementary truth. » Thus, neither can the Body of Christ, true man?...

St. Thomas replies that it is a miracle:

« God allows these accidents to remain as accidents and to act according to their natural laws even though their substance has disappeared. It is as though the waiter’s tray holding cups, saucers, teapot and water jug would continue to keep the careening group of moving things in order if there were suddenly no waiter and no supporting hand, but in their place an angel, for example …

« Fantastic! The accidents remain in the air? They seem to constitute an opaque veil, beneath which a substance other than their own is hidden, known only to faith alone. »

CRITICISM OF THIS THEORY

« When Aristotle speaks too loudly », the Abbé de Nantes warns, the Faith is in danger… Indeed, « the major objection to enclosing the Faith in the Aristotelian system is at its gravest here. A break, a void, a total absence of positive relations between the accidents of bread that “remain” and the Body of Christ, which “supervenes”, affects the unity and coherence of the sacramental being. » (CCR n° 96, p. 9)

Nevertheless, as it is what is seen and touched that first has full reality for man, it is these appearances or species, these accidents that alone have the essential role, by virtue of this miraculous action of God who conserves them in their being and in their movement!

« The Body of Christ, invisible, object of faith, imperceptible, inoperative, seems to be driven back and held in the background without managing to pierce the veil, this wall of these “accidents of bread”, which still remain. The Body of Christ is presented as the hidden gift that is in the host, beneath the veil and under the appearances of something which is not itself, and which it has not succeeded in totally supplanting. The Body’s remanence, localisation and disappearance are all dependent on the duration, action and dissolution of the appearances of bread. This explanation would efface and subject the Body of Christ far too much; it is the sacrament reversed! » (ibid, p. 9)

Xavier Léon-Dufour seems to find the justification of his theories in this weakness in the Aristotelian explanation. The titles of his books: “The Eucharistic bread” (1982), “The Bread of Life” (2005), are enough to show that « attention is fixed first on the bread ». According to him, the bread, which was to be eaten, as food for man, ceases to speak this natural language to us in order to assume concretely another finality or another meaning. The liturgy modifies the bread’s being-to-the-world, being-for-us, in reserving it for our fraternal communion in Christ. We are told that this change of finality or of meaning affects its deepest definition... All this pure subjectivism, however, merely renders the substance of the bread all the more massive and the physical reality of Christ all the more unreal!

Simply put, in the eyes of Xavier Léon-Dufour, « the consecrated bread symbolises the body of the Lord » (op. cit., p. 71).It is, however, still bread.

This is where the « worrisome lack of metaphysics », the concern of Cardinal Bertone, can be felt. First, Fr. Xavier Léon-Dufour has not understood that St. Thomas goes beyond Aristotle: an existentialist before the word existed, St. Thomas indicated that a metaphysical element remained and assures a profound continuity and radical identity in this physical change. It is the natura entis – being as being – existence pure and simple, yet real… The bread before the consecration is being; after the consecration, it is no longer bread, but it is still being.

Nevertheless, St. Thomas « dared not accept that such a being subsists outside all limits and beyond all definition of essence without some mode of substantial being ». It is either bread or the Body of Christ. However, concerning “being” that passes from one to the other, while being neither one nor the other, St. Thomas thought that nothing could be said. « It is to the great credit of St. Thomas that he should have indicated what his system was unable to include. » (CCR n°96, p. 9)

This is where the Abbé de Nantes has us make decisive progress.

NEW EXPLANATION

In order to retain the dogma of faith in transubstantiation, it is necessary to recall that the relationship of origin that brings a substance into existence precedes it. In her posthumous book that appeared a year after her death, Sister Lucy becomes our professor on this point, in perfect accord with the Abbé de Nantes:

« When Moses asked the Lord His Name in order to communicate it to the people, the Lord answered him: “You will tell them that I Am who I Am” » she writes.

« God alone can say that He is who He is, because always, today and tomorrow, He is! »

While scholastic philosophers draw up their proofs for the existence of God by five laborious ways of reasoning from the objects of creation, Sister Lucy, in a very keen intuition of existence as such, stripped of all “substantial” formality, grasps it as an reality that is as absolute as it is mysterious, such as it was revealed to Moses on the “mountain of God”: « I am ». God alone can say I am, « because always, today and tomorrow, He is! »

As a creature of God, I am sustained in being by God. I am “connected”. If I am disconnected, I fall into nothingness.

Let us take another step forward:

As a creature of God, I know, I feel that I am a son of God; the love of God gives me being at this moment. I hope that He will give it to me later on and that He will protect me afterwards.

God is like a mother, a nurse, full of solicitude for nurturing me at every moment.

Now, what did He invent to feed me? Well, He gives me bread to eat, quite simply, and wine to drink. He thought of this even from the days of the Creation when He created wheat and grapevines to this end.

Our Father saw it in a marvellous way first, and then he wrote it down. In this excerpt from Mémoires et Récits, (our insert, below, p. 7), metaphysics becomes mysticism.

FINAL METAPHYSICAL EXPLANATION

What is bread and what is wine ?

« Bread is “the product resulting from baking dough made of a mixture of wheat flour, (sometimes supplemented by the flour of other cereals), and of leaven that is called baker’s yeast”. »

« Wine is “a liquid made exclusively from the fermentation of crushed grapes or from the juice of fresh grapes”. »

Thus bread is not strictly speaking a substance but a conglomerate of various substances produced from baking a mixture of water (35-40%), salt (0.2%), lipids (0.80%), carbohydrates, of which the principal one is starch, a sort of vegetable sugar (52%), vegetable proteins or gluten, constructed on a nitrogen atom (7.25%). All this subsists after the Consecration. This is why Fr. Xavier Léon-Dufour does not believe in the “transubstantiation” that changes this bread into the Body of Jesus.

As for the Abbé de Nantes, he contributes a response that saves our faith, but by going beyond St. Thomas, who is too dependent on Aristotle. For St. Thomas, existence has significance only through its bond with an essence: an essence of bread, or man or God. Stripped of this essence, existence remains unintelligible, in that it is nothing. According to the decidedly Christian metaphysics of our Father, every existence is like a portion of being, created by God and subsisting by a positive act of God’s power. Thus the bread on the altar is a portion of being; it is the term of a fraction of creative energy: it is drawn from its nothingness and conserved as and where it is by a precise act of the will of God. Its place in the world and in history ontologically precedes its substance of bread and its accidents.

Thus, transubstantiation consists in this: it is a conversion of being itself. The substance that changes is not so much the essence of the bread, but rather the concrete being, the individual existence: the entire being. These physico-chemical elements no longer exist in themselves, but they are the Body of Christ living by His own Soul that has taken possession of them.

It is the whole being, salt, alcohol, sugars, yeast etc., which is absorbed by Christ’s Body, under the hold of His Soul, as He makes of this bread a real, historical, and material extension of His Incarnation.

It is this portion of being that is taken hold of by Christ, in order to make of it His Body. Christ gives Himself all these appearances and properties of bread in order to signify what He wishes that we should do with Him: that we should eat Him. They are no longer the appearances of bread; they are the appearances of the Body, sacramental appearances that have been willed intentionally, fully significant of what the Lord wishes to be for us The water, alcohol, gluten, iron, acids and proteins, all elements remaining without change of structure or operations, are the Body of Christ and no longer anything else. He is their total being, and their unique integrating form is the soul of Christ.

MYSTERY OF FAITH

By denying the real and substantial Presence of Christ, Xavier Léon-Dufour denies, with all the more reason, all reality to the Holy Sacrifice: « With the word over the cup, it is the very notion of sacrifice that must be revised: the Eucharist is essentially a “sacrifice of praise”, by which the disciples of Christ glorify God for having, in Jesus, made life triumph over death […], for it is then a question not of purification, but of increase in life. » (pp. 78-79)

« Furthermore, when Jesus says “this is my blood of the covenant”, the verb “to be” does not immediately express a material identity between “wine” and “covenant” or between “wine” and “my blood”. Moreover, Jesus does not speak of wine, but of a cup. » In short, all this is « symbolic ». Of what? Of an « anti-sacrifice » (p. 88).

Let us come back to reality, thanks to our metaphysics.

The Son of God, having already revealed to us His power in assuming a human nature subordinate to His Divine nature, in order to become the Son of Mary and our brother, now reveals His human power to withdraw the bodily appearances and operations of Himself as Man in order to manifest Himself to us and act in us as bread and wine, thus making Himself entirely ours – our food and drink.

When Jesus pronounces over the cup of wine the words: This is My Blood, shed for you and for many, the soul of Christ seizes hold of this concrete substance of wine and, through His own limitless power, makes of it His own Blood, as though shed or rather springing forth from Himself, from His Body, into this cup that symbolises the crucial ordeal, the decisive gift of His life. It is the physical prefiguration of His death.

Ever since, when the priest at Mass pronounces the same words in His Name, Jesus Himself seizes hold of the being of the wine in order to change it into His Blood. Again He pours His life into this cup to signify His suffering…

Jesus accomplishes anew what He has effected fully once and for all: it is the sacrifice of His Life on the Cross for the remission of sins.

In the reality of the Sacrificial Action, in the truth of the commemoration by Christ and the Church together of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the remission of the sins of the People of the Covenant is accomplished anew. That is the principal reason for continually celebrating Holy Mass.

Still more, in the sacramental symbolism of the meal the Eucharist carries out Christ’s feeding of His Church with His Body, and this justifies the daily repetition of the Mass by every priest in every church, wherever two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus.

That the blood shed in pain to obtain God’s forgiveness and blessings should become the wine of this sacred banquet signifies the joy that Christ wishes to call forth through this sacred exhilaration, and the gratitude of the redeemed in celebrating the blessings of the Covenant in joy and song. It is Christ’s Wedding Banquet with His Church in His Blood, anticipated.

Brother Bruno of Jesus