The symbol that the Church employs these days to help us come to some understanding of the Eucharist is the symbol of presence. Not cherry presence, it's actually prominent in the writings of contemporary existential philosophers and phenomenologists. And so commentators in turn distinguish between spatial or physical presence, spatial or physical presence, personal presence, and human presence. Theologians in turn distinguish between divine presence the presence of the historical Jesus, the presence of the risen Lord Jesus, and the presence of the risen Lord Jesus in the church,

[01:25]

and in the church's worship, including the Eucharist. I'm going to comment briefly on each one of these. Physical, spatial, material, or bodily presence. Well, same thing. Physical, spatial, material, or bodily presence. implies that something exists in space next to other material bodies. For example, the chairs in this room occupy a definite space. And this chair is surrounded by other chairs. Physical, spatial, material or bodily presence does not admit degrees.

[02:40]

A thing is either present in space or it is... Some of us do get spaced out at times. Personal presence. To be a person is above all to have an intellect and a will. Believe in angels, they are persons. You have a body, but they have intellects and wills. Consequently, personal presence implies that one knows and loves, can relate to other persons and other things through knowledge and love.

[03:43]

Obviously, personal presence admits degrees of intensity. Some persons are morning persons. Some people are night persons. How present are you in the morning or at night? Human presence brings together spatial presence and personal presence because we are body persons. Human presence brings together spatial presence and personal presence because we are body persons. My body is either here or it's not here.

[04:56]

But as a person, I might well be more or less present to other body persons and things which surround me. Divine presence. Divine presence is never confined, confined. any particular time or place. The simple reason that God is everywhere and always. Unfortunately, we're often like the folks in the Old Testament. Our tendency has been to tie God down. to particular times and places. When we speak of God, we cannot speak in any way of a spatial presence.

[06:00]

We cannot attribute a body to God that would limit God as our bodies limit us. Therefore, we cannot say that God has bodily contact with other bodies. God fills all space and all time, but not in a spatial or temporal way. In other words, I think we must do well then to see the world in God, rather than God in the world. We live in God. We are in God. We have our being in God. As I mentioned, we, in fact, are the bearers of God's light, but we're certainly not God.

[07:06]

And I think we often make what I would call an unfortunate distinction between the natural and the supernatural. As though the natural is down here, and the supernatural is up there. As though the world, the universe, is a layer of cake. Personally, I prefer to think of it all as a wonderful fruitcake which is saturated through and through with good brandy. This makes sense to me. God possesses, surrounds, and pervades us and our world in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, as we have seen this week, God offers us the divine presence always and as a free gift.

[08:15]

God's always there. God is present in us in order to make us live, in order to fulfill us, in order to enable us to give our lives to each other with the power of the Spirit. But on God's part, this presence is absolutely unlimited. What I'm saying here is that we cannot divide God up into little parts or parcels. But as the body persons that we are, we can refuse to be present to God. We can't sin. We can refuse the gift of God's life that comes to us moment by moment in the context of our world and the communities that we live in.

[09:16]

Any questions about this so far? Can we put God in a box? I'm sorry, it just occurred to me, I wrote it down. The incarnation would be different. That would be an exception. That's what I'm going to do now is talk about the presence of the historical Jesus and then the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, thank you. Some comments then on the presence of Jesus Christ. First of all, something about the historical Jesus, the Jesus of Nazareth.

[10:26]

In the beginning was the Word of God, everywhere and always, but that Word became flesh. That Word was with God and was God. from all eternity. The Word existed before creation. But in the Incarnation, the Word became one of us with a created body. So we have one person and two natures, one divine and one human. The Word of God took flesh in a humanity that was in no way guilty of sin. Hence, it was a humanity that was perfectly open to the light and presence on the Word of God.

[11:32]

In other words, God's presence was very real in the historical Jesus, but not limited in any way. God was still everywhere and always, but present in a very profound and special way in the historical body of Jesus. So through his body, his person, the divine work, it was revealed to all who saw him, heard him, touched him, And so in a real sense then we can say talk about the historical Jesus as having spacial or physical presence because he had a historical body situated in time and space. The historical body of Jesus died.

[12:47]

but was raised from the dead. And so we call the risen Jesus the Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is continuity between the historical body of Jesus and his risen body, but his risen body has become, as Paul insists, it has become spirit. In other words, his risen body is no longer confined to a particular time or place that has become spirit. We can then, I think as Thomas does, Aquinas, we might well speak then of the risen Lord Jesus being present to a time or place rather than in a time or place.

[13:54]

The full body person of the Lord Jesus has been glorified and not simply his bodiless soul. Therefore, the full person of the Lord Jesus is present with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing of the Lord Jesus is far away from us as in a spatially imagined heaven up there. The disciples of Jesus encountered him in his historical body in Palestine, we encounter the Lord Jesus, not in a sense immediately, but His presence is mediated to us through symbols which are real.

[15:01]

We must be very careful then I think not to speak of the Lord Jesus as present to us physically or materially. As you probably know some Victorian hymns and prayers did in fact speak of the Lord Jesus as a prisoner in the tabernacle. So the Lord was somehow confined in a small box. We cannot restrict or confine the Lord Jesus in any way. Any questions or comments about that? Monk Edward? We might not be able to restrict him. But he did feel restriction.

[16:07]

Yes, yes. We can restrict him on our part. Right. I mean, he felt his body restrict him or his Are you talking about the historical Jesus or the risen Lord Jesus Christ? I'm just talking about his suffering. The historical body. His physical body. There's no doubt, yes. That's the historical body. The difference here between the risen Lord Jesus and the historical body. All right. Now, I think one of the most memorable and widely quoted passages of Vatican II's Constitution of Liberty is found in paragraph seven. And there, it's very important, it says, it doesn't say Jesus, it says Christ.

[17:12]

That's the risen Lord Jesus Christ is always present in this church. especially in her liturgical celebrations. His Honour says he is present in the sacrifice in the Mass, not only in the person of his minister, but especially in the Eucharistic speech. By his power, he is present in the sacraments, present in his word, present when the Church prays and sings. By the way, reference to that conciliar teaching has been very carefully incorporated into the text of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. And that document, by the way, alludes further to the expanded formulation about Christ's multiple presences in the liturgy that are found in Pope Paul VI's 1965 encyclical Mysterium Fidei.

[18:25]

what Paul did in that encyclical. He expanded, really, the conciliar teaching. He drew attention to the praying and preaching church, drew attention to the works of mercy and justice in the world, and very carefully drew attention to the whole range of pastoral ministering and sacramental activity. So very clearly then, discourse about the Lord's presence has been paramount in the church's discussions about the liturgy, especially the Eucharist, in the last 40 years. So what I'm going to do now is to speak quite briefly about the various modes of the Lord's presence in the Eucharist, which are specified above all in the Constitution of the Liturgy.

[19:52]

From the outset, I want to affirm that all the modes of the Lord's presence are real. They're all real. They simply differ in the way they express the Lord's omnipresence. It must be seen then as complementary, not contradictory. Unfortunately, I think many Catholics probably still believe only in one real presence. the real presence under the symbols of bread and wine. I've already talked these days about the Lord's real presence in the church, which is the body of Christ. And that means then that the liturgical assembly is really the primary celebrant of the Eucharist.

[21:00]

And I think we need to affirm the privacy of people who aren't the members of the body of Christ. Because they're baptized into that body and consequently they share in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly roles of Christ himself as priest, prophet, and king. So as I mentioned, in the Eucharist, the Lord is present not only on the altar table, but also in all those who gather around the altar. Picking up that medieval axiom, sacramenta sunt prospera homines, the primary reason why the Lord Jesus makes himself present on the altar is so that he might be present in us. I think that's often where our faith lies.

[22:10]

And I think today, you know, when human life is threatened on so many fronts, it's so important that we emphasize the dignity and the value of the human person. Threatened by abortion, threatened by euthanasia, threatened by capital punishment. driven by sexual exploitation. Alright, within the Eucharistic assembly then, there are various ministries. And a very special ministry is in fact that of the ordained priest. What we need to emphasize is that his ordination is rooted in his baptism. But through his ordination, he is initiated into the hierarchical structure of the church. Unfortunately, I think we tend to think of the hierarchy as a pyramid.

[23:22]

with the ordained at the top and the non-ordained somewhere at the bottom. That term hierarchy, it comes in two Greek words, hieros and archaic. I think if one understands this, then one doesn't get spastic when we talk about the church as hierarchical. By divine institution, the church is hierarchical. And that means that there has to be holy order in the church. Hieros et arche. Holy order. All right, in other words, it is the function of the ordained to preside over the Eucharist, to see that the assembly is properly ordered, to proclaim the Eucharistic prayer and other prayer.

[24:37]

But he does all that in the name of the assembly. And he nourishes the assembly with the body and the blood of Christ. So it is the function of the ordained to facilitate the expressions and the constructive implementation of the diverse gifts and charisms that are to be found in the assembly of the faith. You know in his early letters Paul reminds us that we are all members of the body of Christ. But in the letter to the Ephesians and the Colossians, the Pauline author affirms that Christ himself is the head of the body. Well, what does that mean? Well, just as in the human body, the head coordinates the activities of the whole body.

[25:44]

Sown in the body of Christ, the role of Christ as head of the body is symbolized by the ordained minister who coordinates the various ministries in the Eucharistic assembly. But we are all, by baptism, initiated in Persona Christi, all of us, The ordained then, as baptized, is related in a very special way in Persona Christi Covetis, very specially related to Christ as dead of the font. Some of the commentators will point out he's in Persona Christi Servi, the person of Christ as a servant of the Assembled. So there is, you know, as the Vatican II documents point, there is an essential difference between the ordained and the non-ordained.

[26:56]

Is that clear? Now among those ministries that the presider coordinates is the ministry of the Word. And we regularly speak of the scriptures as the Word of God. And since Christ is present in His Word, He is also present in the reader and the homiless as well as in the scriptures themselves. And so the mission of the church is to proclaim the word of God and transmit it faithfully to each generation. And so we Christians are called to listen to the word, the word of God, and respond to God who in fact is speaking to us.

[28:05]

We hear not only from here on. Major difference, by the way, between what I would call a Semitic anthropology and a Greek or Hellenic anthropology. For the Greek, you know, they often have more or less contempt for matter. And the higher up you went in the body, the more noble you became, with the intellect being primary. very different Semitic anthropology. It was not the head that was primary, but the heart. And so in their very primitive way, they imagined that there was a little canal that went from the ear down into the heart. And so the person who was silent, or the person who was attentive to light, much when in the ear, And much went down into the heart. And so that was the person who became wise and being hardened.

[29:11]

You chatted all the time, never took time out to listen. You never allowed anything to go in the ear. Nothing went down into the heart. And so you were the one who ended up being hard hearted. This is very prominent, by the way, in the sapiential literature, including some of the Psalms, like 50. But who is it that opens my heart? It's God's word proclaimed to me that opens my heart and heart. You know, it's interesting in that regard. Commentators don't pay much attention to this right now. But there was, when the new order of mass was being formulated, there was considerable tension over the placement of the penitential rite. Now think of your experience of that penitential rite. You know, often I think we come together on a high singing an entrance hymn and then we have the in the name of the Father and then a greeting and so forth and then

[30:26]

Now hold your mind, you'll see it, you should all get it. What happened? This much happened? I don't think so. The way I always view the penitential right was a way of opening, you know, seeing my poverty and my need for what's to come. But the penitential right, to me, isn't a low point, it's actually a point of opening up and preparing oneself for what? Well, what I'm about to emphasize, it's God's Spirit that makes that all possible. And taking that into account, this other school at the council wanted to put the penitential right somewhere else. Where would you put it? And some of the Protestant priests allow for this, by the way.

[31:38]

Before there's such an event? Well, how much before? What I've been saying, it's God's Word that opens my heart and heart. So they would have placed it after the proclamation of the Word and the breaking of the Word in the home. And the claim was, they said that Joseph Jung would want to sleep on this, and so they made that place in the wrong place. I have experienced that in some solo victims of the Eucharist, and it does seem to work much more profoundly, at least for me, in many ways. Listening to the Word of God, then, really has profound implications. It implies understanding the grace of the message, participating in the saving deeds that are proclaimed in the Scriptures, and above all, commitment to the firsting and flower of Jesus Christ, the power of the Spirit.

[32:57]

Is that the way I experience, for example, the readings in the Yule books? One can't help but think then, if I never prepare, if I stumble through the text, I'm cheating the assembly. The Gospels tell us that Jesus healed and restored to life with his spoken word. Many other people in his day heard him willingly because he spoke with heart. No one seemed to speak as he spoke. So the question then that I must ask, if spoken words would heal and restore people to life in those days.

[34:01]

Why can't spoken words, which are the word of God, have less power today? Certainly our world is full of sick people, demoralized people, people who are really dead, but who are still living. There is power in God's Word, and I think what the Word has done in the past, it can do in the present. If the ministers of the Word, first of all, hear the Word in their own hearts, that the words that they speak in turn to others are God's Word. And you must know, one of the major complaints that we hear from lay people is the very poor quality of Roman Catholic homilies. You know, you go away from a homily and you ask, what light did it shed on my love?

[35:12]

What light did it shed in them on my love? You know, we simply don't have a tradition like the Protestants have here. Of the privacy. They really believe in the real presence of God's Word. You know, after the Council of Trent, they became people of the Word. Roman Catholics became people of the visual. Right. I do think that what the Word has done in the past, it can also do in the present, if the ministers of the Word only hear that Word themselves, and then proclaim it effectively to others.

[36:17]

The Constitution also speaks of his special presence, very special presence of the Lord Jesus under the forms of bread and wine. Now, what I think is also important here, he is equally present under the sacramental forms of water in baptism and oil in the sacraments of confirmation holy orders and anointing in the city. Can you believe that? A couple of years ago, at one of the neighboring parishes in the Diocese of St. Cloud, there was a new church put up, and the bishop came to consecrate the church. And of course, There's a very interesting article, by the way, in the July issue of Worship, on the whole history and meaning of the consecration of the church and altars by a young holy cross priest who's finishing on the Vespers and Catechism.

[37:31]

Altare est Christus, the altar is Christ. And in the course of the consecration ritual, the altar is really treated almost like a body. and the bishop massages, massages the altar, you see, with prism. And it was beautiful just watching him. I mean, the love and the care with which he did that. And then eventually it's closed, you know, with the altar cloth. When he went over and sat down, you know, after he was done with all this, the emcee came out with a roll of paper towel and proceeded then to sop up the oil on the old.

[38:35]

I crawled under the pew with that stick. He obviously didn't believe in the real presence under the symbol of Christ. I mean, the four bishops great care was just kind of cancelled. Just cancelled by what the MC did. Well, for water. I mean, the baptismal water and the baptismal font. I mean, is it a bad? I remember God never sent out to a parish not too long ago. And unfortunately, a little baby was not to be baptized in the course of the Eucharist, but after the Eleventh-Day Mass. So I piously went back to the baptistry, and the family was all there, and I lifted up the lid. There was nothing to drink except a little bottle marked, Holy Water.

[39:40]

You know, we're so steeped in what I would call sacramental minimalism. I'm not sure what that symbol said to the panel. If we all must draw. If we all certainly must draw. Now, the point here is the special significance of the Eucharistic presence under the symbols of bread and wine. And there is, from an anthropological point of view, something very distinctive about food and drink. Bread is to be eaten and wine is to be drunk. Water runs off the body.

[40:48]

Oil is absorbed into the body. Words are spoken and they're no longer heard. The food and drink become one with the human person. They are in fact ingested. In the Eucharist we do not turn the Lord's body and blood into our body and blood through digestion, we are rather transformed into the body and blood of God. So as I mentioned yesterday, the Eucharist is not simply a meal, it's a sacramental ritual, a sacrificial meal. which memorializes the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whom the Father has given us, together with the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is a very special symbol.

[41:54]

God's love for us, at the same time as it is special food and drink, nourishes us as we follow the Lord Jesus, leading into the temple. You're probably wondering what all this has to do with Eucharistic reservation and adoration of the Eucharist. Talk about that. Any questions before I move on? Okay. From earliest times, the Eucharist has, in fact, been reserved. Above all, so that it might be taken as viabicum for those who are dying, be taken also to those who were not able to participate in the celebration of the Eucharist.

[43:02]

And in the Middle Ages, the development of the theory of Eucharistic concomitance That theory developed that affirmed the presence of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ in either the Eucharistic bread or the Eucharistic wine. And so that provided then theological justification for a growing custom, namely the withdrawal of the cup from the laity. And I think that step perhaps more than any other

[44:10]

contributed then to a Eucharistic piety centered almost exclusively on the host. Eucharistic devotion and cult outside mass became in fact then devotion to the host. The very feast of Corpus Christi that originated in the high Middle Ages. It's the body of Christ. It's only with the liturgical reforms that now, once again, it's the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The cup has been restored to the lady. It's fidelity to the words of Jesus to eat and to drink. Now, four popular customs expressive of the cult of the Eucharist outside the immediate context of Mass, developed then in the late Middle Ages.

[45:19]

First of all, visits with the Blessed Sacrament, precessions with the Blessed Sacrament, exposition and benediction. Now obviously these customs reveal a popular change of perception in the meaning and the purpose of the Eucharistic elements. Their original significance as food and drink for the people of God, while not lost, was modified and reinterpreted. What you have then is the cultic and devotional attitude which in an earlier era was directed toward objects such as relics, altars, gospel books, was ritually transferred to the Eucharistic species

[46:38]

and especially to the host. Now, they're developed in what I would describe as a new mode of Christ's presence under the form of a sacred mandala. What is a mandala? It's like that little bale you wear in church. That's a mandala. Your clothes. What is a mandala? It's a geometric figure, often a circle, sometimes a triangle,

[47:43]

geometric figure and obviously you have a geometric figure there when the host is exposed in a monstrance and this becomes possible because of a significant shift from leavened bread to unleavened bread significant shift maybe here so that in the unleavened bread it is possible for the host to take on the shape of a mandel. Eucharist took the form of a white circular wafer. It became then a geometric form of perfection which is common in many world religions.

[48:46]

The point here is that by contemplating a mandala, people believed that they were contemplating and communing with the reality behind the form. is that significant reference is also to the Eastern Church's use of icons. Eastern Church generally it is the icon that replaces the Eucharistic scope. I'm sorry, you said they were communicating with the one in the form? Yes, you're talking about the mandolin, you said when they were or the reality behind the form. How did they answer that?

[49:51]

And then were taken in by the eye in what came to be known as ocular communion. Ocular communion. resulting in communion with the real presence of Jesus Christ, just as realistically as if they were consuming the sacred host by eating. The opulent communion came to replace the actual ingestion of the host. And of course, at this time, there were many, many restrictions on the lay persons, including religious and nuns especially, made the restrictions on the frequency with which they could communicate at liturgy. All right.

[50:53]

Hence, vision, see, became an increasingly common source of religious experience among Christians. Vision. And from earliest times, vision has been a very common metaphor for the Christian experience of a transcendent relationship with God. Fathers of Hoymas, for example, described the ultimate condition of humanity in the presence of God in heaven as visio meatifica, as beatific vision. A tension then developed between Roman Catholics and Protestants

[51:56]

in the 16th century over the priority of visual or aural, a-u-r-a-l, aural symbols. The Protestants favored aural symbols because of their conviction that faith comes above all through hearing. Roman Catholics did not deny the importance of proclaiming the gospel and catechizing the faithful. However, the Council of Trent refused to vernacularize the liturgy with the result that in the post-reformation church, Roman Catholics tended to emphasize visual experience rather than oral experience in the celebration of the Eucharist. All you need to do here is look at the Baroque churches. For example, the church of the Jesuits, the Jesuit church in Rome.

[53:01]

All you need to do is look at them. And what they developed into were elaborately ordained theaters, really. With lavishly decorated walls and ceilings. The altars Instead of being a table for a meal, the elders took on the appearance of pedestals or large gold tabernacles. They became platforms for the placement of the monstrance during the exposition of the Eucharist and Benedict. Now, the importance of seed. in the development of individuals into mature and responsible adults has been emphasized by a number of modern psychologists.

[54:08]

For example, Erik Erikson. Erikson, for example, has stressed the need for the infant to discover a visual symbol of focused centrality in order to perceive a sense of personal identity and a secure focus in life. The infant normally finds this symbol of focused centrality in the mandala, in the round face of the mother, and the eye-to-eye gaze of love and attraction between the mother and the infant. It's fascinating to have exposure to little children. For example, I met somebody at the Active Medical Institute, a Polish couple, with their little children.

[55:18]

And so, her babysitter, after she was taking my course on all this stuff, she said, Cynthia, that's your own mother. It was very easy to end up with. Right? Yes. Right. And what is fascinating, for example, is the experience a few years ago of babies in Romania who were left to defend for themselves without any symbol of focal centrality They all became schizophrenic. Dr. Spock's famous studies in this regard.

[56:23]

Babies which were taken from their parents and then were fed, the bottle was put on a pole and simply stuffed into them. They all became schizophrenic too. The importance of seeing a visual security in people's lives. It's not getting any fewer. So Erikson has suggested that all religions seek a vision of sanctioned centrality, a center inhabited by a divine eye that is mediated through symbols of seed. In other words, what he's saying is that all religions involve a search for a center of security and trust.

[57:26]

And discovery of such a center, he says, begins in earliest childhood and continues throughout life. Now what I find fascinating is that perhaps The search for a vision of sanctioned centrality, I think it might shed light on the desire of many people today, especially more recently, to pray before the tabernacle or to praise before the exposed host. Potential adoration and so forth is growing in leaps and bounds. Now, just a feeling for this one conclusion. One of the most obvious features of the Eucharistic Liturgy since the Second Vatican Council is that the ritual actions and the elements, like the bread and the wine, they are in fact displayed so that everyone can see them.

[58:34]

Very interesting, we talk about the presider now and the alter facing the people. Bread and wine are visible throughout the literature on the table. And perhaps unconsciously, the liturgical reforms have cooperated with the primitive human instinct to see, the desire to see, face to face. to gaze and to be gazed upon, participate in rituals of mutual seeing and recognition. So I think it may be argued that the recent liturgical reforms which intensify the assembly's ability to participate visually in the ritual elements and actions, and the medieval fascination with the host as an object of contemplation, ocular communion with God in the Eucharistic vapor, are both rooted really in the same source, the search for a vision of sanctioned centrality.

[59:56]

Now although the Vatican to reform to the liturgy did not abandon certainly visual symbolism, they did in fact subtly shift its center. In the Reformed liturgy, visual attention centers not so much on objects like prayer books, statues, or the tabernacle, or brocaded vestments, or the host in the monsters, or hidden in the tabernacle. Rather, the visual focus is on people and their actions. In other words, the visual fulcrum of Sanctioned Centrality has shifted away from inert objects bored ritual actions themselves of taking, flossing, breaking, and sharing.

[61:10]

And so I'm like the rather static centrality supplied by the host and the monsters, or in the saborium in the tabernacle. The visual center of the Reformed Eucharist is in motion. It can't be easily fixed on a single element or ritual gesture. But I want to stress here that neither of these two expressions of visual symbolism need necessarily exclude the other. The resurgence of Eucharistic devotions in recent years indicates, I think, that the Reformed Eucharist, especially as it's often celebrated,

[62:17]

does not satisfy the devotional need of many people, especially those who come from a frenetic world which is filled with busyness and noise. As they are in fact celebrated, many futuristic liturgies do not provide people with either time or space. for silence and stillness. Consequently, many people yearn for the peace and quiet and contemplation in the presence of the reserved sacrament can provide. What I want to stress here is that people's needs in this regard different from person to person.

[63:21]

Not everyone experiences these needs with equal intensity. Consequently, and this is the important conclusion, we should not use devotions of any kind as a gauge for evaluating anyone's faith. extremely important. Some parishes where perpetual adoration has been introduced. People are embarrassed. Why aren't you signed up? We have very different needs in this regard. Certainly, Benedict is silent on devotions. And as you know, practices from one monastic community differ considerably. from monastery to monastery in this regard. What I think is most important is that such devotions always come out of the celebration of the Eucharistic Liberty itself and flow back into the celebration.

[64:38]

You know, the Roman Congregation of Divine Worship issued this directive on popular devotions a couple of years ago. And the opening chapters are extremely good in this regard. Devotion should be consonant with the liturgical celebrations themselves. It's the Eucharistic celebration which is most important. And I have unfortunately gotten the impression from some people, oh, it's Eucharistic devotion that's most important. Not to me. So both liturgical action and devotional practices are meant to empower us to undergo transformation. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we might then become effective agents in the establishment of a reign of justice and peace in the world. And I think we need more and more

[65:43]

to relate the Eucharist to the enormous problems of social justice and peace that we have in our world. Very brief conclusion. The Eucharistic liturgy and Eucharistic devotions then, they are complementary, not contradictory. And I think we do very well to remember that no symbols, no ritual practices, even those that are an integral part of the liturgy itself, exhaust the infinite richness of God's presence in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. God's presence is inexhaustible. And it's irreducible to any single symbol, any single ritual.

[66:44]

Those are the new aphorisms from Tennyson. Our little systems have their day, but Jesus Christ is always more than that.

[67:00]

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