The Holy Eucharist

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/holyeucharistOOhedl THE WESTMINSTER LIBRARY A SERIES OF MANUALS FOR CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND STUDENTS EDITED BY The Right Rev. Mgr. BERNARD WARD PRESIDENT OP ST. EDMUND'S COLLEGE AND The Rev. HERBERT THURSTON, S.J. It may perchance be asked why God now requires more from Christians under the Gospel than He did from the Jews under the law. The reason is evident ; we give more to God because we owe more. The Jews partook of the manna, we of Christ ; the Jews of the birds of the air, we of the Body of God ; the Jews of the dew of heaven, we of Heaven's Lord.—Salvian, Ad Ecclesiam, lib. 2. THE HOLY EUCHARIST BY THE Right Rev. JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY BISHOP OF NEWPORT NEW IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS I914 8T. MICHAEL'S \ ** ) cr m -81935 74-35 EDITORS' PREFACE. This series of Handbooks is designed to meet a need, which, the Editors believe, has been widely felt, and which results in great measure from the predominant importance attached to Dogmatic and Moral Theology in the studies preliminary to the Priesthood. That the first place must of necessity be given to these subjects will not be disputed. But there re- mains a large outlying field of professional knowledge which is always in danger of being crowded out in the years before ordination, and the practical utility of which may not be fully realised until some experience of the ministry has been gained. It will be the aim of the present series to offer the sort of help which is dictated by such experience, and its develop- ments will be largely guided by the suggestions, past and future, of the Clergy themselves. To provide Textbooks for Dogmatic Treatises is not contemplated—at any rate not at the outset. On the other hand, the pastoral work of the missionary priests will be kept constantly in view, and the series will also deal with those historical and liturgical aspects of Catholic belief and practice which are every day being brought more into prominence. vi EDITORS' PREFACE That the needs of English-speaking countries are, in these respects, exceptional, must be manifest to all. In point of treatment it seems desirable that the volumes should be popular rather than scholastic, but the Editors hope that by the selection of writers, fully competent in their special subjects, the information given may always be accurate and abreast of modern research. The kind approval of this scheme by His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster, in whose Diocese these manuals are edited, has suggested that the series should be introduced to the public under the general title of The West- minster Library. It is hoped, however, that contributors may also be found among the distinguished Clergy of Ireland and America, and that the Westminster Library will be repre- sentative of Catholic scholarship in all English- speaking countries. PREFACE. This book is presented to the reader as a useful manual, and not as an exhaustive treatise. The divine gift of the Holy Eucharist has naturally- occupied the thought and inspired the pens of the greatest doctors of theological science in every age of Christianity. Very great writers have demonstrated its reality, developed its theology, explored its philosophy, related its history and defended it against the contradictions of false teaching. In our days there is an increasingly large public who require something between a treatise and a catechism. There are many, both among the clergy and the laity, who have not the time, nor perhaps the taste, for a professed discussion on questions of divinity, of Christian philosophy, and of Church history, but who are quite able to take in a reasoned exposition of the principal dogmas of their faith. Theology, as the science of human religion, is, in a certain sense, within the grasp of every educated man. Proof, definition, division and the setting forth of relations, may be presented on a modest scale, in octavos, as well as in scholastic form in folios. The more vu viii PREFACE the priest and the thinking layman can be in- duced to make himself acquainted with the intel- lectual sphere in which the truths of his religion live and glow in their order and their harmony, the more firm will be their mental grasp of their faith, and the less reason will there be to fear the hostile influence of non-religious thought. It is hoped that books of the kind here attempted, although primarily intended for the clergy, may help the laity to intelligent knowledge without impairing the docility that the Gospel enjoins on every Christian. The clergy, who have really studied the subject here treated, and who are in a position to judge of what is said in these pages, will, perhaps, be pleased and refreshed to see their youthful studies reproduced without any bewilder- ing apparatus of authorities or too rigid an in- sistence on scholastic form. There are many aspects of the Holy Eucharist in which it may be said to have assumed a greater importance in mental and spiritual science at the present day than ever it has had before. There is, first of all, its relation to the philosophy of material things, and, indirectly, to the modern theories of knowledge. No one who has even a slight acquaintance with the modern views of objective and subjective cognition can help feeling that a philosophical system of mind and of the universe is perfectly impossible without a certain obedience to authority. The prevailing persuasion, indeed, is that a valid system of philosophy is, any how, impossible ; for no philosopher will accept authority, and, on the other hand, PREFACE ix merely to interrogate one's own mental phenom- ena is, at the best, to shut one's self up in one's own atmosphere without any lawful way into the world outside, or any bridge that will bear one's weight, to give one a passage from mind to matter. All the time, it is evident that the mass of man- kind behave and act as if there really were two spheres, that of mind, and that of external things, and that men are so constituted that they are con- fident they make no mistake, speaking generally, when they hold that these two spheres can mu- tually affect one another. As this persuasion on the part of the human race is sure to hold fast as long as there are any human beings left, it seems a pity that this common philosophy could not be accepted and made the base of a system. The great word-spinners of Oxford and elsewhere will cry out on the crudeness and unscientific nature of a suggestion like this. But if we take man as we find him, and refuse to argue against his solid instincts—and it seems futile to act in any other way—it is certain that we can never be proved to be in the wrong ; and also that any scientific edi- fice we build up on that foundation will harmonise with that wide, deep and powerful flow of human impulse which is either genuine reality or else there is no reality at all. It is this human, plain, and consistent philosophy that the great doctors of Catholicism have clung to, used, and developed. Chief among them is St. Thomas of Aquin. It is this philosophy, and notably as expounded by St. Thomas, that the Catholic Church has em- ployed as a setting for her doctrine of the Holy ; x PREFACE Eucharist. As that doctrine, which is a vital doctrine of the faith, concerns not merely abstract truth or practical morals but a certain fact or facts in the sphere of material substance, it is not difficult to see that the common human view of material substance must be, to a great extent, bound up with the Church's faith. This does not mean that the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist contradicts scientific research. But the Church will sometimes, no doubt, be unable to accept the inferences of scientific investigators, just as it rejects the a priori pro- nouncements of the speculative analysts of mental process. The Christian philosophy, as represented by St. Thomas, is by no means infallible or un- shaken in the lines of reasoning or the deductions which, in its long history, its expounders have pursued and fought for. Catholics have a wide freedom, even after they have accepted the funda- mental philosophy which seems to be required by the Holy Eucharist. But, to a Catholic who enters into the philosophical war of this age, it is a subject of intense interest to perceive how, in the Holy Eucharist, he has firm ground to stand upon, and to consider whether, in the Eucharistic dogma of the Real Presence and of Transub- stantiation, he can find any sort of a lever to move the dead weight of sceptical speculation from which the most brilliant mental work of the age is so plainly suffering. There is another direction in which the Holy Eucharist is of greater importance to Catholics at this moment than ever it has been in other times and that is in the spiritual life and growth of the PREFACE xi soul. This spiritual life, as we know, depends upon a supernatural indwelling of Christ in the soul and on His supernatural stirrings and quickenings. Although this "life of grace," as it is properly called, is of grace, and not of nature, still it has always been recognised that for the higher work of grace Almighty God generally chooses a nature that is more refined, more conscious, more spiritual in its own elements.

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