I favor combining the reflections of John Chrysostom, St. Augustine and, soon to be Blessed, Archbishop Fulton Sheen. At Eucharist, we experience a moment in eternity: Christ's sacrifice, once and for all, is made present.
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Absolutely.
In reflecting on the Cana miracle, Chrysostom and Augustine note that in eternity the water is wine as all moments, past and future, in eternity are present. Sheen reflects on how in the natural order, the hierarchy of living things transforms the lower into higher forms in order that the lower might share life more abundantly. In the Eucharist, the bread and wine that the living Christ consumed, and in consuming transformed them into Himself, is made present to us as His body, blood, soul and divinity for us to consume that we might have life everlasting.
John Chrysostom (Homily 22 on John's Gospel) says,"But now to show that it is He who transmutes water in the vine plants, and who converts the rain by its passage through the root into wine, He effected that in a moment at the wedding which in the plant is long in doing."
In De Trinitate, Augustine says that miracles are the acceleration of events that occur in nature over time. Significantly, he begins his explanation by saying that God draws the rainwater through the roots to the branches of the vine and makes wine. Christ's changing of the water into wine at Cana is the same process done with "unusual speed" (De Trin. III, 5).
And Fulton J. Sheen, (Life of Christ) reflects on the Last Supper:
Everything in nature has to have communion in order to live; and through it what is lower is transformed into what is higher: chemical into plants, plants into animals, animals into man. And man? Should he not be elevated through communion with Him Who “came down” from heaven to make man a partaker of the Divine nature? …
When Our Lord, after He changed the bread and wine to His Body and Blood, told His Apostles to eat and drink, He was doing for the soul of man what food and drink do for the body. Unless the plants sacrifice themselves to being plucked up from the roots, they cannot nourish or commune with man. The sacrifice of what is lowest must precede communion with what is higher. First His death was mystically represented; then communion followed. The lower is transformed into the higher; chemicals into plants; plants into animals; chemicals, plants, and animals into man; and man into Christ by communion. Animals have life more abundantly than plants; man has life more abundantly than animals. He said that He came to give a life beyond the human. As the oxygen could not live the more abundant life of the plant, unless the plant came down to it, so neither could man share Divine Life unless Our Lord came down to give it.
Indeed. Actually I feel like the words of St. John Chrysostom on the Eucharist, as expressed in the Sanctus, Institution Narrative, and Epiklesis of the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy he adopted for use in Constantinople from the older Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles, which was the ancient liturgy of the city of Antioch, is the simplest and concurrently a most pure possible expression of the correct doctrine:
It is meet and right to hymn thee, to bless thee, to praise thee, to give thanks unto thee, and to worship thee in every place of thy dominion: for thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever existing and eternally the same, thou and thine Only-begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit. Thou it was who didst bring us from non-existence into being, and when we had fallen away didst raise us up again, and didst not cease to do all things until thou hadst brought us back to heaven, and hadst endowed us with thy kingdom which is to come. For all these things we give thanks unto thee, and to thine Only-begotten Son, and thy Holy Spirit; for all things of which we know, and of which we know not, and for all the benefits bestowed upon us, both manifest and unseen. And we give thanks unto thee also for this ministry which thou dost vouchsafe to receive at our hands, even though there stand beside thee thousands of Archangels and ten thousands of Angels, the Cherubim and the Seraphim, six-winged, many eyed, soaring aloft, Singing the Triumphal Hymn, shouting, proclaiming, and saying: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of thy glory; Hosanna in the highest: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
The celebrant prays:
O Master who lovest mankind, cry aloud and say: Holy art thou and all-holy, thou and thine Only-begotten Son, and thy Holy Spirit: holy art thou and all-holy, and magnificent is thy glory: Who hast so loved thy world as to give thine Only-begotten Son, that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; Who when he had come and had fulfilled all the dispensation for us, in the night in which he was betrayed,-- or rather, gave himself up for the life of the world,--took bread in his holy and pure and blameless hands; and when he had given thanks and blessed it, and hallowed it and broken it, he gave it to his holy Disciples and Apostles, saying:
Take, eat: this is my Body which is broken for you, for the remission of sins.
Likewise, after supper, he took the cup, saying:
Drink ye all of this: this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for any, for the remission of sins.
Having in remembrance, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious Coming:
Thine own of thine own we offer unto thee, on behalf of all, and for all!
There are many other ancient liturgies including the Roman Canon which is the basis for the Eucharist in the Western Church which also express this doctrine succinctly, indeed, all of those of the four ancient churches that have come down to us express it, but I feel the most beautiful and concise expression is in the Divine Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, with its extremely clear epiclesis, which makes it clear that through the action of the Holy Spirit, who was sent by Christ to be our paraklete, Christ in turn becomes present for us in the Eucharist, and we become present for Him.
I also greatly admire Archbishop Fulton Sheen as one of the three greatest televangelists, along with Rev. Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral, with whom he made a joint presentation at least once (and the Crystal Cathedral is now Christ Cathedral, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, due to unfortunate problems with that ministry after the retirement and repose of Schuller), and Dr. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Of these three, I think Archbishop Sheen probably had the best grasp on dogmatic theology, as the concern of Schuller was primarily evangelism, and of Dr. Kennedy, on moral theology and the preservation of traditional values concerning family life, and so forth.
