Preview: Another Newman Easter Season Sermon, "The Eucharistic Presence"

On Monday, April 29, the penultimate day of the month, we'll continue our Newman Easter Sermon series on the Son Rise Morning Show with "The Eucharistic Presence" sermon 11 in volume 6 of the Parochial and Plain Sermons ("This is the Bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die." John 6:50.) 

So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern on Monday, April 29. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later (and sometimes the show does repeat these segments later in the week during the first national hour).

Saint John Henry Newman, then an Anglican minister, preached this sermon on May 13, 1838, according to the chronology "given at the end of Longmans' Sermons on Subjects of the Day (pp. 411-424)". It is definitely an Anglican sermon as Newman is careful to distinguish between the Eucharistic doctrines of the Church of England and what he calls "one very large portion of Christendom" (the Catholic Church)--but more about that later!

In this Season of Easter, when those who entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, receiving the Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion) and Second Graders have received their First Holy Communion, this seems an appropriate Newman Sermon to consider, even though he did not believe at that time what those new Catholics and Second Graders do about Holy Communion.

He begins with calling the Lenten and Easter Seasons the "Sacramental Season" and particularly the season in which Anglicans receive Holy Communion, according to the rites of the Book of Common Prayer:

THE quarter of the year from Ash-Wednesday to Trinity Sunday may fittingly be called the Sacramental Season, as the Season preceding it is the Season of grace; and as we are specially called in the Christmas Season to sincerity of purpose, so now we are called to faith. God does good to those who are good and true of heart; and He reveals His mysteries to the believing. The earnest heart is the good ground in which faith takes root, and the truths of the Gospel are like the dew, the sunshine, and the soft rain, which make that heavenly seed to grow.

And in this sermon Newman does refer to Holy Communion as an Anglican sacrament:

The text speaks of the greatest and highest of all the Sacramental mysteries, which faith has been vouchsafed, that of Holy Communion. Christ, who died and rose again for us, is in it spiritually present, in the fulness of His death and of His resurrection. We call His presence in this Holy Sacrament a {137} spiritual presence, not as if "spiritual" were but a name or mode of speech, and He were really absent, but by way of expressing that He who is present there can neither be seen nor heard; that He cannot be approached or ascertained by any of the senses; that He is not present in place, that He is not present carnally, though He is really present. And how this is, of course is a mystery. All that we know or need know is that He is given to us, and that in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

Just a little background, via this article from Adoremus by Father Michael Ewe Lang:

The early Tractarians (the members of the Oxford Movement were known for the publication of their Tracts for the Times) advocated a full application of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, especially the daily services of Matins and Evensong, which had fallen out of use, and a more frequent celebration of Communion. . . . On June 30, 1834, Newman began with the daily service of Matins in St. Mary the Virgin, and from 1836 he ensured that Evensong was celebrated every day in his newly built church in Littlemore. After some consideration, Newman instituted an early Sunday morning Communion service in the University church at Easter 1837.[4]

Newman was careful to follow the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer to the letter, since any alteration of the established customs would have added fuel to the controversy about the Oxford Movement, which was seen as “Romanizing.” . . .

Also, please note that according to the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer, those who wished to receive Holy Communion at the Sunday service notified the Curate of the parish in advance so that there was time to determine if there was any reason the communicant should NOT present herself to receive the Sacrament to avoid "grave and immediate scandal"!

After his introduction of the text for his sermon, Newman addresses how the Gospel of St. John, in chapter 6 and elsewhere, supplements the narratives of the Lord's Supper and other Sacraments in the Synoptic Gospels with a doctrinal explanation:

Now, with reference to the text and the chapter from which it is taken, I begin by observing, what at first sight one would think no one could doubt, that this chapter of St. John does treat of the Lord's Supper, and is, in fact, a comment upon the account of it, given by the other three Evangelists. We know it is St. John's way to supply what his brethren omit, and that especially in matters of doctrine; and in like manner to omit what they record. Hence, while all three give an account of the institution of Holy Communion at the last Supper, St. John omits it; and, because they omit to enlarge upon the great gift contained in it, he enters upon it. . . .

So in what we now usually call "the Bread of Life discourse", Newman tells his listeners/readers that

The bearing, then, of our Lord's sacred words would seem to be as follows, if one may venture to investigate it. At Capernaum, in the chapter now before us, He solemnly declares to His Apostles that none shall live for ever, but such as eat and drink His flesh and blood; and then afterwards. just before He was crucified, as related in the other three Gospels, He points out to them the way in which this mystery of grace was to be fulfilled in them. He assigns the consecrated Bread as that Body of which He had spoken, and the consecrated Wine as His Blood; and in partaking of the Bread and the Cup, they were partakers of His Body and Blood. . . .

When, then, Christ used the words of the text and of {140} other parts of the chapter containing it, He was describing prospectively that gift, which, in due season, the consecrated bread and wine were to convey to His Church for ever. Speaking with reference to what was to be, He says, "I am that Bread of Life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the Bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this Bread he shall live for ever: and the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

And then Newman goes on to explicate the connections among the Manna of the Holy Testament, the miracle of loaves and fishes Jesus had just performed before the crowds followed Him to get more, the meaning of the words in the Discourse, the Institution of the Eucharist, and even the words and rubrics of the Anglican Prayer of Consecration. 

His effort throughout is to demonstrate that Jesus was not speaking figuratively or metaphorically about His Body and His Blood in chapter six of the Gospel of John but that the Institution of the Holy Eucharist the night before He died described in the Synoptic Gospels was the fulfillment of that earlier message: He gave the Church the means of consecrating and receiving His Body and His Blood.

There's just too much detail for us to consider in the time we have at the end of the hour to review it all! You may certainly read it all here.

Of course, Newman's conclusion is important, since it prescribes the congregation's response to these mysteries. Note especially the connection Newman makes between the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Sacrament of Holy Communion:

Such reflections as the foregoing lead us to this conclusion,—to understand that it is our duty to make much of Christ's miracles of love; and instead of denying or feeling cold towards them, to desire to possess our hearts with them. . . . Let us feel interest and awful expectation at the news of them; let us put ourselves in the way of them; let us wait upon God day by day for the treasures of grace, which are hid in Christ, which are great beyond words or thought.

Above all, let us pray Him to draw us to Him, and to give us faith. When we feel that His mysteries are too severe for us, and occasion us to doubt, let us earnestly wait on Him for the gift of humility and love. Those who love and who are humble will apprehend them;—carnal minds do not seek them, and proud minds are offended at them;—but while love desires them, humility sustains them. Let us pray Him then to give us such a real and living insight into the blessed doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God, of His birth of a Virgin, His atoning death, and resurrection, that we may desire that the Holy Communion may be the effectual type of that gracious Economy. No one realizes the Mystery of the Incarnation but must feel disposed towards that of Holy Communion. Let us pray Him to give us an earnest longing after Him—a thirst for His presence—an anxiety to find Him—a joy on hearing that He is to be found, even now, under the veil of sensible things,—and a good hope that we shall find Him there. Blessed indeed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed. They have their reward in believing; they enjoy the contemplation of a mysterious blessing, which does not even enter into the thoughts {152} of other men; and while they are more blessed than others, in the gift vouchsafed to them, they have the additional privilege of knowing that they are vouchsafed it.

Now, about his comments in this sermon re: the [Roman] Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation. This is what he says in 1838:

Nothing can show more clearly how high the blessing is, than to observe that the Church's tendency has been, not to detract from its marvellousness, but to increase it. The Church has never thought little of the gift; so far from it, we know that one very large portion of Christendom holds more than we hold. That belief, which goes beyond ours, shows how great the gift is really. I allude to the doctrine of what is called Transubstantiation, which we do not admit; or that the bread and wine cease to be, and that Christ's sacred Body and Blood are directly seen, touched, and handled, under the appearances of Bread and Wine. This our Church considers there is no ground for saying, and our Lord's own words contain marvel enough, even without adding any thing to them by way of explanation. Let us, then, now consider them in themselves, apart from additions which came afterwards.

But if you turn to his Apologia pro Vita Sua from 1864, you'll read in the last chapter, "The Position of my Mind since 1845", Newman writes of the doctrine of Transubstantiation:

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe? Yet Macaulay thought it so difficult to believe, that he had need of a believer in it of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas More, before he could bring himself to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could resist "the overwhelming force of the argument against it." "Sir Thomas More," he says, "is one of the choice specimens of wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that test, will stand any test." But for myself, I cannot indeed prove it, I cannot tell how it is; but I say, "Why should it not be? What's to hinder it? 

He compares faithful acceptance of the doctrine of Transubstantiation to faithful acceptance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, One God in Three Persons:

 And, in like manner, of that majestic Article of the Anglican as well as of the Catholic Creed,—the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. What do I know of the Essence of the Divine Being? I know that my abstract idea of three is simply incompatible with my idea of one; but when I come to the question of concrete fact, I have no means of proving that there is not a sense in which one and three can equally be predicated of the Incommunicable God.

Please note that the date at the bottom of this chapter is on the Feast of Corpus Christi, May 26, 1864.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Source (Public Domain): 16th-century painting of the Lord's/Last Supper by Juan de Juanes

Image Source (Public Domain): The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (Raphael 1509–1510) depicts theologians debating Transubstantiation, including four Doctors of the Church, with Pope Gregory I and Jerome seated to the left of the altar and Augustine and Ambrose to the right, Pope Julius II, Pope Sixtus IV, Savonarola and Dante Alighieri.