(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Church teaches us
that the Eucharist is the source
and summit of the Christian life.
Christ in the Eucharist is the source
of true charity, of true unity.
In the body, blood, soul and divinity
of our Lord, we find our strength.
We know what and who the Eucharist is,
but many of our fellow Catholics do not.
Restoring belief in the Eucharist is essential.
The future of our Church depends on it.
(dramatic music)
- Many people ask, what is the Eucharist?
But I think a better question is maybe,
"Who is the Eucharist?" because the Eucharist is
Jesus, his very real presence
underneath the appearance of bread and wine.
We believe that when the priest says
those words of consecration at every Mass,
the bread and wine are actually changed
into the very body, blood, soul,
and divinity of Jesus.
- When we talk about the real presence of Jesus,
we use this big word, transubstantiation.
It means that the substance or the essence
is transformed or changed, that when the priest
says, "This is my body, this is my blood,"
over the bread and the wine, what was
ordinary bread and wine now are transformed
in their inner nature.
And in fact, there's no more bread there.
What's there is Jesus.
- One of the best places to start if you're
wanting to look into the real presence of Jesus
in the Eucharist is in the Bible, John, Chapter Six.
He starts talking about how He's the Bread of Life.
And people were like, what are you talking about?
You can't be the Bread of Life.
And instead of trying to back up
and just say, "Oh no, you misunderstood,
I'm just speaking figuratively here,"
his language gets really intense.
And he says, no, really, unless you
eat my flesh and drink my blood,
you have no life in you.
Because the gift of Eucharist is so important,
so essential to our Christian faith.
- If the Catholic teaching about the Eucharist is true,
it is simply the most important thing in life.
It deserves to be adored and worshiped like nothing else.
Nothing can compete with it.
(dramatic music)
- Francis Xavier Nguyen van Thuan is my eldest brother.
In 1967, he was ordained the first Vietnamese Bishop
of the Diocese of Nha Trang, and in April 1975,
when the Communist Party took over South Vietnam,
he was arrested and started 30 years of prison,
nine of which were in isolation.
The conditions were not only mental
but also physical torture.
The burning question for him was,
how am I going to be united with Christ
through the Eucharist?
And that motivated him to write a letter
to family and friends asking for medicine
for his stomach ailment.
And when we received that letter, we immediately
understood, and therefore, we sent in a bottle,
saying, stomach ache ailment medicine,
but it was altar wine, and for the host,
it was wrapped in aluminum foil
and put inside a flashlight.
And Francis were able to receive that
and he celebrated mass with the wine
and the water in the palm of his hand.
And for him, he always said the Eucharist
represent the presence of God,
which is the healing force of humanity.
(speaking in foreign language)
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- It was 2000 years ago that Jesus made
that ultimate sacrifice on Calvary.
The sacrifice was universal.
It was for the sins of the world.
So the question is, how is the whole world
going to know that and experience
what those people experienced that day?
And the answer is: sacramentally.
God came up with a way where I can be present
with him at Calvary and experience
that death, that burial, that resurrection.
- The one true sacrifice that Jesus
offered on the cross is made present to us
mystically, spiritually, in every liturgy.
So every Mass makes present
the one true sacrifice of Christ
so we can enter into it and allow
Christ's sacrifice to change our hearts.
- The Old Testament, covenants were made through sacrifice.
But then covenants were sealed
through a meal that followed the sacrifice.
You'd offer up a... sacrifice a lamb.
Then you would eat the lamb.
Jesus, when He takes the bread
and He takes the cup, instituting the new covenant,
He has the meal and then the sacrifice.
But you have both components,
and that's what's crucial.
- Just as He shared the Eucharist
before He carried his cross to Calvary,
He gives to us His own resurrected body,
the same body that was crucified,
but it is now raised in order to raise us up.
The Eucharist is the source of our life.
- Why does the Church evangelize?
Well, we want people to come to the Eucharist
and to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
Why does the Church stand up for the unborn?
Why does the Church serve the poor?
All these things flow from the Eucharist
and ultimately, we hope, will draw
the world back to the Eucharist.
(dramatic music)
- For Mother Teresa, the Eucharist was central.
She was passionately in love with Jesus.
People would ask her, well, how can you do
all the things you do?
And then she would say, well, I could not live
without the Eucharist.
It was very impressive to see Mother during the Mass.
Once she received Communion, she would go back,
and she would be really absorbed in prayer.
Then she would say, well, the same Jesus
you received in the morning, now you go
find him in the poor.
So the different places that they would have,
the home for the dying or the children
living the street or shelter,
whatever, it was the same Jesus. You touch
Jesus in the Eucharist, and you touch Jesus in the poor.
The conviction of Jesus in the blessed sacrament,
in the Eucharist, receiving Him in Holy Communion,
it's not just Mother.
It's all the sisters, all the MCs, the MC family,
the co-workers, the lay people, all the apostolate,
all the charity work, all the service to the poorest
of the poor to really be
charity and love comes from the Eucharist.
- Every person is Christ for me, and that's why,
since there is only one Jesus,
then that person is only one person
for me at that moment.
It is that continual contact
with Christ that we have during Mass
and in the blessed sacrament.
- The Eucharist is the sacrament for sinners.
We're all sinners in need of God's mercy.
The key is not just going to Mass
and showing up, receiving Communion.
It's cooperating with the grace of the sacrament.
- When we come back from receiving Communion,
this is a time to really pour your heart out to God,
to thank Him, to tell Him you love Him,
to pour out your needs to Him.
Let's be present to Him and take that time
for thanksgiving and praise and adoration.
- St. John Chrysostom once said, when you
turn around coming back from the altar
with Communion inside of you,
the demons look at you and they tremble,
because you look to them like a lion
who's breathing fire.
What a wonderful image.
They're scared of you.
So Communion is a way to strengthen
our spiritual lives, making us more like Christ.
- It's the ultimate weapon.
Our life here is spiritual warfare.
We cannot live without the Eucharist.
- In the Eucharist, what happens is
we come forward and receive the very blood of Christ.
What else would we become except
for literally blood brothers
united as one. Prepared for what?
Prepared to live as Christ
with His blood united with each other as brothers.
Prepared to do what?
Well, to live as Christ, our brother, had lived,
to die as Christ, our brother, had died
and to rise with Him as Christ, our brother, has risen.
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- The Mexican martyrs, they were killed
during the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico.
St. Pedro de Jesus Maldonado Lucero
was born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1892.
He joined the seminary when he was 14.
After he was ordained a priest, he was known
in his diocese and in the country
for being a very devout person of the Eucharist.
When the Mexican Revolution ended Plutarco
Elias Calles takes the presidency
and he decides that he needs to exterminate
the Catholic Church.
St. Pedro de Jesus Maldonado,
all his biographers mention that he knew
that one day he will be killed, and he was
prepared to share in the cross of our Lord.
Somebody gave word that he was celebrating Mass,
and the local police went to apprehend him.
As he's being beaten, the host fall down on the floor.
One of his killers pick it up and stuff
it in his mouth and said, "Eat it, and let's see
if He can save you now."
This man in love with the Eucharist
gets this final moment the gift of receiving
again the Eucharist and be united with His Lord.
(dramatic music)
- Christ is waiting for us in the blessed sacrament.
We just have to make time to say yes
and come before Him so He can really begin
to make a huge impact in our lives.
- In the Gospels, Jesus is present
in one place at one time, and through the Eucharist,
He has made himself present everywhere
throughout all time.
Only God could come up with something
so beautiful, so powerful.
- The sacrament was given us so He could
remain with us.
He said I want to be with you at all times.
- Eucharistic adoration is basically
being in the presence of Jesus,
being in the presence of the One that we love.
Here's the way I like to think about it.
I travel quite extensively,
and so, I'm away from my wife fairly often.
And so, I wanna connect with her.
What do I do?
I pick up the phone and that's wonderful.
But I'd rather be with her.
Isn't it better to be in the presence
of the person that you love when you're talking to them?
Sure, you can pray in your house.
You can pray in your car.
You can pray anywhere.
But it's always better to be
in the presence of the One that you love
when you're talking to Him.
That, in its essence and core, is
what Eucharistic adoration is.
- I remember before I entered the convent,
I wandered into a Eucharistic Adoration Chapel,
and I knelt down before the blessed sacrament
in the monstrance, and I was pierced
with the stunning reality and I knew,
I absolutely knew, that the God
who created the universe and the God
who created me was before me.
This was absolutely transforming.
I just saw how that our God, who's so powerful,
so mighty, also becomes so humble
and makes himself so available.
- Ultimately I think we learn through the Eucharist
that we are creatures and that the Lord
is in charge.
I frequently spend time before the Lord
in Eucharistic adoration, and I find
that that time is never wasted.
I bring issues before the Lord
and even my hopes and desires for the future.
I bring that all before the Lord
and I put it before Him.
The Eucharist is the center of our lives as Catholics.
Everything flows from it and everything we do
returns to the Eucharist.
(gentle music)
- J.R.R. Tolkien is the author of the greatest book
of the 20th century.
I first read the Lord of the Rings
in the early '60s.
It was not just reading a book.
It was living in a world, and the world
was the real world.
When I closed the Lord of the Rings,
I didn't get the impression that I was
moving from a less real world into a more real world,
just the opposite.
I knew in my bones that this was a Catholic story.
It has a Catholic sensibility.
There's definitely a Eucharistic pervasive symbolism.
Tolkien was Catholic from, he says,
the age eight up.
It informed his whole youth, his whole life,
his whole writings.
He says, the Lord of the Rings is, of course,
a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,
unconsciously so at first.
So it's very deeply religious
and very deeply Catholic,
so deeply so that it doesn't have
to be so on the surface.
Tolkien's Catholicism was very Eucharistic.
All of his life, he says in one of his letters,
the only cure for sagging
or fainting faith is Communion.
He was Eucharistic to the core.
And he writes in a letter to his son,
a remarkable thing:
"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated,
"I put before you the one great thing
"to love on earth, the blessed sacrament.
"There you will find romance, glory, honor,
"fidelity, the true way of all your loves upon earth."
In other words, the Eucharist is the meaning of life.
Nothing less.
(dramatic music)
- There is a crisis of Eucharistic belief
today in our Church.
If you look at the statistics,
somewhere around 69% of Catholics
do not believe that Jesus Christ
is present body, blood, soul, divinity in the Eucharist.
- There's no doubt right now, you look at society
and you look at the entirety of the West,
there's a crisis of faith.
A lot of people start to doubt,
is there really a God?
Even easier, it's the doubt, well, if there is a God,
does he care about the world
and is He present to it?
And so the Eucharist is right
at the cusp of the challenge of faith.
- We're tempted to ask the question,
what do we do about it?
What's the method of getting people back
to full Eucharistic devotion?
And I don't think there is any.
I think the Holy Spirit is the master of method, not us.
We're just His servants.
One of my favorite statements of any
of the saints is Mother Teresa's,
"God did not put us in this world to be successful.
"He put us here to be faithful."
Teach the whole truth.
Speak truth to power and God will produce results.
- Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.
We live in a time when people are clearly searching
for a way and for truth and for life.
In the Eucharist, we are invited to encounter Him,
to receive Him, and we are united with Him.
No matter the problems we face,
Jesus Christ is the answer.
The more we can understand and live that reality,
the more we can invite others to know
and to live it, the better our whole world will be.
The starting point is that which Jesus left us:
My flesh for the life of the world.
(dramatic music)