The presence of Jesus Christ in the world is at the heart of our Christian and Catholic faith. That presence, taking on the earthly flesh and blood reality of humanity, began at the Annunciation. At that moment, Mary conversed with the Archangel Gabriel and gave her consent and her whole will to God and His plan that she should become the mother of our savior and redeemer.

 

Given the reality that continues throughout human history, the newly-conceived child is already a human life. And so, in the womb of Mary, the human person of Jesus Christ had entered the world. That presence of the Son of God, fully divine and fully human, was born, lived and taught the world. That human reality in His body suffered, died, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

 

But the plan of God was such that He wanted to be present and close to the whole human race that He came to save in a way that was not exclusive. It was a great privilege that the apostles and the early Church had known Jesus who walked and spoke and laughed among us. But God did not wish then to leave it to those of all the succeeding generations to know Christ only by memory and by the records, precious as they are, of those who lived with Jesus.

 

The sacred events at the core of human salvation — that is the Paschal Mystery of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper linked to Christ’s passion, death and resurrection — are meant for the faithful of all time. Jesus’s words “This is my body” and “This is my blood” echo throughout human history and into eternity. In His body and blood, that is, His true and living presence in a sacramental form, Jesus continues to live among us. 

 

Because the Eucharist makes present to us today, sacramentally but truly, the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood on the cross, that sacrifice is also present to us in the Mass as it was to those who stood on Calvary on Good Friday.

 

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus showed His disciples His body, glorified but real, in appearing to them following His resurrection. The Eucharist makes present to us that fullness of the Lord’s glorified body as well. All of these elements form a consistent and united whole in the Church’s faith. 

 

There is yet another element of Christ’s presence in the world related to the Eucharist. That is the priest who offers the Mass among and for the faithful and the whole Church. The Second Vatican Council taught that, the priest, “… acting in the person of Christ, … makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people.” (Lumen Gentium 10).

 

Pope St. John Paul II, writing about the phrase “in the person of Christ” stated the priest is not simply offering Mass in the name of or in place of Jesus. Rather, that term means the priest has a “specific sacramental identification with the eternal High Priest who is the author and principal subject of this sacrifice of his, a sacrifice in which, in truth nobody can take his place.”

 

In short, Christ is united to and present in the priest as he offers the Eucharist. Our Eucharistic faith, then, must also recognize and believe in the presence of Jesus in the priest and in the sacred priesthood that He established.

 

In so many ways, each flowing from and reinforcing the reality of the others, the presence of Jesus is in the Eucharist. This is the great gift that is the source and summit of our faith. It flows from God’s will to be close and present to us in every generation, not simply 2,000 years ago.