My wife once heard some excellent advice: look for men who want to be husbands, not for men who just want wives.

Having a wife is tremendous. She provides encouragement and emotional support. She turns a house into a home. She is a companion to share your interests and struggles with, and she’s a key part to starting your own family. It’s no surprise then that the great majority of single men hope to get married. This is especially true now given the increased reporting of loneliness and social isolation among men.

But a man who desires to be married shouldn’t “just” want a wife. He must want to be a husband as well.

The key word there is “want.” It is not enough for a man to realize that it is just for him to be a husband in order to obtain a wife. He must want to be a husband. He must look at the Cross, see how Our Lord gave Himself for His bride the Church, and think “I want to imitate Him.” Meanwhile, the man who wants a wife has his attention focused entirely on the benefits that a wife will provide him, instead of what he wants to give to her.

When looking at what the Church says on marriage, there is a repeated emphasis on the Cross. St. Pope John Paul II wrote that “marriage sets the couple on a path where they will encounter the cross.” Pope Leo XIII specifies that a husband and wife must “give one another an unfailing and unselfish help.”

This sacrifice isn’t to be limited. When looking to the Cross, we don’t see a partial or limited sacrifice, we see an overwhelming and unlimited one. We also see a sacrifice that was full of love to a bride that is sometimes less than stellar in return. St. John Chrysostom points this out in his writings on marriage, teaching that a husband should continue to devote himself to his wife even if she doesn’t do the same. He reminds us that Christ’s bride has not earned the love He offers, and yet He gives it anyway, always ready to forgive, always providing, always devoted. A husband ought to do the same, because he truly loves his wife.

This talk of sacrifice must also be grounded in the reality that people are unique. If a man feels called to marriage, it’s still not enough to want to be a husband, he must want to be a husband to his wife in particular. Contrary to what a lot of dating culture (especially some dating apps) might imply, he shouldn’t be on the lookout for a woman who checks off all the requirements on his list, who’s “good enough” to marry. He needs to look for the woman he loves so intensely that he will happily sacrifice for her.

When a man becomes a husband, he becomes someone’s husband. He’s not a husband in general, but solely and completely to his wife. His life is committed to her, and she becomes irreplaceable to him.

This is an important point that both people need to consider when discerning marriage. Men, is this the woman you would gladly sacrifice your remaining days for, no matter how demanding that might be? In the event that the circumstances demanded it, would you give up a hobby and free time for her, not just because she needs you to, but because you really want to?

Women, is this man someone who you could see doing that for you? Is he someone who is more than happy to be your husband, no matter the sacrifices that might entail? Is his desire to be a husband focused on you in particular, not just in the abstract? Is he someone who will spend more time working if the family needs it, or less time working (and more time with family) if it’s for the good of the family?

Of course this discernment should be flipped the other way around as well, and both should additionally consider if this is someone who should be the parent of their own children.

Women seeking marriage must be sure to look for a man who really wants to be a husband. There has never been a shortage of horror stories of abusive, infantile, or just extremely lazy men who married primarily out of loneliness, convenience, or lust. In the encyclical Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI emphasized the importance of choosing a partner in marriage, for it “depends a great deal whether the forthcoming marriage will be happy or not, since one may be to the other either a great help in leading a Christian life, or, a great danger and hindrance.” He adds that their discernment must be based in “a true and noble love and by a sincere affection for the future partner.”

Earlier in the same encyclical, he also emphasizes preparation, since “the basis of a happy wedlock, and the ruin of an unhappy one, is prepared and set in the souls of boys and girls during the period of childhood and adolescence.” He says those who indulge in impure desires before marriage without working to overcome them “will find themselves left alone with their own unconquered passions.”

This means that men who want to be husbands will be pursuing improvement and attempting to root out their ties to sin (especially lust!). They will be, to the extent that they are able, working on developing skills so that they can provide, caring for their own health, devoting time to prayer, and setting aside appropriate time for hobbies. They may not have mastered all of these, or even one of these, but they will be struggling towards holiness as best they can.

Women, do not merely look for a man who wants a wife. Look for a man who wants to be your husband.

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The Calgary Herald created a stir some time ago when it printed a cartoon characterization of Bishop Henry. It was the newspaper’s response to the bishop’s condemnation of abortion. I found myself in the center of the storm facing a team of the newspaper’s writers and editors. I set them back a little when I mentioned that their ill-advised treatment of the good bishop had become an international embarrassment.

It was an interesting and memorable confrontation. Bishop Henry was simply doing what he was supposed to be doing, defending all human life, including the unborn as well as those who were born. The Herald was doing what it was not supposed to be doing, unjustly lampooning an innocent man. The irony was that the unauthorized was castigating the authorized. There was tension in the air, but our meeting ended on a cordial note. The team, at least most of them, had recognized that some of my comments had merit. The newspaper’s action in vilifying Bishop Henry, nonetheless, struck me as a case in which the outlaw tells the sheriff what he should do.

I made my transition from the Press to the Chancery where I offered Bishop Henry my sympathies. He responded with thanks, but told me that he has “thick skin” and the ruckus did not get to him. There was a silver lining, however, to the abuse that was heaped upon him. It led to his acceptance of many speaking engagements he would not have received otherwise. I offered him, as a consolation and a gesture of friendship, a book of poetry I penned entitled, Patches of God-light. It is a collection of poems about sharing the light and the many ways in which we can enlighten the lives of others. Bishop Henry’s “sin” was trying to share the light among people who preferred to remain in the dark.

Light exposes the cockroaches in the kitchen. This can prove unsettling. But dousing the light does not remove the pests. Remaining in the dark is not a solution. We should be grateful for the light because it allows us to perceive the situation realistically and move in the direction of a positive resolution. Enlightenment is the first step in cleaning the kitchen.

Plato, in his Dialogue, Gorgias, presents an imaginary, but instructive, example of injustice. He has a cook prosecute a doctor before a jury of children. The cook speaks to the children and accuses the doctor of “giving you the bitterest potions and compels you to hunger and thirst.” He reminds the jury of “the variety of meats and sweets on which I have feasted you.” Naturally, the children will side with the cook. In his defense, the doctor would say, “All these evil things, my boys, I did for your health.” His defense, however, would not release him from his predicament. The jury of children, an image of the unenlightened masses, would laugh and side with the cook.

Bishop Henry is the doctor. The Calgary Herald is the cook. Readers of the newspaper represent the unenlightened children. Injustice reigns when the incidental takes precedence over the essential. In the example Plato offers, taste is given priority over health. To approve abortion, by comparison, is to place convenience over the life of the unborn. When the light leads to ridicule and laughter, injustice reigns.

In 1832, while John Henry Newman was in Sicily, he had fallen victim to a severe fever which lasted for three weeks. Utterly convinced he was going to die, he made final arrangements with his Italian servant. In a memorandum he wrote many years later, Newman recalled the unlikely and unexpected words he kept saying to himself during the time of his critical illness: “I shall not die. I shall not die, for I have not sinned against the light…God has still a work for me to do.” He lived another 58 years doing God’s work by sharing His light. In 2019, was declared a saint.

In John 1:4-9, Jesus proclaims, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John the Evangelist states in 3:19, that “light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” Light, of course, is illuminating. It allows us to see what is, thereby allowing us to participate more fully in the glory of God’s creation. The battle continues to rage, however, between the children of light and the children of darkness.

On September 23, 2022, 20 armed federal agents raided the home of Mark Houck. Houck was arrested in front of his family and interrogated for six hours. What was his crime to precipitate such extraordinary action on the part of these gun-wielding agents? He was a pro-life activist who prayed in front of a Planned Parenthood facility. The incident cried out for justice. Four years later, Mark Houck was acquitted of charges and awarded a $1 million settlement. Justice was slow to arrive, but it did arrive, though it did not compensate for what happened to Houck, his wife, and their children. As a pro-life advocate, Houck and his family were merely trying to share the light with the world.

Justice requires enlightenment. But all too often it reveals something that people do not want to know. When the Culture of Light meets the Culture of Darkness, justice becomes the issue. Those brave hearts who want to share the light must be as courageous as they are generous.

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We have recently celebrated the great solemnity of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is identified as the power source of the Church for all generations. We know this event ripples outward through space and time, impacting each of us who are disciples of Jesus, and the world through us. It is appropriate and necessary, then, to consider the full implication of this gift, pondering the ways our lives are impacted and transformed many centuries later.

As we make this consideration, we begin by recognizing that the Gift of the Holy Spirit is preceded by the ministry and work of Jesus Christ. One of Jesus’ most perplexing teachings helps us understand the effect of the Holy Spirit most fully. While He was being questioned by scribes and Pharisees about the application of the old law, Our Lord remarked:

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, “The old is good.” (Lk. 5:37-39)

The basic spiritual truth at play is quite easy to discern in Jesus’ words. One biblical scholar states it succinctly as he concludes his commentary on this passage. The point of Jesus’ words, he writes, “is that people, such as the Pharisees, who are satisfied with the good things of the old, such as the law, are not very willing to accept the fulfillment of those things in the New Covenant that Jesus establishes” (Gadenz, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: The Gospel of Luke, 121). The explanation he provides is satisfying in regards to the old and new covenants. But what about the connection to the Holy Spirit and Pentecost?

That connection is found in the homilies and commentaries of the Church Fathers, the great Christian teachers of antiquity. Among these ancient teachers was St. Cyril of Alexandria, who made the connection as he preached a homily on this portion of St. Luke’s Gospel. He taught:

Those who live according to the law cannot receive the institutions of Christ. These institutions cannot be admitted into the hearts of such as have not yet received the renewing by the Holy Spirit. …Those, therefore, who adhere to it and keep at heart the antiquated commandment have no share in the new order of things… (from Ancient Christian Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Luke, 97)

This sheds more light on Jesus’ comment about the lack of desire for new wine because of the affinity for the old. What Jesus meant, and what St. Cyril expounded, is that the old law—like old wineskins—has reached its full measure and served its purpose. It still has value, but it cannot serve as the repository for the “new thing” the Heavenly Father is doing through Jesus Christ prophesied by Isaiah. This new reality “springs forth” without being perceived by those who are intently focused on the letter of the law rather than its spirit (Is. 43:18-19).

After St. Cyril, an unidentified preacher in sixth-century Africa made the connection even more specific. His sermon (included in the Office of Readings for Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter, the day immediately before Pentecost) connected the Pentecost event to this Gospel passage.

So when the disciples were heard speaking in all kinds of languages, some people were not far wrong in saying: They have been drinking too much new wine. The truth is that the disciples has now become fresh wineskins renewed and made holy by grace. The new wine of the Holy Spirit filled them, so that their fervor brimmed over and they spoke in manifold tongues.

The connection is now full and solid. The Holy Spirit—the one who descends to guide the Church through history—is the new wine that will make us ready for the new thing Jesus intends to do. And, Jesus’ disciples must become the new wineskins to contain and carry that new wine to the world.

Thus, we are impelled to consider how this biblical, historical reality impacts our lives. That, of course, is by our personal participation in the Pentecost event, the Sacrament of Confirmation. In that sacramental liturgy, a disciple participates, substantially, in the original Pentecost in Jerusalem in A.D. 33. This is the moment each of us is filled with the new wine of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:13; Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 1288).

Following the grace of Pentecost and Confirmation, the question becomes whether or not any of us, individually, will be transformed from old skins to new by this outpouring. There are at least a couple specific ways we can facilitate such transformation. First, it is only possible by remaining rooted in the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Second, coupled with sacraments, we need to pray for this ongoing transformation.

The Prayer to the Holy Spirit (the one all of us seem to know in a different version…) is just one way to pray for such transformation. “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,” just as you filled the hearts of the Apostles on Pentecost, and just as wine is poured into skins. “Lord, send forth your Spirit, and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.” The Holy Spirit comes to bring re-creation and renewal, which all of us need to become fit receptacles of God’s “new thing.” “…and ever rejoice in His consolation.” Consolation is a palpable experience of joy and fulfillment that often carries euphoric feelings akin to imbibing wine in a convivial environment. No wonder the bystanders at Pentecost thought the disciples were tipsy.

Finally, we ought to recognize that the new wine poured into us will transform us over time, in a way similar to wine made from grapes does. Indeed, like great wine, we need that process of development to become really exceptional. As each of us responds to grace and grows over time, we really are able to notice the Gifts of the Holy Spirit working on us. These are the completion and perfection of the virtues that bring us to perfection as disciples. They are the loftiest virtues we exhibit in our daily lives (see CCC 1831). We also notice the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are “first fruits of eternal glory” (CCC 1832). These fruits are the good qualities we pour out into the world, like the qualities of good wine being poured out into a glass. As a wine drinker first notices the “nose” of a particular vintage poured into a glass, so the world notices the fragrance of eternal life already being spread in this life.

All this might bring us to a greater appreciation for good wine. More importantly, it should bring us to a greater appreciation for our own Confirmations; and it should excite us for being transformed into new wineskins that can convey the newness, power, richness, and beauty of the Holy Spirit to a world that may not even realize its need. Just be aware that, along the way, people on the outside may think us a little crazy.

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For some Catholics, carrying the reverence, faith, and grace they feel during Sunday Mass with them into their busy weeks can prove difficult. The peace and beauty of the Mass is a welcome respite from the pace and distortions of life in the modern world. However, a respite is all that it is for many Catholics who lead stressful lives. They cling to that one hour on a Sunday morning as one would to a life raft adrift in a raging sea of noise, distractions, temptations, and darkness. Once Monday rolls around, they tread water the best that they can until the raft drifts back into view the following week. So, the question becomes: what bridges the gap between the lives we live for an hour each Sunday at Mass and the lives we live for the rest of the week?

One of the most powerful tools the Catholic can employ is the regular practice of personal pieties. These devotions can carry the Mass far past Sunday morning and deep into the week. They can be used by the faithful not only to re-center their days on Christ but also to tap into the peace and faith of the Mass. The Catechism clearly encourages the practice of personal piety, provided it is grounded in Church teaching and the Church’s liturgical life (CCC 1674-176).

When used properly, personal pieties are invaluable. These personal devotions should never take the place of regular Mass attendance and the reception of the Sacraments. But they should not be shied away from or discounted for their spiritual efficacy.

Unfortunately, the nature of modern life in the West dictates that our priorities don’t normally focus on our prayer and spiritual wellbeing, and ultimately the final destinations of our souls. This is ironic, as through all of the noise and distractions, the fragility of life is always before us.

Whether it is in our own lives and the people we know or through endless media, our senses are inundated with images and stories dealing with death. We are acutely aware of the fact that tomorrow is never guaranteed, and therefore, we ought to be mindful of the decisions we make today.

Still, some do not explore the world of personal devotion as a means to shore up spiritual health in the same manner as they would when it comes to researching vitamins, motivational podcasts, and gym memberships. While the physical and mental health of individuals is obviously important, if not considered as important, the spirit can be damaged, and the very source of our lives, Christ, becomes a distant, periodic voice rather than a constant conversation partner.

Devotions, according to the Catechism, should “extend the liturgical life…not replace it” (CCC 1675). Personal devotions can help ensure our Mass attendance and reverence in prayer by being those little motivators that point us to the bigger picture. While we cannot simply say a Rosary instead of attending Mass on a Sunday when the weather is particularly adversarial or when we stayed up too late binging a streaming series the night before, we can rely on the Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet, different devotions to saints, prayer routines, etc., to strengthen our resolve to attend Mass regardless of the weather or our lack of sleep.

Personal pieties, practiced with the express intention of bringing us into a deeper relationship with Christ and the Sacramental life of the Church, should always point to the Eucharist and Mass attendance as the ultimate form of devotion.

Imagine a scenario where you are more excited for Sunday morning than you are for Friday night. It may seem impossible, but with firm reliance on the divine and our personal pieties as conduits for grace and strength, it is not only possible but almost guaranteed.

The devotions we choose to take on ought to fit where we are in our lives most practically. For some, it is impossible to take on certain devotions that require time that they simply do not have. For others, physical limitations might be a major concern as to what they can realistically take on. The first step is to examine where we are and, from there, discern a reasonable expectation to place upon ourselves.

Whatever personal pieties we decide to take on, consistency ought to be paramount. For that reason, taking on too much right away may not be the best course of action for some. It is better to adopt devotions that we can express faithfully and practice routinely than it is to attempt more arduous spiritual therapies and programs that come with periodic bursts of zeal and then eventually fade away.

The entire purpose of taking on a personal devotion is to enhance our faith lives and spur us on to spiritual perseverance. Not to frustrate us and lead to possible feelings of shame and guilt if we do not live up to the expectations that we have placed on ourselves.

Along with consistency, we must understand that there will be days that, due to any number of reasons, we may not be able to perform our devotions fully, or in a manner that we have prescribed. Those instances must be met with patience and a resolve to carry on the next day with an even stronger desire to bring glory to God through our actions and prayers.

It can be too easy, at times, to pull away from the devotions and practices we place on ourselves due to a sense of guilt or shame born from the times when we fall short. However, it is in those moments that Christ calls to us in the sweetest, mildest ways. It requires a quiet heart to hear Him and to allow Him to wipe away our false notions of ourselves and replace them with a desire to love Him in a manner that shores up our faith in what we are capable of.

Whatever we decide to take on as personal pieties should be something that we look forward to and enjoy. Anything that we do that enhances our experience of the divine is to be celebrated and cherished.

After practicing our devotions faithfully, we will see the fruits of the Spirit more clearly in our lives. The world becomes quieter. Mass becomes even more precious to us. Christ, His Mother, and His saints get deeply involved in our lives because we have personally opened the door to our hearts and invited them in. We give Him the time He deserves in our lives throughout the course of our weeks, months, and years. We strive to grow closer to Him in our devotions as a means to ensure an eternal life with Him.

The saints didn’t become holy by Sunday Mass alone, but by cultivating a constant relationship with God through daily practices. We need to do the same.

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Modern Christians often feel that the city is almost impossible to evangelize. The city is fast, distracted, anonymous, commercial, restless, and increasingly secular. It does not seem to lend itself naturally to contemplation. It does not seem to leave much room for silence, liturgy, memory, or prayer.

For this reason, many Christian thinkers have looked with sympathy toward the countryside. Christopher Dawson, reflecting on the origins of Christian culture in Europe, often saw rural life as a more natural setting for cultural and spiritual formation. The countryside preserves memory more easily. It follows the rhythm of nature. It allows family, locality, work, and worship to remain visibly connected. Roger Scruton, in a different but related way, also saw in rural life a privileged place for continuity, inherited affection, and resistance to the fragmentation of modernity.

There is much truth in this. In much of medieval Europe, especially in France, Germany, and England, Christian culture was deeply shaped by monastic life outside the great cities. The monastery ordered the land. It sanctified time. It taught work, prayer, discipline, and memory. In many cases, the monastery came before the town; the town grew around the monastery.

But Italy followed a somewhat different path. The Italian city was never merely a necessary evil or a symbol of spiritual decline. From the medieval communes onward, the city became one of the great places where Christian culture took visible form. Universities, guilds, churches, law, commerce, art, and civic life were woven together in the urban fabric. Florence, Milan, Bologna, Siena, Venice, Rome, and countless smaller cities were not simply places of secularization. They were also places where Christian civilization became architecture, painting, music, preaching, law, and public life.

This is the context in which Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster becomes so important. Schuster, Archbishop of Milan from 1929 to 1954, was one of the great episcopal figures of twentieth-century Italy. Yet he was not first formed as a diocesan administrator, public figure, or ecclesiastical politician. He was formed as a Benedictine monk. Before he governed Milan, he had learned the order of the cloister.

This is the key to understanding him. Schuster did not leave the monastery behind when he became archbishop. He carried the monastery into the city. For him, the passage from abbey to episcopal residence was not a rupture but a transposition. What he had learned in monastic life—silence, discipline, liturgy, obedience, order, and the primacy of God—had to become the measure of his pastoral government. Milan, with its industrial force, political tensions, economic power, and modern restlessness, was not the opposite of the monastery. It was the place where the monastic principle had to be expanded.

This gives us a striking image: the city as monastery. Of course, this does not mean that the city literally becomes a cloister. It means that urban life, too, can be ordered toward God. The monastery is not holy because it is isolated. It is holy because its time, space, work, and relationships are centered on divine worship. If that is true, then the city can also be sanctified—not by fleeing its complexity, but by giving it a spiritual center.

For Schuster, that center was the liturgy. The liturgy was not, for him, one pastoral activity among others. It was not decoration, nostalgia, or ceremonial excess. It was the heart of the Church’s life. The Church is built from the altar outward, not from committees, strategies, or activism. When worship is central, time is no longer merely productivity. Space is no longer merely function. Human life is no longer reduced to work, consumption, and distraction.

The liturgy teaches the city how to breathe again. This is why Schuster’s Benedictine soul mattered so much. Like St. Benedict, he understood that Christian life begins with order: order of time, order of worship, order of the soul, order of charity. The modern city is often disordered because it has lost its center. Schuster’s answer was not to imitate the city’s restlessness, but to bring the city back to the altar.

Here the feast of the Epiphany gives us a beautiful key. Among the gifts of the Magi, gold has always been understood as a sign of Christ’s kingship. But gold also has another meaning. Gold does not create light. It receives and reflects it. Its brilliance depends on a source beyond itself.

This is an image of the Church. It is also an image of the Christian city. The Church does not generate her own splendor. She receives the light of Christ and reflects it into the world. She does not invent meaning. She recognizes the glory already present in the Child of Bethlehem and offers that glory back in worship. The city, too, becomes Christian not when it boasts of its own power, wealth, or creativity, but when it learns to reflect a light it cannot produce.

This is why Schuster’s liturgical vision was not ritualism. It was realism. Without worship, the city becomes opaque. It closes in on itself. It becomes a place of noise, production, ambition, politics, and exhaustion. But with worship at its center, even a modern metropolis can become like gold placed before the light. It shines not by its own virtue, but by participation.

This is also why Schuster was not detached from history. His liturgical and monastic soul did not make him passive before the tragedies of the twentieth century. On the contrary, it gave him the interior freedom to act with prudence and firmness during war, destruction, and reconstruction. His authority was not ideological. It was spiritual. He knew that public action without interior order becomes frantic. He also knew that holiness is not an escape from responsibility, but its deepest foundation.

This is a lesson the Church urgently needs today. In many cities, Catholics are tempted in two opposite directions. Some want to adapt entirely to urban secular culture, as though the Church must become more restless, more managerial, more fashionable, and more activist in order to survive. Others want simply to retreat, treating the city as spiritually lost.

Schuster offers another way. The task is not to make the Church more worldly in order to fit the city. Nor is it simply to abandon the city. The task is to restore spiritual order within the city. The city must be evangelized not first by programs, but by worship; not first by noise, but by the sacred; not first by strategy, but by the presence of God.

This does not mean that institutions, schools, charities, preaching, and social action are unimportant. Schuster himself was a pastor, not a museum piece. But all these works must flow from the altar. When they do not, they become activism. When they do, they become culture.

Christopher Dawson understood that culture is not created by technique alone. It grows from worship, memory, moral formation, and a shared vision of the sacred. A civilization cannot be carried forward by one brilliant individual alone. Genius itself is the fruit of a particular culture. Great men receive before they create. They are formed by families, schools, liturgies, languages, symbols, and traditions that precede them.

Schuster embodied this truth. He was not a solitary genius inventing a new Christianity for the modern city. He was a son of St. Benedict, of Roman liturgy, of Milanese Catholic life, and of the great tradition of the Church. His greatness lay in receiving that inheritance so deeply that he could transmit it creatively in a new historical moment.

That is what the Church must recover. The modern city will not be saved by becoming louder than the world. It will not be renewed by pastoral restlessness or cultural imitation. It will be renewed when Christians remember that the city, too, can become a place of sanctification. Its streets, churches, schools, homes, hospitals, offices, and public spaces can be reordered when they are placed again under the light of Christ.

Like the gold of the Magi, the Church is called to reflect a light she has received. She does not need to invent her own brilliance. She needs to stand before Christ and shine with His. Cardinal Schuster reminds us that even the metropolis can become monastic—not by ceasing to be a city, but by rediscovering its center, and that center is the altar.

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Jesus was and is a healer. He healed when He walked among us and has continued to do so for two thousand years. He heals through love and empathy. The accounts of Jesus’ healing in the Gospels describe agape, or “descending love” according to Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est. (The opposite being eros, or “ascending love,” the word used in most non-Christian ancient literature.) And as the Apostle John declared in his first letter, Ο Θεός είναι αγάπη: “God is love.”

The Greek and Roman Art of Healing

By the first century, Greek and Roman physicians had been practicing the art of healing for hundreds of years. The philosopher Plutarch argued that Homer was something of a physician and that the Iliad and Odyssey showcase an understanding of the physician’s art.

The greatest ancient physician was the fifth century B.C. Greek Hippocrates, whose legacy lasted for over two thousand years. Hippocrates was an asclepiad on the Aegean island of Cos; the asclepiads were self-described descendants and disciples of the first healer, Asclepios, who was subsequently deified according to Greek mythology.

Hippocrates was an empirical observer of disease more than a healer, but he inspired a variety of healers that included Erasistratus, the third century physician who studied not only physical causes of disease but nervous and emotional causes as well. The Platonic vision of the combination of the body and soul, inspired in part by divine love, Eros, resulted in a commensurate approach to medicine. In perusing the Hippocratic Corpus and other ancient sources, however, the reader does not encounter the kind of empathetic healing of Jesus.

The Transformational Power of Jesus’ Healing

The synoptic gospels provide several examples of Jesus’ healing in quick succession. In the Gospel of Matthew chapter eight, for example, Jesus healed by touching. A leper approached Him asking for healing, to which Jesus replied by touching the leper and saying, “Be thou healed,” and the man’s leprosy vanished. Likewise, when He went to Peter’s house and saw that Peter’s mother suffered from fever, He touched her and the fever left her. That same day the demon-possessed came before Him, and “he expelled the spirits with a word.”

Soon after, Jesus healed a women suffering from incessant bleeding by her merely touching the hem of His garment. The Gospel of Mark explained that Jesus felt power (Greek dynamin) flow from Him, which is how He knew the woman had touched His garment, even though He was in the middle of a crowd. Jesus’ healing, according to the synoptics, involved touch, words, and sensations of a healing power that emanated from Him.

The most astonishing example of Jesus’ healing was when He healed a man possessed by demons who lived on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee, in the Decapolis. In this episode, Jesus arrived in a place where the prohibitions and attitudes of the people were not Jewish, but rather part of the Hellenistic culture of the eastern Mediterranean that developed after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

The people at the time were influenced by the traditional Greco-Roman pantheon of anthropomorphic deities that intermixed with humans who worshipped them by sacrifice in temples. The growth of mystery religions differed from this traditional polytheism by the worship of sometimes single deities, like Isis or Cybele. These worshippers were initiated into mysteries that only the initiates could enjoy. The mystery religions typically promised eternal life.

Jesus was approached by a man who had been influenced by this Hellenistic culture. Interestingly, the man groveled before Him in an act, called proskynesis, typical of religions influenced by Asian culture. Having never seen Jesus, this man nevertheless knew Him to have the spirit of the divine upon Him, and thus cried out, “what have you to do with me, Jesus son of God the most high?”

According to the different accounts in the synoptic gospels, the man was a savage who lived among the tombs of the dead; even chains could not hold his demon-possessed strength. Indeed, when Jesus asked his name the man replied, Legion, evoking both the multitude of demons possessing him and the strength of a Roman military unit.

Jesus allowed the demons to flee from the man into a nearby heard of swine, which stampeded into the lake and drowned. People arrived from one of the ten towns of the Decapolis, and they witnessed that the formerly crazed lunatic was now sitting next to Jesus, rational and calm.

How could such a transformation take place?

Although the Greek word sympatheia is not used, the story nevertheless implies it in Jesus’ approach to healing the man. His healing relied on empathy, the quality by which a person is able to feel what another feels. But even more, Jesus could feel, sense, intuit, know all about this poor, distraught man overwhelmed by his past, and the countless images of trauma and horror that had so disabled his mind.

One’s past experiences can accumulate at times into tumultuous waves and spasms of crippling fear. Christ understood this: “Somehow or other, Jesus took upon himself Legion’s fears, insecurities, memories, past, and sin, and through love and empathy broke the weight of the past to make the present endurable and the future possible” (Lawson, 2019). Jesus was able to transform, metamorphosize, this man, unknown except for his chosen appellation of Legion.

Physical and Spiritual Metamorphosis

Examples of metamorphosis are found often in ancient literature. Ovid’s Metamorphoses contains the stories of the Greek gods interacting with and changing humans. Lucius Apulius’ account of the man transformed into a donkey and saved by the mysteries of Isis was also titled Metamorphosis. Jesus’ healing of Legion was the same, a complete transformation, from sin, doubt, despair, and evil to hope, goodness, and love. This is truly an example of agape, or descending love, transformative love, of so loving another that such love heals, metamorphosizes a person into something completely different.

So complete was the change in the body, mind, and soul of Legion that he became arguably the first Apostle to the Gentiles. He wanted to join Jesus in His ministry, but Jesus commanded him to go among his people of Decapolis telling them of what he had experienced. When Jesus returned to the region later, so many people had heard of his healings that four thousand appeared, hungry for the preaching of the Word.

That other, more famous, apostle to the Gentiles, Paul of Tarsus, experienced a similar metamorphosis in his body and soul on the road to Damascus—this time by the risen Christ. The impact of Christ’s healing on Paul was similar to that of Legion.

Jesus was a physician unlike the many physicians of the ancient world. He was able to heal in a way that Hippocrates and Galen could not, because of His overwhelming empathy and love for the other. He healed body and mind of pain, crippling diseases, hate, despair, and hopelessness, accompanying the many illnesses that overwhelmed the people of the ancient world. Christ especially healed—and conquered—fear, including the greatest fear: death.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the History of Love, pursuing the meaning of love and our understanding of it throughout time.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The Holy Eucharist is a shocking teaching of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the Lord’s teaching on the Eucharist has been shocking from the beginning. Today, followers of Christ still have trouble believing in this unwavering teaching from Jesus and His Church: that He is truly present—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—under the appearances, or accidents, of bread and wine.

In 2020, a Pew Research Center poll revealed that only 31% of U.S. Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The remaining 69% of U.S. Catholics believed the Eucharist to be merely symbolic. These findings are both heartbreaking and shocking. However, I would propose that these proportions of believers have been constant since Jesus first preached about the subject.

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, Jesus preaches about the Eucharist to a large crowd of people. He directs His preaching to three important groups: (1) the Jews, (2) the Disciples, and (3) the Apostles. The reaction of each group is very telling as it pertains to the teaching of the True Presence in the Holy Eucharist.

The Jews

First, Jesus preaches to the Jews:

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down out of heaven, so that anyone may eat from it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats from this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I will give for the life of the world also is My flesh. (Jn. 6:48-51)

How did the Jews react?

The Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” (Jn. 6:52)

The Jews could not believe what He was saying. Indeed, many walked away and left Him on that day because of His stance on the Eucharist.

The Disciples

Next, Jesus preaches to the disciples:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. (Jn. 6:53-55)

How did the disciples react?

Many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”; Jesus, aware that His disciples were complaining about this, said to them, “Does this shock you?” […] As a result of this many of His disciples left, and would no longer walk with Him. (Jn. 6:60-61;66)

At this point, many people are walking away from Jesus—even the disciples, many of whom had followed Him for as much as two years. And He doesn’t stop them. Jesus could have said, “Wait! Wait! It’s just a symbol! Come back!” But He doesn’t. Jesus only presses further about the His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist and even inquires of them: Does this shock you?

The Apostles

As many followers are walking away from Jesus, He then turns to the Apostles:

Jesus said to the twelve: “Do you also want to leave?”

This is a pivotal moment in the life of the Church. If the Apostles would have left at that moment, everything would have been over. Jesus could have go on to suffer, die, and be resurrected, but there would have been no one to spread His message. There would have been no Apostles (apóstolos meaning “to be sent”) to spread the Gospel to the world. Thankfully, the Apostles don’t leave Him:

Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” (Jn. 6:67)

Peter responds with faith and trust, even without fully understanding. This could be the posture of many Catholics today. Perhaps we don’t fully understand the miracle of the Holy Eucharist, but we trust in Jesus and His teaching. We trust that He can do all things; even to feed us with Himself in this great Sacrament.

A Similar Proportion

Upon preaching to these three groups, the Lord Jesus looks upon a similar number that is still observed today. Roughly a third believed. And here is where the parallel with the Pew study is both intriguing: around 31% of Jesus’ audience stayed with Him after this teaching—just as 31% of Catholics today continue to believe in the Real Presence.

The Lord’s question still remains: Does this shock you? Jesus invites us to surrender our feeble, human understanding and trust in His Divine Word.

In a world that constantly sees everything as symbolic, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist stands as a sacred scandal. It is the heart of Catholic worship. It is the source and summit of our Faith. And it is the test of discipleship.

Today, Jesus turns again to each one of us and asks: Do you also want to leave?

Let us, with St. Peter, respond the words of faith and love: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. Let us stay with Him, believe in Him, and adore Him—truly present in the Most Holy Eucharist.

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

Eucharistic Miracles are instances where consecrated bread and wine no longer appear as bread and wine. The veil of ordinary appearances is lifted, and we see, in a way our eyes of faith already trust, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Though tradition assures us that these species are not the particular body and blood of our Blessed Lord, His presence remains, and not as a result of the miraculous intervention, but still by the words of consecration.

These miracles confront our doubt and our skepticism, they assuage our demand for scientific proof, they realign our attention to what is ordinarily miraculous, and remind us how merciful our God is to those of us who fail to take Him at His Word: “This is my Body…I will be with you always, until the end of the age.”

The CFO of the ministry which is gracious enough to employ me, Live Vertical, tells a poignant story about his experience at Lanciano, Italy. After an all-day excursion through holy sites in Assisi, Luke and his group finally arrive at Lanciano, right as the doors are closing, and find themselves face-to-face with the clotted Blood of our Blessed Lord.

Luke took his time gazing at the Miracle, a miracle that he had shared many times over to students and adults. His hungry and exhausted son wanted to find the nearest cafe and made this more or less known to his father. Luke, visibly moved to tears by the encounter with the Miracle, in a moment of frustration, did his best to impart to his 19-year-old son the significance of the moment. A significance to which his son responded, “Dad, I don’t know why you are so excited…we receive Jesus in the Eucharist at every Mass. I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”

I think of when Jesus heals the blind man with saliva-mud, having to reapply for the full effect. Eucharistic Miracles seem to be an inverse of this divine intervention. The veil which descends during the consecration fades, and what is sacramentally and truly present is made uniquely visible: the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The miracle of consecration, then, is the true miracle, more miraculous than what our overstimulated human senses perceive to be miracles in these “Eucharistic Miracles.”

And yet, how seldom do we allow our sense of the divine to ascend to the forefront of our perception and be reminded of just how consequential this reality is? How often do we miss the ordinarily miraculous moments we encounter at least every single week?

In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton recounts his time spent in Cazals, France, where the “disposition of everything around [him]…, the streets which all pointed inward to the center of town,” forced him to be “at least virtually conscious of the Church,” which contained “that Sacrament…the Christ living in our midst, and sacrificed by us, and for us and with us, in the clean and perpetual Sacrifice…Who holds our world together, and keeps us all from being poured headlong and immediately into the pit of our eternal destruction.”

“Oh, what a thing it is,” Merton exclaims, “to live in a place…where all the day long your eyes must turn, again and again, to the House that hides the Sacramental Christ…where several times each morning, under those high arches on the altar over the relics of the martyr, took place that tremendous, secret and obvious immolation, so secret that it will never be thoroughly understood by a created intellect, and yet so obvious that its very obviousness blinds us by excess of clarity: the unbloody Sacrifice of God under the species of bread and wine.”

Though Merton admittedly was not aware of this at the time, the landscape itself communicated this ultimate reality, which is entirely possible to miss despite how the world may or may not be configured around us. Commonplace, obvious, and ordinary, yet the very thing that holds our world together and keeps us from existential destruction, permits us to dwell in the same realm, to pass by without a second thought, to risk or even commit indifference, irreverence… 

It’s the humility of the sacrament that levels me. These moments of descending into the bread and the wine on altars throughout the centuries are dwarfed by the eternity Our Lord spends in glory.

In essence, this transformation doesn’t cost anything, so why be so amazed? What does it cost God to substitute the substance of common food and drink for a moment while remaining omnipotent, while remaining in glory, not at all affected by this momentary transformation?

What we find when the veil is torn is the assurance that this transformation is indeed not momentary, that He remains.

It was inevitable that God would become man as a result of our fallen state, on account of our brokenness and His loving kindness (cf. On the Incarnation § 6-10). But as to why He remains, this is where our reason fails. Why does the bread from heaven have to be Himself? Why does He remain and continue to be our source of life?

If we forgo the dramatic faith Our Lord calls us to in favor of human deduction, these questions will never be answered. This is theology born in the light of revealed reality, not the kind that tries to generate reality from our own reasoning. We begin with what Our Lord says and theologize in the wake. No amount of Biblical study, moral reasoning or otherwise could in essence produce the doctrine which surrounds the Holy Eucharist. Only what Our Lord says satisfies.

Our work is to “believe.” Belief is not blind; it is the cure for blindness. Without it, we cannot see properly. Without faith, we cannot move forward into what we can’t yet know. It is the key which unlocks the mystery of it all.

And this is what is revealed: inexplicably, not only does the Lord come to really dwell in what appears to be bread and wine, but He remains there. Furthermore, His remaining is by all means ordinary. Each and every operating Church, Chapel, and Oratory ordinarily contains a Tabernacle in which the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ ordinarily resides under a perfectly ordinary miracle which is performed at every perfectly ordinary Mass.

Not only does it seem impossible or impossibly complex to the naked eye of faith, to the worldly world of worldly people, it seems entirely unnecessary.

One might ask, “taking for granted that God exists, why then would He not only become a human being, provide us with incredible moral teaching and wisdom, free us from sin and death by dying a horrible death on the Cross, rise from the dead proving the victory, ascend into heaven and take His rightful place with the Father, and then choose to literally remain with His people, not as a person who can be in every place at once, but under the guise of simple bread and wine?”

The faithful bask in the radiance of this reality. Freed from an endless cycle of skepticism, a Catholic receives the work of Christ’s redemption through believing, and is free to enjoy the riches to which he is heir, which he did not earn or even request, and, without an amount of humility, would otherwise be refused on account of its inexplicable proportion.

For God, however, we are worth it—you are worth it—to remain. As St. Carlo Acutis framed the purpose of each Eucharistic Miracle he presented, these events “direct our attention to look beyond the appearances of bread and wine, and to the hidden reality of the True Presence of Our Lord.”

Eucharistic Miracles are reminders of what it is we place our faith in, what is ordinarily miraculous, what transcends feeble human reason, and stuns skepticism: the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash

When Jesus ascended to Heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to His followers to give them the divine life of the Trinity.  Why, then, did He also give them a meal of Bread and Wine to attain eternal life?

Gospel (Read Jn. 6:51-58)

Our Easter lectionary readings moved us through Christ’s Resurrection, Ascension, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.  Last Sunday, we celebrated the Most Holy Trinity, because we understood, from all that history, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; from the beginning, all Three Persons have lovingly worked to restore us to the life for which we were designed.  We might, therefore, conclude that the history is now liturgically complete. 

Yet this Sunday the Church calls us to another solemnity.  In our readings, we are pondering the mystery of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord in the Eucharist.  This meal raises a question:  If we now have the Holy Spirit to put God’s life in us, why do we need to “eat the Body” and “drink the Blood” of Christ?  What does that accomplish that the gift of the Holy Spirit doesn’t?

Our Gospel reading begins midway through a long conversation Jesus had with people who tracked Him down after His miraculous feeding of the five thousand (Jn. 6:25-50).  They were looking for more bread, but Jesus used their physical hunger to direct their thoughts to another kind of bread:  “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (Jn. 6:33).  It worked:  “They said to Him, ‘Lord, give us this bread always’” (Jn. 6:34).

Seeing they were interested, Jesus explained that He is the bread of life, and He called the Jews to believe in Him.  In this part of the discussion, Jesus used imagery of bread and drink metaphorically: “he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall not thirst” (Jn. 6:35).  When the Jews began to murmur at the suggestion that Jesus is bread from heaven (“Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”), He emphasized again that believing in Him is the source of eternal life:  “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (Jn. 6:47).

Had the conversation stopped there, we would conclude that believing in Jesus was all that was necessary to gain eternal life.  As we know from history, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to all those who believed in Him.  He planted God’s own life in them.  They were destined for heaven.  What more was necessary? 

The “more” comes in the next part of the conversation, which we take up now:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.”  This bold statement caused an argument to break out:  “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”

Notice that no explanation is forthcoming.  Jesus simply keeps repeating, in ever increasing emphasis:  “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.”  This truly baffled His hearers, and, as reported in verses not in this reading, many of His followers left him because of it.  

Even the Twelve were hard-pressed to absorb it.  There was a strong prohibition in Jewish law against drinking the blood of animals (see Gn. 9:4; Lev. 17:10-13; Deut. 12:16).  That kind of participation in an animal’s life, making a man “one” with the animal, was beneath the dignity of creatures made in the image and likeness of God. No one even thought of drinking human blood!

We can understand how objectionable Jesus’ words were to those who first heard them.  To remain with Him would require what Jesus had spoken about earlier in the conversation—belief.  His miraculous works and His authoritative teaching had caused many to have faith in Him.  That faith would have to sustain them as they digested this “hard saying.”  They would have to suspend judgment and simply ponder these words. 

Eventually, of course, Jesus would explain.  At the Last Supper, the apostles learned that Jesus was leaving them a memorial sacrifice as the centerpiece of His Church’s life.  The bread and wine of the Old Passover meal were transformed into the meal of the New Covenant, the Eucharist.  They would become the Body and Blood of His glorified humanity.  That is how His call to “eat My flesh” and “drink My blood” would be accomplished.  Believing would lead to eating.

However, we may still be left wondering why God’s plan for His people included not only the gift of the Holy Spirit but also the celebration of the Eucharist.  How does this act of eating Jesus in the elements of bread and wine differ from receiving Him in our hearts through the Holy Spirit?  The rest of the readings can help answer this question.

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, thank You for remaining with us as Bread and Wine, so that we may eat and drink and live forever.

First Reading (Read Dt. 8:2-3; 14b-16a)

In this reading, the people of Israel are about to enter the Promised Land after their long sojourn in the wilderness with Moses, made longer than necessary by their disobedience and lack of faith in God.  Now, after forty years, they were ready.  In Deuteronomy, Moses gives the people three lengthy sermons, reminding them of what they had been through and warning them about what lay ahead.

Our reading contains one of the great themes of Moses’ parting exhortation:  “Do not forget the LORD your God.”  We might wonder how these people could ever “forget” the LORD, after all He had done for them.  Yet over and over, Moses exhorts Israel:  “You shall remember the LORD your God” (Dt. 8:18).  He knew they were entering a land flowing with milk and honey; life there would be much easier than it had been in the desert.  He had already witnessed their short memories.  He never wanted them to forget that their lives in the Promised Land depended completely on God’s love for them. 

As evidence of this love, Moses reminded the people that God had let them “be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  The people had feared starvation when they first left Egypt, but God sent down manna for them to eat each day. 

However, this was not simply a food supply.  God told them to gather only one day’s worth of manna at a time.  There was to be no stockpiling.  Anything more than one day’s worth of manna rotted, which prevented hoarding. 

This bread from heaven taught Israel a lesson:  they were body and soul.  They needed bread for their bodies, but they also needed faith for their souls.  They would have to live one day at a time, gathering only enough manna for one day and trusting that tomorrow, God would again provide what they needed. 

Every day, for forty years, they had to trust God for their daily bread (the historical antecedent for the request to “give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer).  This is why Moses said that the manna taught the people a spiritual lesson.  We need physical and spiritual bread to really live as God’s people, because we are (and always will be) body and soul.

When we understand this, we are on our way to understanding why Jesus gave us Eucharistic bread and wine.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is real but invisible, not open to the senses.  He is Spirit; we are spirit and body.  The worship of Israel always incorporated body and soul—invisible, unseen action in the heart and visible action in the body.  The worship of the New Covenant continues to keep body and soul together. 

Nothing makes this clearer than the Eucharist!  The bread and wine become Body and Blood; we take them into our own bodies in the act of eating, the most basic of bodily functions (no eating, no life).  Just as the Passover meal was meant to help people with weak memories remember what God had done for Israel (and thus lead to worship), the Eucharistic meal helps us remember what Jesus has done for us (“Do this in memory of Me”), and thus becomes our worship. 

The Holy Spirit puts God’s own life in us, invisibly and spiritually; eating Jesus in the elements of a meal gives us physical (our flesh and blood) communion with Jesus (His flesh and blood).  What a gift!

No wonder Jesus told His followers, in our Gospel reading, to believe (invisible, spiritual) and to eat (visible, corporeal).  We believe, and then we worship, although Jesus did not, at that time, explain that the eating and drinking meant worship.  Later, at the Last Supper, He instituted a meal of supernatural food and drink as our memorial act of worship in the Church.  In our second reading, St. Paul will help us think more about this mysterious and blessed meal.

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, I know You are manna for my journey home to Heaven; please strengthen that grace in me today.

Psalm (Read Ps. 147:12-15, 19-20)

The psalmist exhorts Jerusalem to praise the LORD because of the loving care He has always shown to His people.  One verse in particular has prophetic joy embedded in it, and, on this day, we can sing it with special fervor:  “He has granted peace in your borders; with the best of wheat He fills you” (vs. 14).  The “best of wheat” is the “bread of heaven,” Jesus.  God’s gift to the Church, the new Israel, is a unique gift.  We could say with the psalmist, “He has not done thus for any other nation” (vs. 20). 

As we ponder this great gift in our readings, let us heed the psalmist’s call to “Praise the Lord, Jerusalem!”

Possible response:  The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read 1 Cor. 10:16-17)

The context of this reading (read 1 Cor. 10:14-21) helps us understand that the Eucharist is the Church’s act of worship and that it is a sacrifice.  St. Paul is warning his readers in Corinth (a notoriously pagan city in which he had preached the Gospel and made many converts) against continuing to worship at the altars of pagan idols.  It may surprise us that the new converts needed this warning, but in the polytheistic cultures of the Greco-Roman world, people worshipped many different idols at the same time. 

St. Paul says that drinking “the cup of blessing” (the wine of the Eucharist) and breaking the bread gives the believer a “participation” or “communion” in the Body and Blood of Christ.  This is an exceptionally clear description of what happens during the Eucharistic meal.  Far from the bread and wine being simply symbols of something that has happened or is true, the elements themselves cause the communion. 

For that reason, St. Paul goes on to say, worship at the altars of idols is to be shunned, because any eating or drinking that happens at those altars makes the worshipper a “partner” with demons.  There are, of course, no real “gods.”  St. Paul considers demons to be the source of idol worship. 

To further make his point about the communion that takes place at altars, St. Paul makes reference to the altars of Israel:  “Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?” (1 Cor. 14:18).  Sacrifices, or offerings, lay at the heart of Israel’s worship.  In the “peace” or “thank” offering, the worshipper and the priest ate a meal of a portion of the animal that had been sacrificed.  To eat a meal at the altar of God was to give thanks for some action of God on behalf of the worshipper; it expressed “peace” or “communion” between God and the worshipper. 

In the Eucharist, our thank offering of bread and wine is, mysteriously, joined to the one offering made by Christ on the Cross (God is not bound by time, as we are).  We then eat this sacrificial meal (as the Jews did at their altars) and have communion with God.  What the worship of Israel foreshadowed, the worship of the New Covenant fulfills. This epistle, written about 56 A.D., shows us that right from the beginning of the Church’s life, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic sacrifice was an established belief and practice. 

St. Paul makes another important point in these verses.  The Eucharist is the sign and source of unity in the Church:  “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”  This helps us understand that our unity in the Church is both organic and visible.  Our eating gives us a “participation” in Christ—we are all doing the same action (visible unity) and the “food” inside of us joins us to Christ (organic unity). 

Thus, our public worship is the occasion for our unity to be established and expressed.  Our lives with God cannot be only private and individual (“Jesus and me”).  From the start, the Church made the Eucharistic offering the centerpiece of our worship, restoring our unity with God and man, visibly and invisibly, body and soul.  Blessed be the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ!

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, I can barely comprehend all that You give us in Your Most Holy Body and Blood.  Help me to resist distraction, lukewarmness, and doubt when I receive You at the altar.

Photo by Dariia Lemesheva on Unsplash

A few definitions will help at the outset. By IVF, or in vitro fertilization, I mean the generation of human embryos outside the body, ordinarily in a laboratory setting, with later transfer to the womb (Donum Vitae II.B; Dignitas Personae 12–18). By abortion, I mean the deliberate termination of the life of the unborn child (Evangelium Vitae 58, 62; Dignitas Infinita 47). By eugenics, I mean the effort to improve the human population by selecting for some lives and excluding or eliminating others, whether by public policy or private technique (Dignitas Personae 22; Evangelium Vitae 14, 63). And by transhumanism, I mean the modern project of overcoming the given limits of human nature through technology, whether by enhancement, redesign, or the technical remaking of the body itself (International Theological Commission, Quo vadis, humanitas? 46–49).

Many people treat IVF, abortion, eugenics, and transhumanism as separate moral debates. IVF is often presented as a compassionate response to infertility. Abortion is discussed in terms of autonomy or rights. Eugenics belongs, we are told, to a dark chapter of the twentieth century. Transhumanism sounds like futuristic speculation about enhancement, artificial wombs, or redesigning the human species.

But these are not separate moral worlds. They are connected. They arise from a common way of imagining the human person, freedom, the body, technology, and even the meaning of generation itself. At the center of all of them lies one question: Is human life a gift to be received, or a project to be managed?

As I argued in a recent article on human beginnings, much depends on whether the embryo is recognized from conception as a human being already present, rather than as biological material awaiting later moral status. Once that beginning is obscured, the earliest stages of life become vulnerable to experimentation, freezing, disposal, and selection. And once that permission is granted, a larger logic begins to unfold.

From Begetting to Making

The first step is the displacement of begetting by making. Here, a careful theological distinction is important. The Creed’s confession that the Son is “begotten, not made” belongs properly and uniquely to Trinitarian theology; it cannot be transferred univocally to human generation. Yet, it still sheds analogical light on an essential truth about the human person. A child is not manufactured as a product. He is begotten by his parents and created by God, whose immediate gift of the spiritual soul places every human life beyond the logic of production.

In natural generation, the child is begotten through the conjugal union of spouses and received as the fruit of their communion. In the technological frame, however, the child increasingly appears as the outcome of procedure. This is why IVF is so decisive. It is not just one treatment among others. It represents a symbolic relocation of generation itself. It shifts our attention from the bodily self-gift of spouses to the laboratory, from procreation to production.

Once that relocation is accepted, the grammar of human origins changes. Embryos may be generated in excess, classified, frozen, discarded, or used for research. If some embryonic or fetal lives may be judged unworthy because of disability, defect, burden, or timing, then abortion becomes a tool of selection. If selection becomes normalized, eugenics reappears—not necessarily in its old statist form, but in a new privatized, medicalized, and consumer form. If human life may be selected, optimized, and redesigned at its earliest stages, then transhumanism is not a strange rupture. It is the culmination.

So the deepest question is not simply whether one approves or disapproves of a given procedure. The deepest question is this: What is the human person? Is the human being a creature who receives life as gift? Or is the human being a project of sovereign will—something to be produced, selected, improved, and eventually redesigned according to desire and technical power? That is the real issue.

The Truth of the Conjugal Act

The Christian tradition insists that marriage and sexuality possess an intrinsic intelligibility. The conjugal act is not morally neutral matter onto which the will may impose whatever meaning it chooses. It already has a structure ordered by nature, illumined by reason, and elevated by grace.

For this reason, the Church has consistently taught that the conjugal act bears two inseparable meanings: the unitive and the procreative. These are not two values externally attached to the act. They belong to its very truth (Humanae Vitae 12; Evangelium Vitae 23). This is the teaching reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae, deepened by St. John Paul II’s theology of the body and by Gaudium et Spes 24, and presupposed by Donum Vitae, which teaches that human procreation is properly the fruit of marriage and not the product of a technique that replaces the conjugal act (Donum Vitae II.B.4–5).

Here, St. Thomas Aquinas remains indispensable. Moral acts are not justified simply by sincere intention. Their morality depends above all on their object—what the act is in its kind—as well as on intention and circumstances. In other words, a good intention cannot justify an act that falsifies the act’s own meaning. This distinction matters greatly in sexual ethics. The conjugal act is ordered, by the kind of act it is, toward both the union of husband and wife and the generation of offspring. These are not merely biological functions. They belong to the personal and social truth of marriage. Even if spouses intend something good—love, intimacy, even parenthood—that intention cannot justify an act that falsifies the act’s own meaning.

This is exactly the problem with both contraception and IVF, though in opposite ways. Contraception seeks the unitive while deliberately excluding the procreative. IVF seeks procreation while bypassing the conjugal union as the proper embodied context of generation. In both cases, the will no longer receives the act according to its truth, but intervenes to restructure it.

The problem with IVF, then, is deeper than technique. The decisive question is whether technology assists the conjugal act in reaching its proper end, or replaces the conjugal act as the site of generation. That difference is fundamental. A technique that helps spouses conceive while respecting the integrity of their union is one thing. A technique that substitutes for the act and transfers generation to the laboratory is another. In the latter case, generation becomes production.

The Child Is a Gift, Not a Product

St. John Paul II deepened the Church’s classical vision of marriage and procreation by reflecting on the body, the person, and the logic of gift. The body is not an external instrument merely possessed by the person. It expresses the person and reveals the vocation to communion. That is why he repeatedly returned to Gaudium et Spes 24: man “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”

Marriage is one privileged form of that gift. In the conjugal act, the spouses enact bodily the mutual gift of their persons. The child is meant to arise from and within that self-gift as its fruit. He is not something owed. He is not the object of a claim. He is a gift.

This is why the tradition insists that a child is never a product. A gift is received with gratitude and reverence. A product is planned, controlled, measured, and assessed according to desired outcomes. Once procreation is relocated to the laboratory, the child risks being subtly repositioned from the horizon of gift to the horizon of production.

This does not mean that parents who use IVF do not love their children. Often they do, deeply. But the objective meaning of the process still matters. What is produced can be screened, ranked, frozen, or discarded. A child cannot be treated that way without moral violence. The distinction between begetting and making is therefore not rhetorical but metaphysical: we make things for our use, but we beget persons who are equal in dignity and never reducible to our projects.

This also helps explain why IVF and abortion are closer than they first appear. IVF is often seen as pro-child because it is sought by those who ardently desire a child. Abortion is seen as anti-child because it ends the life of a child already conceived. But the contrast is incomplete. Both can operate within the same underlying principle: human life is welcomed when it corresponds to desire and may be rejected when it becomes burdensome, defective, mistimed, or unwanted.

In abortion, the unborn child may be killed because he is not wanted, because he is conceived in painful circumstances, or because he is diagnosed as disabled. In IVF, the embryo may be generated in excess, graded, frozen, rejected, reduced to research material, or destroyed because he does not meet the criteria established by the process. The rhetoric differs, and the emotional posture of the adults may differ, but in both cases the life of the child is placed beneath the judgment of another will. The child is no longer simply received as one who must be loved. He is first evaluated as one who must qualify.

That is why eugenics is not merely a relic of the twentieth century. It has returned in a new form. The old eugenics was blunt, statist, and coercive. The new eugenics is more individualized, more medicalized, more market-friendly, and often clothed in the language of compassion, health, parental freedom, and the prevention of suffering. Yet the underlying premise is disturbingly similar: some human lives are welcomed while others are quietly excluded based on health, genetic status, sex, or conformity to desired standards.

Once embryos are generated outside the body and in plurality, they become available for assessment. Some are designated “good quality,” others “poor quality.” Some are transferred, others frozen. Some are preserved, others abandoned. Once preimplantation genetic testing enters the picture, the dynamic becomes still more explicit: embryos are screened so that only those judged suitable may continue toward birth. In this light, IVF and abortion are not opposites so much as neighboring expressions of the same deeper logic: life under management, life under judgment, life under selection.

Freedom Detached from Truth: From Eugenics to Transhumanism

Behind this entire bioethical field stands a deeper philosophical crisis: the modern detachment of freedom from truth. Much of contemporary culture identifies freedom with sheer self-assertion, the power of the will to choose without any norm beyond itself. But the Christian tradition understands freedom differently. For Aquinas, freedom is fulfilled not by inventing the good, but by recognizing and choosing what is truly good. That is why St. John Paul II insisted in Veritatis Splendor that truth is not the enemy of freedom, but its condition.

This matters in bioethics because once freedom is severed from truth, human life is no longer received according to what it is, but judged according to whether it serves desire. The embryo becomes disposable, the disabled become vulnerable to exclusion, and the body itself becomes raw material for redesign. The unborn child is therefore not only the victim of this false freedom, but also its clearest test case: whether freedom still recognizes goods higher than preference, power, and control.

Once some lives may be selected out and others technologically produced, transhumanism no longer appears as a strange futuristic deviation. It becomes the next coherent step. IVF relocates generation to technique. Abortion permits the elimination of unwanted life. Eugenics normalizes selection. Transhumanism carries the same logic to its furthest point: human nature itself becomes available for redesign.

What begins as control over reproduction ends as dissatisfaction with givenness. The creature no longer wishes simply to receive himself, but to refashion himself. That is why the real issue is not technology alone, but the anthropology governing its use. The Christian response must therefore be deeper than fear of machines. What must be recovered is a vision in which being precedes making, gift precedes project, and creaturehood is recognized as good.

The Real Alternative

The Christian alternative is not mere prohibition. It is the recovery of an entire moral and spiritual vision of the person. What must be recovered is an ethics of reception rather than domination. Reality is not first something to be conquered, but something to be received. This is especially true of life itself. We do not give ourselves being. We do not author our existence. We are received from Another, and therefore the posture most fitting to human life is not sovereignty but gratitude.

This means recovering an anthropology of gift rather than possession, a concept of freedom ordered to truth rather than arbitrary will, a medicine of care rather than selection, a family understood as communion rather than arrangement, and a society that measures greatness not by efficiency, but by its willingness to protect the weak.

One cannot defend the unborn in the abstract while abandoning women in crisis pregnancies. One cannot condemn eugenics while leaving parents of disabled children to isolation and exhaustion. One cannot speak against artificial reproduction while responding to infertile couples with coldness. And one cannot proclaim the evil of abortion while offering no path of healing to those who bear its wounds.

The Gospel of life cannot be defended by argument alone. It must become visible in communities where the weak are not hidden, where suffering is not met with elimination, where children are welcomed, where the disabled are honored, and where repentance is met with mercy.

For IVF, abortion, eugenics, and transhumanism are not merely four different controversies. They are linked expressions of one deeper struggle over the meaning of the human person. If man is a creature, then life is gift, truth is objective, freedom is ordered to the good, the body has meaning, children are received rather than produced, and technology must remain within moral limits. In that world, dependence is not humiliation, finitude is not absurdity, and vulnerability is not a sign that a life has lost its worth.

If man is instead the sovereign author of himself, then life becomes raw material, procreation becomes manufacture, freedom becomes will, technology becomes salvation, and the weak become vulnerable to selection and elimination. That is why these debates matter so much. They are not arguments about isolated procedures. They are arguments about whether human life will still be recognized as sacred, given, and inviolable—or whether it will be reorganized under the categories of control, utility, and design.

And ultimately, that is not only a bioethical question. It is a question about whether we still know how to welcome the human person before we measure him.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on Bioethics & Culture by Fr. Francesco Giordano, tackling the challenging moral issues of our day.

Photo by Braňo on Unsplash

Shortly after turning 50, my late father had to leave behind two decades of practicing law to go on full-time disability. At 7 years old, he had contracted Rheumatic Fever. That was the beginning of 61 long years of suffering. He spent a year of his childhood paralyzed. He spent a year homeschooling with his English teacher mother, during a time when homeschooling was rarely thought of. His father found a cart to help push him around; otherwise, he’d carry him.

He went on to have good years and bad years with the debilitatingly painful chronic illness. He was a talented lawyer, but his passion was reading and philosophy, which eventually he would have a lot of time for. The pain became too great after three intense years of traveling across the country for depositions. Thus began 17 years of being homebound to varying degrees.

Initially, he could still volunteer and serve in various capacities. He was heavily involved in 40 Days for Life. Being a night owl, he would often take night vigils since the Montana 40 Days teams ran near constant vigils. On one occasion, someone threw firecrackers at him. He continued praying his Rosary undaunted.

He also made a point of taking Holy Communion to the homebound. He was still able to drive and get around enough to visit the sick and homebound in his parish. It was one of his favorite ministries. It gave him a chance to enter the suffering of others, which he often saw as greater than his own. He really enjoyed those visits and missed them when he became too ill to continue.

Eventually, his disease worsened. His doctors tried every biologic drug available; some of which nearly killed him. He reached a point when he had to stop driving. He became homebound, except to attend his granddaughter’s local softball games or the occasional dinner out, as long as my mother drove. All of this came at an age when most people are still fully mobile and working full-time. My father died last year. He was 68 years old.

It is an excruciatingly painful spiritual purification that happens to the homebound, especially for those who are struck down in their prime. Living across the country, I couldn’t help as much as I wanted to. I encouraged him and tried to get him to reach out to the local parish for Holy Communion when he couldn’t get to Mass. What I noticed was how quickly the homebound are forgotten by the parish community. I really noticed it when I started serving in hospital ministry 13 years ago.

The Church has adopted an erroneous position of expecting the sick and the suffering to constantly reach out to the parish for help. They are expected to do almost all the work in reaching out. It should be the opposite. We should be actively checking on and monitoring the sick and the lost who are no longer able to join us in the pews. If we notice someone is missing, we should be checking in on them.

The suffering often lack the energy or know-how to reach out, or they fall into a false sense that they are a burden. To be frank, too many parishes treat the suffering and the sick like a burden or inconvenience in the face of “more important” functions. Uncharitable or insurmountable burdens are placed on them, so they silently fall by the wayside.

It is the sick, lost, possessed, and afflicted who the Lord sought out with great fervor. It was not the ones who are healthy, powerful, or those who have it all together. Our parishes are often designed for those who are able-bodied and strong. The sick are an afterthought. This has been exacerbated by the end of Catholic hospital chaplaincies.

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the suffering man lying alongside the road did not ask for help. He did not call the parish office to request assistance; rather, the Good Samaritan comes across his need and picks him up, ministers to his wounds, and cares for him.

But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.

A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.

Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.

But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight.

He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him.

The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’

Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”

He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Lk. 10:29-37)

This used to be the standard for Christian service to the sick. St. Charles Borromeo took Holy Communion out into the plague-riddled streets of his day. In fact, this is how Catholic hospitals became so widespread. Many religious communities saw it as their duty to go out to the sick and the suffering to bring them to hospitals and clinics. St. Teresa of Calcutta would wander the streets in search of the sick and the dying.

Our parishes are not small kingdoms where people come to us when they are strong enough. Our parishes are meant to be hospitals for the sick and the lost. The healing balm of the Sacraments and the tender loving care of the community should be what greet the sick. We should be known for actively seeking the lost, sick, and homebound in our communities.

If someone disappears from the pews, the parish should be seeking them out and making sure they are being sacramentally, spiritually, and emotionally cared for by members of the community. This is not a checklist affair. There should be regular visits to each of the homebound and frequent evangelical missions into the hospitals to invite lost souls to return to Christ, the Sacraments, and the Mass.

While individuals should reach out for sacramental care, there are countless reasons why they may not. The top reasons I hear are that they don’t want to be a burden or that the priest is probably too busy. My response is always the same: “You are not a burden. Priests were ordained to anoint, forgive sins, provide Heavenly Food, and care for the sick and the dying who are engaged in their most intense spiritual battle.” It is especially in cases such as these when we must be proactive in reaching out to them. They need us to be St. Simon of Cyrene in their moment of greatest need—not to assume they will reach out if they need something.

This is also why hospital and homebound ministries need to be more of a priority in parish life. The lost sheep are lying alone in hospital beds. They have left for a variety of reasons, but like the wounded man lying on the road beaten and robbed, we must reach out and minister to them. We know they are there. My husband and I have done hospital ministry off and on for years. There are countless lost souls in the hospitals, many of whom will die without the sacraments or without an invitation to return to Christ and His Church.

My own father became increasingly more isolated in his final years. He was largely invisible to the parish except on the occasions he reached out. He knew to receive Last Rites his final week, and my husband gave him viaticum on the Solemnity of St. Joseph. My father died four days later. He breathed his last as we prayed the final words of the St. Joseph Prayer.

Many Catholics do not know when or how to reach out for sacramental and pastoral care when struck with illness or impending death. The age of pretending Catholics are well catechized should have come to an end ages ago. Most Catholics, and fallen away Catholics, do not understand the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick or Last Rites. We have to reach out to people to guide them and help them. They often don’t know what to do or are confused about the distinction between Last Rites and Anointing of the Sick. They don’t know they can request Holy Communion be brought to their homes weekly.

Christian discipleship is not comfortable suburban living. It is willing to enter the brokenness, isolation, and difficulties of others. This extends well beyond hospital ministry to the isolation of youth and stay-at-home mothers, which are their own topics, and a whole host of other areas. Our parishes should not feel like places we stop to check off Mass and do a few insular ministries. They should feel like places of authentic community, with doors wide open—doors through which we go out into the world to help others and to bring them back home, perhaps even for the first time.

We should not be sitting around waiting for them to reach out or come to us. The Great Commission is a sending out, not a sitting on our laurels. The end of each Mass sends us out on that mission.

May we become more like the Good Samaritan. There are countless souls waiting for us even if they don’t know it yet.

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