I keep thinking of this astonishing quote in Dilexi Te, “On the Love of the Poor,” an apostolic exhortation begun by Pope Francis just before he died and finished by Pope Leo. It’s a quote from St. John Chrysostom, the archbishop of Constantinople in the fifth century:
Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Do not allow it to be despised in its members—that is, in the poor, who have no clothes to cover themselves. Do not honor Christ’s body here in church with silk fabrics, while outside you neglect it when it suffers from cold and nakedness. The body of Christ on the altar does not need cloaks but pure souls, while the one outside needs much care. Let us therefore learn to think of and honor Christ as he wishes. For the most pleasing honor we can give to the one we want to venerate is that of doing what he himself desires, not what we devise. So you, too, give him the honor he has commanded, and let the poor benefit from your riches. God does not need golden vessels, but golden souls. (41)
Do we really understand what the “real presence of Christ in the Eucharist” means? Do we really understand what “traditional” Catholicism is?
This is the fifth century.
Pope Leo then adds this comment: St. John Chrysostom “understood the Eucharist as a sacramental expression of the charity and justice that both preceded and accompanied it. That same charity and justice should perpetuate the Eucharist through the love and attention to the poor.”
Perpetuating the Eucharist.
When we think of the Eucharist we think of it in much too narrow a way. We think it only happens in the Church, but that’s wrong. It happens everywhere, or should. Our lives lead up to it and our lives flow out of it, and it all blends. It’s all of a piece.
A few sections later, Pope Leo, who is an Augustinian, after quoting St. Augustine, says this: “for Augustine, the poor are not just people to be helped, but the sacramental presence of the Lord.”
The sacramental presence of the Lord.