St. Anthony and the Eucharist

Yesterday, we celebrated the wonderful Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Latin for “The Body of Christ.”

As Catholics, we believe that in our prayer of the Mass, during the liturgy of the Eucharist and at the “consecration” – which means “to make holy, sacred” – the elements of bread and wine on the altar become the Risen Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It is a memorial also of the Last Supper, yet in real time, as we receive the eternal Christ into our bodies and souls.

June 13 also happened providentially to be the feast day of my parish patron saint, St. Anthony of Padua. He was an amazing priest, preacher and follower of St. Francis!

Well, there happens to be some local history that relates to St. Anthony here. As my parishioners of St. Anthony Shrine know well, about two years ago we had to remove a dying, 200+ year old tree from our parish cemetery on the hill next to the National Shrine Grotto of Lourdes here in Emmitsburg. It is most likely that St. Elizabeth Ann Seton at one point would have touched it or sat in its shade. It was that historic. And it was a HUGE tree, probably about five or six feet wide at its base and was very tall and high.

So, some parishioners got the idea of taking the wood from the wide base and trunk of the tree and having a highly-skilled wood carver create a statue of St. Anthony from this very wood.  Well, this did happen. In fact, we were actually able to get two large statues of St. Anthony out of it, carved by Jason Stoner of Fairfield, Pennsylvania. One of them sits in front of our parish, and one of them will eventually be erected and blessed in our parish cemetery on the hill, in the place where the tree originally stood.

I mention this because this itself is a great teaching on what the purpose of the Eucharist is for us as Catholics. As this old wood was patiently carved and slowly transformed into something spectacular and brand new, so it is with ourselves and Jesus, sacramentally inside of us when we receive the Eucharist. He is transforming us from the inside out. You might say that through the Eucharist, Christ’s own Body and Blood, we ourselves are being “carved” and polished, sanctified and washed clean, given strength to be virtuous and to fight against vice and sin, so that we will look more and more like him.

Our good St. Anthony resembled Christ in his joy, his humility, his generosity and sacrificial love, and as a remarkable teacher of the faith. He had a great devotion to the child Jesus and he often is depicted in art and statuary holding the child Jesus. He also had an unshakable faith in the Real Presence. There’s a great and true story about this, called “St. Anthony and the Mule” which is recommended reading and I would also add that if you visit the “other” Shrine of St. Anthony in Folly Quarters, which is a lovely shrine hosted by many good Franciscan priests, there is actually a statue depicting this!

St. Anthony once said, “The life of the body is the soul, and the life of the soul is Christ.” May our eucharistic Jesus give us that renewed life, and powerfully change and transform us from the inside out.

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