On 30 June, at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, a full house turned out for the latest instalment of the Didaskō faith formation short course series, as Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP led a rich and often surprising exploration of the Eucharist.
Now in its fourth year, the series is offered by the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation’s Parish Renewal Team in partnership with the University of Notre Dame Australia. The evening with Archbishop Fisher was a high point offered in partnership with the Strathfield-based institute.
Speaking to a packed hall, he traced the long history of Eucharistic miracles: bleeding hosts, incorrupt relics, saints who staked their lives on the Real Presence, before turning his focus toward something far closer to home. He said that while extraordinary Eucharistic miracles are real, the ‘real miracle’ is offered at every Mass. Christ truly present: body, blood, soul and divinity.
“The greatest Eucharistic miracle is the everyday one,” he said, and it
happens quietly and faithfully, at Mass after Mass, parish after parish.
The archbishop drew on the church’s teaching on anamnesis, explaining that when the Eucharist is celebrated, the past is not simply remembered but made present. Calvary itself, he explained, is “present in the hands of the priest and upon the tongues of the faithful” at every single Mass, a truth he suggested Catholics can too easily take for granted after a lifetime of familiarity with the sacrament.
His talk struck a chord.
“While we have these extraordinary Eucharistic miracles, as we call them, with the visible sign of flesh or blood in the host, it’s so important to understand that we can’t let this take away from the ordinary miracle that is the Eucharist itself,” said first-year seminarian, Joseph Nicolls after the talk.
It was a truth that also resonated with mother of four, Ravita DeSousa.
“We must remember to be reverent, to not take the Eucharist for granted,” she said.
“I’ve got my four kids are here. So it’s also about starting them young with the simple habits of fasting or genuflecting, as the archbishop was saying,” she said.
Young Catholic Jack Tesoriero said, “Honestly, I found tonight incredibly earth shattering.”
“All I could think about the words that kept repeating in my head was, what is bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and you cannot loosen either from each other.”
The archbishop also fielded questions with warmth and humour, including one query from a catechist about how to explain the Eucharist to young children without it sounding like an invitation to cannibalism.
God, he explained, “does not give us the accidents of flesh and blood” precisely because we would be repulsed by them. The miracle of the sacrament is that Christ makes himself fully present to us without the very thing that would make us recoil.
“I think that was the most wonderful talk even by his own standard, you know, which is a very high standard,” President of the Catholic Institute of Sydney Professor Hayden Ramsay told The Catholic Weekly.
Helen Wagner from the Parish Renewal Team said the hundreds of people joining online included about 30 parish groups. Archbishop Fisher signalled that further sessions will run until November and will explore other dimensions of the Eucharist in the lead-up to the International Eucharistic Congress, Eucharist28.
For those who filled the hall and logged in online the message was simple but demanding: the most extraordinary thing in the universe is available every day, if only we have the eyes to see it.
Information on further talks is at gomakedisciples.org.au/didasko
