Pints With Aquinas - 110: The Holy Eucharist, with Bishop Robert Barron

Episode Date: June 12, 2018

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today we are joined around the bar table by Bishop Robert Barron. How cool would that be? Can we just be honest? 200,000 years from now and we're all in heaven drinking beer. Drinking beer with Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Robert Barron. You're going to get a foretaste of how great that's going to be in today's episode. I'm so excited. We're going to be chatting with Bishop Robert Barron, reflecting on what Thomas Aquinas has to say about the Holy Eucharist. We haven't done an episode on the Holy Eucharist before. This was a fantastic conversation. Was I a little nervous before it started? Yes. I was so afraid that the microphone was going to cut out or something like that, but the whole thing went terrific and you're just going to love this episode. A little bit about Bishop Barron before we get into the show. He is the auxiliary bishop

of Los Angeles, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He's the host of Catholicism, which is a great award-winning documentary on the Catholic faith. If you haven't seen it, you totally should. He's the founder of wordonfire.org. Go check that out. I love that I'm telling you to go check it out as if you haven't checked it out. Everybody knows who Bishop Robert Barron is. His YouTube videos have been, let's see here. This is ridiculous. They've been viewed over 30 million times. It's like the population of Australia.

He's over 1.5 million followers on Facebook. I think he's the most followed Catholic figure On social media after the Pope Which is pretty cool Anyway, buckle up, here we go Yes, yes, yes Good to have you back here as I said said, at Pines of Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool

next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. We've had well over 100 podcasts now. If you're new to the show, go back and listen to the back catalogue. Right now, we're getting well over 10,000 downloads a day from people in well over 100 countries. It's pretty cool to see how this thing has grown since its inception, which was essentially meant to just get me more credit for my graduate class. So that's cool. We have a new website, pintswithaquinas.com, brand spanking

new as of like a couple of days ago. So go check that out, pintswithaquinas.com. And this is the second week of our competition. You remember I said last week that I'm going to try and get on Dave Rubin's show. I think it'd be sweet to talk to Dave Rubin. So if you want to enter the raffle to win either the five-volume set of the Summa Theologiae, I'm giving away that. I'm also giving away 10 copies of my new book, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Okay, here's what you got to do to enter. Go onto Twitter and tell Dave Rubin. So you have to at him.

I think it's at Rubin Report to have Matt Fradd. You got to make sure you at me too on his show. All right, I want to get on his show. I'll be happy to talk about anything. I want to talk about pornography perhaps and how it affects our culture and why people who aren't religious should still agree. I'm not sure if you know this.

I have a podcast called Love People Use Things, which I co-host with an atheist. So there you go. Yeah, at Ruben Report. So go to Twitter and say, at Ruben Report, have at Matt Fradd on your show. And then you have to put in my URL, mattfradd.com. All right? That's how you enter the raffle. At the end of this week,

I will let you know who the winners are and that'll be that. Hey, I want to let you know this too. At the end of this show, I'm going to share with you a bunch of very powerful quotations from the church fathers. Those are those Orthodox Christians who lived, you know, within the first few hundred years after the death and resurrection of Christ as to what they had to say about the Holy Eucharist. Okay, so Bishop Barron and I are going to be talking about the Holy Eucharist. We're going to be talking about how to maybe explain this to our Protestant brothers and sisters. If you're a Protestant brother and sister listening, welcome. We are so happy that you're here. But stick around to the end of the

episode. I'm going to share some of those very powerful quotations with you. I think you're going to find them pretty impressive. All right. Here's Bishop Robert Barron. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, guide us today. May this conversation be fruitful for the building up of your kingdom in the world.

And may it give glory to you and draw people's attention to St. Thomas Aquinas. And we pray through his intercession and through Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen. Bishop Robert Barron, thank you very much for being on Pints with Aquinas. My joy to be with you, Matt.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, I just have to say, I so appreciate your ability to communicate the faith in a way that's both intellectually convincing and gentle. I think some people are convincing but not gentle, and some people are gentle and not convincing, but it seems like the Lord's given you the gift to bring those two together.

And yeah, whenever I listen to people speak about you, people who are outside of the fold, as it were, you know, on William Lane Craig's podcast or some secular people, they can't help but affirm you, even if they disagree with you. So thank you for your yes and your work. I do appreciate that. Thanks.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into today's topic about Thomas Aquinas and the Eucharist. Before we do, tell us how you were first introduced to the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Oh, well, that goes back to my freshman year in high school when a young Dominican friar, he's now an older Dominican friar, he's now an older Dominican friar, Father Tom Paulson, but taught us one of the arguments for God's existence. I think it was the argument for motion. So I'm a 14-year-old kid and, you know, Catholic and going to mass with my parents and all that, but I wasn't all that interested in religion. And this was right after Vatican II in our country when there was a lot of very superficial catechesis going on.

So I never thought about religion as a serious topic. And to hear this very compelling, fascinating argument for God's existence just kind of lit a fire in my mind. And I ran to the library, our local library, and I got out Mortimer Adler's Great Books series, and he had two volumes on Thomas Aquinas. And I opened up the section dealing with the arguments for God's existence, and I read those with great interest, even though I barely understood what I was reading. But that was how it started, and it's just been this sort of lifelong fascination with love for Thomas Aquinas. Would you like to see Catholics develop a greater appreciation for Aquinas and his works?

Yes! And how would—I know these are softball questions, but how would that benefit them, especially in today's culture, where truth is often seen as something that either doesn't exist or is something we can't attain? Yeah, you know, it's a big question. And something that has interested me for a long time is why Aquinas, who was such a dominant player, let's say from the Council of Trent all the way up to Vatican II. So, I mean, look at how Vatican I fathers use him. Look at Eterni Patris, which calls for a revival in Aquinas.

Look at the greatest figures in the first half of the 20th century. Mary Tan and Gilson and Lonergan and de Lubac and Rahner. I mean, they were all very serious readers of Thomas Aquinas. But then Vatican II happened, and it's as though this curtain just fell down on the Thomas Aquinas stage. And that was a real loss. Now, I'm an advocate of the Nouvelle Théologie. I love the Réseau Semain movement and Back to the Scriptures and to the Fathers, and I'm totally supportive of the de Lubach program. And Vatican II certainly represents that approach. You read the text of Vatican II as opposed to the text of Vatican I, for example. Vatican I sounds much more scholastic than Vatican II. Okay, that's true. Nevertheless,

the loss of Aquinas in the years after the Council was, I think, a tragedy for the Church, because, especially now with the rise of the new atheism and all that, it's precisely someone who was deeply involved in the faith reason conversation that would be helpful to people today. And see, religion came to be seen, now, illegitimately so, but came to be seen as, you know, more of a sentimental affair, more a matter of social justice. So, when I was a kid, go back now to the 60s, early 70s, if you talked to us about spirituality, we probably would have heard care for the poor. We probably would have heard concern for racial justice. Spirituality came to mean the commitment to making the world a better place. So you've got a sentimentalized approach

to religion, and what I would call a sort of Kantian approach to religion, religion as ethics. What's missing was this properly intellectual dimension. Well, where did the atheists go after us? They're not complaining that we have warm feelings or complaining that we're caring for the poor. You know, they're in favor of that. What they're complaining about is that we don't have any intellectual substance. Now, we do indeed in our great tradition, but it was occluded in a way that has been really deleterious in the life of the Church. So, you've gotten me started, so I... No, I love it. It's almost like we've allowed our dear Protestant brothers and sisters to pick up the slack. I mean, when you look at those apologists who are responding to the new atheists in a convincing way, many of them are

evangelicals. Yeah, and that's why when I discovered William Lane Craig, I heard about him first through a student at the North American College in Rome. This is 10 years ago, longer, and he said, well, you must know about William Lane Craig, and I said, no, no, I've never heard of him. So that got me going on him, but I'm thinking, oh, here's this, as you say, evangelical Protestant, and yet using what I would identify as our intellectual tradition in a very compelling way. But see, where were the Catholics on that score? And in fact, when Catholics did engage the new atheists, it was often a bloodbath, not in our favor. And so, I think one of the silver linings here is that it has led to a certain revival in Catholic apologetics,

and that almost ipso facto means a return to Thomas Aquinas, who was one of the great masters of fundamental theology or apologetics or natural theology, whatever you want to call it. So, I think that's been a good thing in our time, a very good development. So even though Catholics, by and large, may not be familiar with the works of Thomas Aquinas, those who are might think of him as a walking brain or a souped-up Aristotle, but they don't often know about his deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, and stay with that first part of your question, because I totally get the fact, about his deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, and stay with that first part of your question, because I totally get the fact Thomas intuited that at his time, so in the mid-13th century, in his cultural environment, namely

the Parisian intellectual life, right? What was needed at that time very specially was this hyper-scientific approach to theology, which he learns from certain masters in the medieval system. He studies under Albert the Great, but took in the whole scholastic thing, which had been going on now for about 100 years prior to him. And he intuited, I think quite rightly, that at the time, that's what was needed. He intuited, I think quite rightly, that at the time, that's what was needed. And so you get this, as you say, kind of a computer-like mind working its way through these questions. Were there people in his own time who objected to it?

And the answer was yes, there were. People who were more Augustinian in style, they were more Platonizing, they were maybe more in touch with a spiritual experience approach to theology. So a number of them, in his own time, felt that it was a strange method. But see, Thomas intuited, I think, that it was the needful thing at the moment. And then in the process, he produced something of perennial value in the life of the church. Now, not that Thomas necessarily is for everybody. I wouldn't recommend to every single person, oh yeah, pick up these texts and you'll be doing fine. He will always appeal to people of a certain frame of mind. Now,

he appealed to me when I was a kid. And I was, again, Catholic, but not particularly interested in religion. But, man, he appealed to me. What I often heard coming of age was, oh, you know, that kind of stuff. It doesn't appeal to people and all that heavy rationalism. And I say, well, he appealed to me. Yeah, yeah. I think he's appealed, obviously, to people across the centuries. I think he's appealed, obviously, to people across the centuries. So I'm okay with the sort of walking brain thing in a, that that's a very limited read on Thomas Aquinas, that he does indeed have a richly called, we could probably say today,

spiritual life, devotional life, a life of an experience of the mysteries that he's talking about in a more philosophical frame of mind. And a big part of that was a devotion to the Eucharist. So that's a Thomas that we wouldn't see as readily, though you certainly get it in the Corpus Christi office, which he composes, and you get it through some of the stories told about him. But it's not going to leap off the page when you're reading his text. Right. So do you think it might be an unhelpful or even erroneous duplicity sometimes when we speak about the head and the heart? You know, people say, the longest journey someone can ever take is from the head to the heart, as if the head were inferior. Maybe that kind of gets back to what we were saying earlier. Yeah, you've hit another one

of my buttons. Because yeah, I've heard that all my life, and it's a stupid distinction. And our greatest people embody the opposite of it in other words from uh origin and and tertullian and irenaeus through augustine up through the great scholastics very much including thomas aquinas now come up to a person whose whose birthday we're celebrating as we tape these words gk chesterton um the best people in our tradition would have repudiated that stupid distinction between head and heart, because it's, look, it's, I'm experiencing God or the truth or another person, and I am not a brain or a heart. See, there's a rationalistic caricature that says, I'm my brain, but there's also a kind

of romantic caricature, which has been true of our time, certainly, that I'm my brain, but there's also a kind of romantic caricature, which has been true of our time, certainly, that I'm deep down on my heart, you know. No, no, I experience whatever, and I am this coming together of all these different elements. I don't have feelings I don't think about. I don't have thoughts I don't have feelings about. No, but it's true, it seems to me. And it's not just true of read Augustine if you want to see someone who's now a literary master who's able to express it, read the Confessions. But to my mind, it's true of everybody. Like the story I just told about myself, hearing this Like the story I just told about myself, hearing this rational argument, but it changed my whole life.

It lit my heart on fire, if you want to put it that way. But I feel thoughts. I think feelings. My body is involved when I have these experiences. So I don't like those distinctions. And you're right. They always seem to privilege emotion over intellect. And that doesn't serve us.

Well, perhaps people might say then that he just wasn't an emotional person. But that certainly isn't the case, is it? No. Yeah. No, on the contrary. Now, you're not going to sense it in the writings. But, see, he's a disciplined writer, writing for a particular purpose, in a particular cultural context, and intuiting what was the need of the time. But to conclude from the text alone, oh, here's a man who's like a computer, he has no feelings. No, on the contrary,

there's so many stories about Aquinas celebrating his own Mass every day and then usually assisting at a second Mass, weeping through both of them, by all accounts. A man for hours resting his head on the tabernacle, seeking inspiration. So, I love that story that his assistant Reginald told. Yes, this gets us to the motto on your bishop's shield, you have to tell us about that, yeah. Yeah, but I'm thinking of the story where Reginald said that Aquinas garnered his wisdom far more from prayer than from study. Oh, okay. Even though he was a man of extraordinary studiousness, Nevertheless, Reginald said he got more truth from his prayer than from his study. And so the character of Aquinas is this kind of disembodied

intellect. It's certainly crazy. Yeah. No, sorry. I jumped the gun there early. I was referring to the end of his life when he said, nothing if not you, Lord. I love that you had that on your, what do you call it? Is it a bishop's shield or a crest or...? Yeah, the coat of arms. We always choose a motto that goes with the coat of arms. And in fact, I use it in my confirmation preaching. We're just finishing confirmation season now. Oh, that's a busy time for you, I bet. It's a very busy time. But I usually bring one of the servers where these little... They're called vimps, actually, these little shawls, and they have the bishop's coat of arms on them with that motto. And so I'll call one of the servers out at the end of my homily, and I'll say, hey, I want you all

to look at this coat of arms. And I explain to them what that means, non nisi te domine. And then I tell the story of Aquinas. And what I say to the confirmation kids is, okay, the Lord's standing right in front of you right now, and he says to you, I'll give you whatever you want. What would you say? And I said, there's the right answer, what Aquinas said. I'll have nothing except you, Lord. And it happened at that great event in connection with the text on the Blessed Sacrament that Thomas placed sort of dramatically at the foot of the cross, asking for judgment. And that's when the voice came, you've written well of me,

Thomas, what would you have as a reward? So that's a very important moment in his spiritual life. Excellent. Now, in a paper I read of yours, you discussed a surprising link between Thomas's doctrine of the Eucharist and his teaching on law. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, it's, I'll say, let me say this first. The section that I'm relying on there in the Summa is one of the most overlooked sections. It's in the second part of the Summa. And a lot of people read Thomas on beatitude.

They read him on the virtues, right, from the Prima Segunda. But there's a section now after the section on the natural law, which is question 90 and following. There's a section dealing with the divine law. Now, he's talking about the positive law of the Old Testament. He's talking about the Ten Commandments, talking about judicial and ceremonial precepts. And I realize, even as your listeners hear me, they might think, I'm going to skip that section. But they are, I believe this is true to say, the longest questions and respondios in the whole Summa. Go through the whole Summa, beginning to end. The longest treatments are in that section.

When Thomas talks about the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts of the old law, and then the new law of the gospel. So my point there is, Thomas Aquinas certainly felt this section was extremely important. Thought these issues of law were extremely important. Now, what does he mean? thought these issues of law were extremely important. Now, what does he mean? Well, the law in its various instantiations, natural law, which he saw largely coinciding with the Ten Commandments, the great precepts of the natural law are offered there. But then the ceremonial judicial precepts of the old law, they're all meant to place this ordo, this divine order in us.

They're the means by which we become properly ordered to God. Now, for all kinds of reasons, and he goes into that, the laws of the old covenant are not sufficient to that purpose. What's needed is the new law of the gospel, right? new law of the gospel, right? And what's the new law of the gospel? Well, that's Jesus himself, who's the Torah in person, right? Jesus is the incarnation of the logos, or the orderliness of God. So, when you internalize Jesus, you've now internalized the full truth of the Ten Commandments and that truth toward which the ceremonial judicial precepts of the law are pointing. Okay, now the last step to the Eucharist. How do we internalize Jesus? Well, the obvious answer is the Blessed Sacrament. By eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus, I take into myself the divine ordo, which is on partial offer in the Ten Commandments, which is in a sort of anticipatory form in the ceremonial and judicial precepts, and now is fully realized in Christ.

And that's why the Eucharist is the law in its fullest sense. It's the new law of the gospel now literally eaten and drunk and fully internalized. So, that's the basic argument. I spend a lot of time trying to amplify all that, but that's the basic trajectory of that argument. Yeah, when you talk about the Mosaic law ordering us towards God, that made me think of daily prayer, why it's so important to have a structured prayer life and perhaps the Blessed Sacrament being a part of that. Yeah, I mean, so that very act is what gets me online. But, you know, Thomas loves the image of the Eucharist as food for the journey as well. It's sustenance.

So baptism gives us the spiritual life, but then the spiritual life needs to be restored when it's lost, hence penance. But it also needs to be sustained. So if I'm not eating and drinking, my life is going to ebb away slowly. Well, the same is true in the spiritual order. That spiritual life in me will ebb away slowly. Well, the same is true in the spiritual order. That spiritual life in me will ebb away if I'm not feeding it. And so there's the metaphor of food, but it's really parallel to the metaphor of the law, right? The internalized order that's on display in Jesus now becomes mine. Yeah, so it's not just the summit, it's the source as well.

Yeah. Yeah, it's how I get the law in me. So think now, Thomas relies on Jeremiah 31, 31, you know, is, there's this law I gave to your fathers written on stone, but the days are coming when I will place my law within your hearts. Well, what is that? That's the Eucharist, is the law, the logos, the orderliness of God incarnate in Christ, now eaten and drunk and thereby internalized and written on our hearts. And that's why the Eucharist is needed for the

sustenance of the spiritual life. The teaching of the Church on the Blessed Sacrament is something very difficult to accept, especially for us moderns, perhaps. I became a Catholic, or at least reverted to the Catholicism when I was 17 at World Youth Day in Rome, and I remember looking around the room and seeing all of these young adults, very serious, throughout Mass, and I thought to myself, I'm not sure I believe that's bread, you know, one step at a time, you know. But how do you begin to explain that? As I say, you've got a real tact for explaining things. We've got many Protestant listeners, including several Protestant pastors who listen regularly. How would you begin explaining the Blessed Sacrament to them? Well, you know, I would follow Thomas

here, that there's something, it seems very clear in our great tradition, there's something utterly unique about the Eucharist. So all the sacraments, he said, contain the virtuos Christi, or the power of Christ. So we talk about Christ himself baptizing, right, when people are baptized, Christ himself forgiving. So the power of Christ to give spiritual life, the power of Christ to forgive sins, the power of Christ to heal in the sacrament of the anointing, etc. But then Thomas says in the Eucharist, it's not just the virtus Christi, it's ipse Christus. It's Christ himself is present in the Eucharist. Not just his power, that's true of all the sacraments, but Christ himself is present. And he plays there, too, with the anticipation and realization thing, you know, that you got all kinds of signs and symbols and indicators of the divine,

right, in the Old Testament. If that's all the Eucharist is, well then, okay, it's just one more of those. Nothing qualitatively different has happened. Or it's even less than, right? I mean, if the manna which fell from heaven was the antitype, yeah, it's not very impressive, just to have the end of it all. It's one more iteration of this Old Testament style, but that there's something that is unique and utterly distinctive, qualitatively different, then we got to play a different game. So how do you make sense of ipse Christus being present? Well, then you go into the famous doctrine of transubstantiation. And I think the best way to get at it is to, again, follow him. And this goes back to the fathers.

Trent sums it up, including both Thomas and the fathers, but this idea goes back to Justin the Martyr, that it's, as Trent puts it, the verborum, by the power of the words that Christ becomes present. Again, go back to the fathers, that when the words are enunciated over these elements, they become the body and blood of Christ. Somehow it's by the words that an ontological change is affected, right? Now, put that in a properly biblical framework. And this is central to Thomas's metaphysics, that the divine word is not merely descriptive. So, I mean, our words are descriptive.

I can describe to you what my office looks like right now, and you can describe to me how many people listen to your podcast, etc., right? So, that's language that is derivative from being, dependent upon being, and now expressive of the truth of being. Okay, good. Now, take another step. Beyond that, our words can affect reality, not just describe it, right? So if I right now were to say to you, you know, Matt, I think this is the worst podcast I've ever heard. Yeah.

Well, that would, it's not true, by the way. Super offensive, and I'd cry a bit. Yeah. Yes. And that's my point is let's say I really meant that. And you somehow intuited, God, like he really means that. Yeah. Uh, right. It might even affect you physically. You know, it would certainly affect you psychologically. It might even, is it make you cry? It might affect you physically. So our words are, yeah, I use the examples of, uh, of a, uh, umpire in baseball calling somebody out. Yeah. Well, by that very verbal move, the game has changed. You might not like it. You might disagree with them, but nevertheless, the game has changed because

the guy's been called out. Right. Yeah. Um, a compliment from your, or, you know, let's go back to my story again. Tom Paulson, 1974, spoke words to this young kid about Thomas Aquinas that absolutely changed my life. So, in other words, our words are descriptive, but our words are also effective. They can change reality. All right, now take the next step. The next step is God's Word. So, God's Word is creative. How come? Well, because God isn't just sort of looking at the world and passively describing it. Rather, God speaks, and that's a biblical metaphor for the placing of intelligibility in things, right? So the world is not dumbly there.

It's intelligibly there. God has spoken the world into being. His word doesn't describe. It makes. And it makes at the most fundamental level. We speak of creatio ex nihilo, right? So God doesn't just rearrange reality as our little words can. So I could rearrange your psychology a bit by critiquing your show, right?

I can rearrange the game of baseball by calling somebody out. But God's word reaches down to the very roots of the being of something and constitutes it as real. Now, next step, who's Jesus? He's not just one prophet among many. If he were, then he could describe things, he could affect things, as certainly Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel continue to do. I can be affected by their words even now. So Jesus could do all that if he were merely a prophet. But if he's the incarnate Son of God, if he is, as St. John puts it, the Word made flesh, the Word through which all things came to be, well, that means something now qualitatively different.

That means what he says is, right? What he says is. And then we have anticipation of this with, you know, Lazarus come out and he came out. Jesus' word affects reality in this perfect way. Little girl get up and she got up, you know. But now, press it all away. Little girl get up and she got up, you know. But now, press it all away.

When Jesus says at the Last Supper over the bread and the cup, this is my body. This is my blood. Well, you know, you and I could sit around and we could manipulate symbols in a way to remind people of Jesus. Okay. We could create symbolic systems. That's why the claim that you're dealing with a symbolic reality. Well, I mean, ho-hum, anyone could do that. You and I could do that. Let's read the scripture and let's reenact what Jesus did and it'll symbolize what he was all about. But see, Jesus speaking those words affects reality at the deepest level.

Wow. Now, once you see that, it seems to me, now John chapter 6 takes on a whole new resonance, right? When Jesus, over and against his skeptical audience, keeps insisting, you know, my flesh is real food, my blood is drink. And, you know, the people balk. Well, heck, he could have just cleared it up in 10 seconds by saying, oh, everybody, look, calm down. I'm not talking literally. I'm talking about symbols. But see, why did that whole crowd leave? If he were just trading in symbols, Jews knew all about symbols and symbolic language, and what's the big deal? And why would they be so offended? When he uses different analogies elsewhere,

he always explained them. So when he says, you know, I'm the door, I'm divine, no one thinks that he's growing leaves, no one's questioning him, or he explains it, or the gospel writer explains it. Yeah, or unless you're born again, and well, can I climb back in my mother's womb? Well, I mean, it's eminently clear that we're dealing with a spiritual metaphor. But then there's that weird text of John 6, that weird text, where he insists upon, I'd say, the densely ontological reality of what's being described. So, the Catholic Church in its teaching, I think, has hung on to these, let's face it, deeply biblical ideas. See, I resist the claim, and you hear it a lot, that the Catholic teaching represents some, you know, later accretion or it's,

you know, these weird additions from Northern European animism or, you know, I think all that's for the birds. I think it's deeply biblical intuitions that are undergirding this teaching on the real presence. Now, Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of transubstantiation is a way in more technical language to talk about exactly this. Right. That the substance of the bread and the wine change into the substance of the body and blood of Jesus, even as the appearances of bread and wine remain. So, for accidents, by the way, or species, we say sometimes, just say appearance. That's all it means. The fundamental reality has changed. Now because the priest at the mass

has spoken in persona Christi and Using Christ's own words, you know how the priest watching the prayer shifts from the third person to the first person You know the night before he died Jesus took bread. So he's describing right? So but then he gave thanks and gave it to his disciples, saying, now we shift to the first person. It's very eloquent, very important. Because now the priest is speaking clearly not his own words. If, you know, Robert Barron sits down, let's put together a symbolic, who cares?

I mean, who cares? Of course I could do that. You could do it. Anyone could. Any clever person could do that. You could do it. Anyone could. Any clever person could do that. But now in persona Christi capitis and speaking the very words of Jesus, this is my body, this is my blood, with the full intentionality behind that, now, vi verborum, right, by the power of those words, an ontological change at the most fundamental level is affected. That's what we mean by transubstantiation. So, it's not like a magic

tricks going on here. That's a total caricature, you know? And I think people say to me on my YouTube site, it's like, well, all we got to do is just bring that host in and put it under a microscope and let's check the cellular structure. What's funny is if the cellular structure actually changed, you would disprove. But if it did, you would disprove the doctrine. Well, as Aquinas said, yes, because I always say to people, anything at the level of appearance is not what we're talking about. Because that's what Thomas would have called accidents or the species, right? The appearance. There's no change at that level.

There's nothing to be seen here. Think of the cops saying, move along, nothing to be seen here. That's true of the Eucharist. That's why, for example, and people miss this too, that the Aquinas will say the Earistic change is not a miracle now why because mirari right you wonder oh look at that that's amazing like lazarus a dead man coming that's a miracle yeah but the eucharist is not a miracle because there's nothing to be seen there's nothing that i'm seeing that's, oh, isn't that amazing? That's why, you know, when your senses can't take it in, but it's by faith that I see it. So, it's, yes, a stupendous,

amazing thing that's happened, but it's not a miracle because it doesn't show up as a visual event in the world. Yeah, that reminds me of Aquinas' line, something to the effect of either truth speaks truly or there is no truth. Yeah. When Christ says, this is my body, yeah, after a bunch of exegesis looking at the Greek, we've decided what he meant was, this is my body. I mean, it's a radical claim, but it's a radical religion. Go back to, is John 6, 6, 6, which of course people always find interesting, that, you know, are you going to leave me too? So, I mean, like everybody left. I think that's fascinating, that text, because why would they all leave if this were just symbolic talk?

I don't think that's hard to understand or, you know. But they, in other words, they got the radicality of what he was saying. And because he kept insisting on it. the radicality of what he was saying. And because he kept insisting on it. And then finally, this is the Johannine version of the Messianic confession. Because it's Peter that speaks now, as he does in the Synoptics, you know, in Caesarea Philippi. But here he speaks for the others and says, Lord, to whom shall we go? And mind you, you have the words of everlasting life. And that's really interesting. The Viverborum, right? By the power of the words, this change is effective.

You have the words of everlasting life, the words of consecration, we would say. Yeah. Well, goodness, I mean, if this is true, this has got to change how we worship and how we be a Christian. So for our Catholic listeners, what advice do you have for them, for me, for us to grow in our love and devotion of the Blessed Sacrament? Yeah, go, do it. Spend a holy hour. I'm a great advocate of the holy hour. Fulton Sheen gave that gift to the church, you know, a long time ago, because he was saying it back in the 40s and 50s to priests. But my generation, if you had said to us when we were in the seminary,

did you do your holy hour today? We would have said, what are you talking about? I wouldn't have known what that word meant. That phrase meant the holy hour. But then, I think through God's grace, Fulton Sheen's teaching leapt over a generation, but landed in the next generation. And the younger ones, when I was a teacher at Mundelein, the seminary, and then rector, they taught us in a way about the holy hour and the importance of it. And it's something now that's a regular practice in my life, is the first thing in the morning. That's wonderful. I chapel, you know. So I would say that. It's an uncomfortable experience being alone and quiet.

Like I'd much rather potter about a Catholic bookstore where I can be distracted than have to be alone with me who I don't like. I think that really is what it gets down to for most of us. Well, yeah, and isn't that – was it Pascal's line? Yeah, exactly. Very Pascalian. The fact that we can't stay in a room by ourselves, you know. Yeah. Yeah, so itian. The fact that we can't stay in a room by ourselves, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. So it takes some practice and some time. I found, if this is any comfort to your listeners, I found it's gotten easier as I've gotten older. And maybe it's just a function of age that you're a little less frenetic. I found it easier to spend that kind of time in prayer as I've gotten older. But there's a lot of good books and pamphlets, that sort of thing, on the holy hour, how to spend that time, like divide it up into four segments of 15 minutes, and that's fine, that sort of thing. I pray at least a large part of my office usually when I'm doing the holy hour, but I pray the rosary. I do the Jesus prayer. I do a fair amount of the, I look at him,

he looks at me stuff. I've been, my family and I have been going to a Byzantine church for the last three years. That's great to hear that you pray the Jesus prayer. I do. Yeah. I've loved it for a long time. And I got one of those little, um, chokis, the chokia, the rope, um, um, prayer. And I, I, I love that. Yeah. I can't stop it now. It's psychosomatic. It spills over into everything. Here's a quick story. My wife recently, unfortunately, had to undergo surgery, but when she woke up from the anesthesia, the first thing she said without knowing it, and it was told to her after, was, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. Because this is what she was, you know, saying as she went under. That's pretty good. Yeah. And that's meant to do. That's actually very good.

Yeah. Well, that's beautiful. I like that. Just go. And maybe that might mean calling a parish and scheduling a time so that people are kind of expecting you to be there, and so you can't cop out. That might be a good idea.

Yeah, but do it. I mean, just get it into your body. Get it into the rhythm of your life. You know, Flannery O'Connor had that great line, someone asking, what can Catholics do to improve their knowledge of the Bible? And she said, well, Catholics have two eyes and brains, don't they? Like, pick up the book and read it. I love it. Yeah, it's not that difficult. It's not complicated. It's not like a three-step formula. Just do it. Yeah, Start. Well, two final questions, and these will be brief. Thank you so much again for your time. What would your advice to those listening who want to delve deeper into Thomas Aquinas be? I mean, should they just go

pick up the Sumer? Are there some books you would recommend? Maybe an amazing podcast? I don't know. Just, yeah. There are a lot of actually good introductions to Aquinas floating around. The one I read as a young man, F.C. Copleston's book on Aquinas, which is very good, short, and it's very well written. You know, Copleston, the great historian, a philosopher, a philosophy in the 20th century, but writes this very punchy, helpful introduction. Still, it's called simply Aquinas, I think. It's his birthday again today, G.K. Chesterton. If you've got a poetic frame of mind, get his wonderful biography slash study of Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox. Wonderful. And then if you want a little more high-octane stuff,

pick up Etienne Gilson, maybe The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. Pick up Jacques Maritain on Aquinas. I wrote a little introduction to Aquinas some years ago called Thomas Aquinas' Spiritual Master. Yeah. Think of Peter Kreeft, right, the summa of the summa. I think it would be a helpful way to get the overview. Read someone like Ed Fazer. Ed has done some wonderful kind of introductory, serious, good, solid stuff,

but introductory to Aquinas' project. Read Jean-Pierre Tourelle if you want a treatment of his life. And the other one too, James Weisheipel's biography of Aquinas, which I think is still very fine and very readable. So there's a few places to start. Yeah, I think that's good. And then I've heard you say in regards to the Summa, you might just pick it up and just read the questions and the article titles and the respondios rather than going through all of it might be a way to go through it. But of course, that Aristotelian metaphysical jargon can sometimes get in the way, which is what those books will help remedy. It can, right. And that was advice given to me long ago by, how old was it now? I want to say like Michael Buckley, one of these big, serious scholars.

And he said that's how he reads Aquinas every year is he just, he reads the respondios. Excellent. And he skips. Now, other people say just the opposite. They say the high octane stuff is found in the objections and responses. And there's something to that too. That's where he's really going to wrestle with the – Yeah. I was just thinking a real cheater's way to read through the Sumer in a year is just to read the article title and the said contra.

It's like a sentence. Yeah. That'll do. Just give me the bottom line. The basic opinion, yeah. Yeah. But no, Aquinas is like an ocean. He's one of these thinkers.

He's like Hegel, like Kant, like Aristotle, and like Plato. He's just bottomless. Spend your life exploring Aquinas. Well, thanks so much, and thanks so much for doing your part to help the rest of us learn more about Aquinas and for believing in us younger Catholics that we can read and grapple and understand these deeper works. Yeah, man, thank you very much. And thanks for your work. And keep going because we need people like you to spread the word. Great. Thank you very much, Bishop Barron. Terrific. You're welcome.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you very much enjoyed this interview. Thanks so much for tuning in. A couple of things I want to ask you to do before we look at those church father quotes. Remember, this is the second week of our competition. If you want to win a copy of the Summa Theologiae, like the five-volume copy that's super expensive, which I will mail to your door if you win. I'm also giving away 10 copies of my new book,

Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. How do you enter the raffle? I hear you ask. Well, I told you at the beginning, but let me tell you again. All you got to do is go to Twitter and tell Dave Rubin to have Matt Fradd on his show. Would you? I would love to talk to him about the detrimental effects of pornography, all that's coming out in the research. I said earlier, I run another podcast called Love People Use Things, which is a secular show, really. I'm clearly a Catholic, but my co-host is an atheist. But we both agree that the world would be better off without sexual exploitation. And I think it's those sort of inter-worldview dialogues that Dave

Rubin is interested in. So again, if you want to enter the raffle, go to Twitter and tell Dave Rubin to have Matt Fradd on your show. You're going to add both of us and then put www.mattfradd.com so you can tell him about me. And then next week, I will announce the winners. Please review us on iTunes if you like. And thank you very much. I want to say a big thanks to my supporters. You know, me interviewing Bishop Aaron, all the stuff that's taking place here, none of it would happen if it weren't for you. Thank you very much for being a supporter. If you want to support Pints with Aquinas, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support or donate. And you can give me as little as one

buck a month if you want to help this good work continue. All right. Now, let's take a look at these church father quotes. I have to say that I find this compelling evidence for the truth of Catholicism. Maybe somebody might say the truth of orthodoxy in that orthodoxy and Catholicism believe many of the things that the early church did. But look, if you are a Protestant right now, and you're listening to this, and you hear what the Catholic church says about the real presence, as Bishop Barron said in our interview, you might be tempted to think that maybe this was some medieval invention, right? Well, here's one sure fire way to know that it wasn't a medieval invention. Read what the earliest Christians

had to say, all right? And again, we can debate over scripture, right? I can say, well, look, you look at the scripture. When Jesus says, this is my body, maybe he meant this is my body. When he says, eat my flesh, maybe he meant that, right? And you might say, well, no, they meant this. Again, one sure way of figuring out how this was interpreted, how this was understood, was by reading the earliest Christians, right? After the New Testament was put together, or even, sorry, I should have said after the New Testament was written. So, let's look at a few here. I think this is really compelling evidence for what the church says and has always said about the Eucharist. First, this is from Ignatius of Antioch writing in his letter to the Smyrnians around AD 110. You understand? That's

pretty early, hey? 110. He says, take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ, which has come to us and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our savior, Jesus Christ, flesh, which suffered for our sins and which that father in his goodness raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes. Here again is Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Romans again at AD 110. He says, I have no taste for corruptible food, nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was the seed of David. And for drink, I desire his blood,

which is loving corruptible. Here's what Justin Martyr said in his first apology in 151. Okay. He says, quote, we call this food Eucharist and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing, which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration, that is baptism, and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation. So too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured is both the flesh and the blood of the incarnated Jesus. Again, that's from the first apology from Justin Martyr in 151. Maybe a couple more. I could go on and on. Irenaeus says this. This is from Against the Heresies in around AD 189. Okay. Quote, if the Lord were from other than the Father,

how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood, right? In other words, if he wasn't God, how could he perform this? How could he change the bread and wine into his body and blood? The fact that he can do that shows that he's from the Father. Let's see here. Clement of Alexandria, that shows that he's from the Father. Let's see here. Clement of Alexandria. Okay. This is from AD 191. Okay. He says, eat my flesh, Jesus says, and drink my blood. The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients. He delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children. Let's do one more, okay? This comes from Origen, okay? This is from his homilies on numbers around the year 248.

Formally, says Origen, there was baptism in an obscure way. Now, however, in full view, there is regeneration in water and in the Holy Spirit. Formally, in an obscure way, water and in the Holy Spirit. Formerly, in an obscure way, there was manna for food. Now, however, in full view, there is the true food, the flesh of the Word of God, as he himself says, my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. This is something we touched upon in our interview that when we look to the manna in the desert, okay, this is a type, I said accidentally antitype, I meant type of the Eucharist, right? You think of this, this is how, you know, we understand typology and Paul employs this in some of his letters. You know, think about it this way, just like God set, well, just as Israel was under the captivity of the Egyptians and God freed them through the waters of the Red Sea where they were to sojourn, being sustained by manna until they reached the promised land.

So we Christians are under the bondage of Satan. How does he free us? Well, he frees us not through the waters of the Red Sea, but through the waters of baptism. He sustains us not by manner, but by the true manner, okay? Christ talked about this in John 6, his flesh and blood, so that we can journey to the promised land of heaven. I really hope that that was a help. I would love to get your feedback. So, shoot me some tweets, let me know what you're thinking. And just a pleasure to be with you. And if you're a Protestant and you still disagree with me, hopefully at least you'll understand a little

more why the Catholic church and the Orthodox churches are so insistent on this teaching and have always been for the past 2000 years. Thanks for listening to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and I cannot wait to chat with you next week.