The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 182: The Signs of Bread and Wine (2026)

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Fr. Mike breaks down the various ways the Eucharist fulfills the sacrifices of bread and wine of the Old Covenant and explains why the Eucharist is central to God’s plan of salvation. We learn that the Eucharist is a pledge of God’s love for each one of us and a tangible reminder that Jesus is always with us. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1333-1340. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

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Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism. In A Year podcast, where we encounter God's plant of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 1882. We are reading paragraphs 1333 to 1340.

As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach. But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And you can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates, daily notifications. Today is day 182. Yesterday we talked about all the different names of the Holy Eucharist, right?

The holy sacrifice of the mass, the holy and divine liturgy, holy communion, holy mass, you know, Itemisa S, that being sent out into the world as living tabernacles who have been filled with Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, divinity. Today, we're talking about the Eucharist in the economy of salvation. Remember that term economy of salvation refers to what's the story of salvation? What's the way in which God has redeemed our lives and saved us? And so the Eucharist has a very, very important place in the way, the story of God's salvation, the way in which God has saved the world. And so we're going to look through all the way back to the beginning of the Jewish people.

What is the way in which the Eucharist was prefigured? What's the way that Jesus gave us the Eucharist? And what is the way that we're going to talk about eventually how that has been lived out in the life of the church? So that's today, 1333 to 1340. Let's say a prayer. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you so much. Thank you for the gift of your son, Jesus Christ,

the incarnate word 2,000 years ago given to us, eternally begotten of the Father yet entering into time two millennia ago. We also thank you that you, Lord, Father in Heaven, continue to send Jesus into our lives. You continue to give us the body, blood, soul, and divinity of your son at every Mass. Lord God, we thank you and we can never thank you enough. We praise you and we can never praise you enough. We worship you and we can never worship you the way you deserve.

We just, but we try. Jesus, you've asked us to do this in memory of you for the glory of the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Help us every time we approach the Mass. Help us to always approach with hearts that have been transformed by your grace, transformed by your Holy Spirit and are able to worship you the way you deserve to be worshipped and loved. In Jesus' name, we pray.

Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son. Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 182. We are reading paragraphs 1333 to 1340. The Eucharist in the Economy of Salvation. The signs of bread and wine. At the heart of the eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ's body and blood. Faithful to the Lord's command, the church continues to do, in his memory, and until his glorious return, what he did on the eve of his passion. He took bread. taking the chalice filled with the fruit of the vine.

The signs of bread and wine become, in a way, surpassing understanding, the body and blood of Christ. They continue also to signify the goodness of creation. Thus, in the offeratory, we give thanks to the creator for bread and wine, fruit of the work of human hands, but above all, as fruit of the earth and of the vine, gifts of the creator. The church sees in the gesture of the king-priest Malkisadek, who brought out bread and wine, a prefiguring of her own offering. In the Old Covenant, bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgement to the Creator.

But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus. The unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt. The remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God. Their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land. the pledge of God's faithfulness to his promises. The cup of blessing at the end of the Jewish Passover meal

adds to the festive joy of wine and eschatological dimension, the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup. The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the blessing, breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this unique bread of his Eucharist.

The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the hour of Jesus' glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father's Kingdom where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the blood of Christ. The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the passion scandalized them. They said, this is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? the Eucharist and the cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery and it never ceases to be the occasion of division. As Jesus asks them, will you also go away? The Lord's question echoes

through the ages as a loving invitation to discover that only he has the words of eternal life and that to receive in faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself. The institution of the Eucharist. The Lord, having love, Loved those who were his own, loved them to the end. Knowing that the hour had come to leave this world and return to the father, in the course of meal, he washed their feet and gave them the commandment of love. In order to leave them a pledge of this love, in order never to depart from his own and to make them sharers in his Passover, he instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of his death and resurrection

and commanded his apostles to celebrate it until his return. thereby he constituted them priests of the New Testament. The three synoptic gospels and St. Paul have handed on to us the account of the institution of the Eucharist. St. John, for his part, reports the words of Jesus in the synagogue of Copernum that prepare for the institution of the Eucharist. Christ calls himself the bread of life come down from heaven. Jesus chose at the time of Passover to fulfill what he had announced at Copernum, giving his disciples his body and his blood. As scripture, states, then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.

So Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it. They went and prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he sat at table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took bread. and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, the cup after supper saying,

This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. By celebrating the last supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning. Jesus passing over to his father by his death and resurrection, the new Passover is anticipated in the Passover. supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the church in the glory of the kingdom. All right, there we have at day 182, paragraphs 1333 to 1340. There is something so powerful about this reality. Let's go back.

The signs of bread and wine go all the way back to you have obviously the fruit of the earth. So here is the gift of bread, the gift of wine that is given to us from the Lord. We even remember this fact every single time we celebrate the Mass. We talk about the fact that here's the bread, the fruit of the earth, here's the wine, the fruit of the vine, a gift of the creator, but also going all the way back to Genesis. And we have the great king priest, Melchizedek. If you remember this at all, remember there was a guy named Abraham, but his name was still Abram at this time, and he comes back from the defeat of the kings, and he meets Melchizedek, who is the king of Salem, which is the king of peace, right? Salem ultimately is Jerusalem. But here's Melchizedek, and he goes to the

Mount Moriah, where Jerusalem is. you know, that same area. And on top of this mountain, he offers a sacrifice on behalf of Abram, a sacrifice of bread and wine. And he blesses Abram. And Abram gives him a tenth of everything. And there's this remarkable thing here that's just, it's so strange. I mean, in the sense that we have this named king priest, Malkisadec. And when I say king priest, that's the unique role, right? Not every king is a priest. Not every priest is a king. And yet here is Malkisadec, the very first one we see in the entire Bible. And he offers a sense. sacrifice of bread and wine on Mount Moriah, or not mountain range right there outside of Jerusalem.

And think about the foreshadowing here. Ultimately, we have Jesus Christ, who is, obviously, he is the king of kings. Jesus, the great high priest, who is king and priest. And what does he do? On Holy Thursday, he offers up a sacrifice of himself under the appearance of bread and wine. The next day, on Good Friday, he offers up himself on the cross. And there's something so powerful where on Mount Moriah, right, Galgatha in this place and this mountain range, that's where Jerusalem is built. It's just incredible, this connection between all the way back to the king priest, Makhizadec, who offers bread and wine on top of the mountain and Jesus Christ, our king and priest, who offers himself on Galgatha on top of the mountain.

Also, bread and wine. It's just amazing, right? So then you have paragraph 1334 talking all about the old covenant, bread and wine were offered in sacrifice. You also have new significance in the Exodus. And every year they celebrate the Passover. You have not only the unleavened bread, but also in the desert. You have the manna come from heaven.

And ultimately, this gets fulfilled in Jesus. But even before that, Jesus is hinting at this whole time. His miracles, the multiplication of the loaves. How many times Jesus does that? He does at least twice we know of. And the Lord says, what's he do? He says the blessing. He breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude.

Remember how Jesus turns to the apostles and says, you give them something to eat. And they said, we have nothing. And so what happens? They give their gifts to Jesus, right? The bread, they give the fish to Jesus. He takes the bread, takes that food. He blesses it, breaks it. And then gives it to the disciples, gives it to the apostles essentially, right?

To give to the people. And there's just something about this invitation to mediation. We'll say it like that. I don't know. Hopefully that's a good way to say this. But even in that, we have this idea, at least in seminal, form, right? We're kind of like in this, you know, germ form, in this small form, this idea that here's Jesus who gives us himself, Jesus who feeds us, but he feeds us through the ministry of the

priests, right? These apostles are going to ultimately be ordained, we call it ordained, priests at the last supper, commissioned as priests at the last supper when Jesus says, do this in memory of me. It's so important to realize that here's how God wants to work, right? Yes, Jesus is the one mediator between God and man. He's the only one who can mediate salvation. But we all participate in mediation, right? If you've ever shared the gospel of anybody, you have mediated the words of the gospel. If you've ever helped anybody, you've mediated God's grace in a certain way. And so this is just part of it. And this is how Jesus has instituted this priesthood is by calling these men and saying, okay, I'm going to give to you what you cannot give on your own. And you're going to take what I've

given you and give it to the world. This is, part of this whole thing. Now, at the same time, what we've been talking about in the Eucharist is that this bread and wine truly become, in a way, surpassing all understanding, surpassing all expectation, truly become the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. And this is a stumbling block. In fact, paragraph 1336 says this. The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just like the announcement of the Passover scandalized them. And what did they say? The disciples say, this is a hard saying who can listen to it. Jesus has said, the bread that I will give for you is my flesh for the life of the world.

And he says, before this, he says, I have bread to give you that if you eat, you'll never die. We want this. We want this bread. Okay, I'm the bread of life. What, what? Wait, wait, what? And then he says, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. And they argued and said, this saying is hard. Who can understand? Who can accept it? Who can listen to it? And many, many left him that day. This is John chapter six. many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. And this is one of those moments. It's a moment of truth.

Jesus lets them go away. In fact, after all these disciples are walking away from Jesus and this teaching of the Eucharist, and this is remarkable, right? Because in so many ways, this is the only time any of Jesus' disciples have abandoned him because of one of his teachings. There are people who rejected him for other reasons. People rejected him and never followed him because of his teachings. This is the only time we ever have someone abandoning Jesus, a disciple, abandoning Jesus

over one of his teachings, and the teaching is on the Eucharist. And Jesus, rather than arguing, rather than saying, no, being desperate and inviting, begging them to come back, he looks at the 12, right? Remember the apostles, the original boy band? He looked at the 12, and he says, will you also go away? Will you also go away? Because this is so key, and this is the last line of paragraph 1336, to receive in faith the gift of the Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself.

To receive in faith, the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself. And the opposite is also true. To reject the gift of Christ's Eucharist is to reject the Lord himself. This is one of the things to walk away from the Eucharist is to walk away from the Lord himself. Because this is the gift of his love. In fact, you know, these four last four paragraphs of today are so powerful. They're so beautiful. Paragraph 1337, I love this. I mean, just the Lord, having loved those who were his own, loved them to the end.

Knowing that the hour had come to leave this world and return to the father in the course of the meal, he washed their feet and gave them the commandment of love. In order to leave them a pledge of this love, in order to never depart from his own to make them sharers in his Passover, he instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of his death and resurrection. Man, this is the gift of love. I mean, think about how indifferent we are. Think of how indifference we are. Think of how in different. I've been so much of my life. I didn't like going to Mass. I hate going to Mass. So bored by what's going on. I had no idea. I had no idea. It reminds me in so many ways. I remember hearing a story from a man in Christopher West. If you've ever heard of Christopher West, he teaches the theology of the body, which is John Paul the second's theology of the body. And at one point, I remember him sharing the story. I don't know if I've shared this here on this

podcast before, but sharing the story about his wife's father. So his father-in-law, that he, I I guess he never had a chance to meet him. He passed away, I think, before Christopher met his wife. But sharing this story, he said that, you know, they got married on a Saturday and so on Sunday morning they went to Mass because, you know, it's Sunday morning, go to Mass. And normal Mass and just, you know, ordinary time, whatever. And at the end of the Mass, they go up and receive communion and come back to their seats. And I think it's the way I remember the story pretty soon, this young bride could feel this,

her new husband next to her, like just shaking and sniffling. And she looks over and she sees tears streaming down this man's face. She's never seen him crying in her life. And the whole time dating, she's never seen him cry. Now, here's this man crying. And, you know, so the closing prayer happens, and he's still kneeling there crying. And the last song happens, and he's still kneeling there, kneeling there crying. And at one point, you're getting kind of nervous, like, you know, are you regretting anything, honey?

What's going on here? And at one point, you know, she asks, what's wrong? And he looks up and through these tears in his eyes, he just says, I never knew. He looks at her and says, I never knew. And she's, we never knew what? He says, I've been going to Mass. my whole life, every Sunday, my whole life, I never knew. She said, you never knew what? And he says, last night, I took you in my arms and I said, this is my body for you. In that intimate embrace,

right? And here, today at Mass, I finally heard those words, the words of Jesus saying, this is my body for you. And if the love that God has for me is even a sliver of a love that I have for you, I never realized. Every time I've been going to Mass, this has been God's gift of love for me. He's been trying to tell me how much he loves me. He's trying to show me how much he loves me at every Mass. And I just never realized it. Because every Mass he's been saying, this is me given for you.

Does that make sense? And so it's just one of those powerful moments that how to often we are so indifferent. This is the Lord. Having loved those who are his own, he loved them to the end. And of course, we have in the scripture, the synoptic gospels, you know that, that's Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, they all have the account of the institution of the Eucharist. St. John is the only gospel that doesn't include the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper,

but that's because St. John has John chapter 6, which is this incredible teaching of Jesus in the synagogue of Copernum, where he makes it absolutely clear what Jesus means when he says this is his body, and spoiler alert, he means this is his body. That's it. When Jesus said, what does he mean when he says, this is my body? This is my blood. Yeah, he means this is my body and this is my blood, which is just incredible last thing today. Paragraph 1340. It says by celebrating the last supper with his disciples in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning.

The Eucharist is the fulfillment. The Eucharist is the fulfillment of this massive story of God delivering his people from death and from slavery and giving them life and giving them freedom. The whole thing just fulfills this and gives it its definitive meaning. And ultimately, every time we celebrate this, we celebrate the new Passover of our Lord. We celebrate the new covenant. Remember what Jesus says? This is the new covenant in my blood.

The blood of the new and eternal covenant we say at every single mass. And anticipates, every time we go to mass, it anticipates the final Passover of the church in the glory of the kingdom. Now, the saints and angels, they already experienced that right now. that you and I get a foretaste of that at every single mass. We get a taste of the love God has for you and the love God has for me at every single mass. And it's such a gift. So my prayer is that you have the opportunity to get to mass as soon as you can. You have the opportunity not only to get there and to be present, but also to hear that

voice of the Lord giving you the gift of himself. This is my body given for you. This is my blood poured out for you because God loves you so much. God loves you so much. You listening to this right now. He wants you to know this. With all your weaknesses, with all your failures, in your littleness, as well as in your victories and your strength

and your importance, God loves you. I just hope that you know that. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.

Thank you.