AQUINAS ON THE EUCHARIST

QUESTION 73   INTRODUCTION Hey patreons of the Catholic Man Show, Karlo Broussard here. I’d like to welcome you to this course on Aquinas and the Eucharist where we’ll be looking at what Aquinas says about the Eucharist in his Summa Theologiae, tertia pars, questions 73-83. I’d like to thank Adam and David for this opportunity to share the course with you, which is a token of their appreciation for your support of the show—a support that I would strongly encourage you to continue in. I think you’re going to enjoy going through this course on the Eucharist because Aquinas has some great things to say about it. And, of course, it’s always to geek out on this stuff. I hope that you have as much fun as I will have teaching it. Aquinas divides his treatment of the Eucharist into seven major themes or aspects of the Sacrament and treats each with one or several different “Questions,” which are basically further subpoints to make about those major aspects. And each of these Questions are further divided into articles, or what Aquinas calls, “points of inquiry.” Each of the lessons for this course will ordinarily deal with a single question. But there will be times when we have to divide a question into two lessons in order to do justice to it. For example, Question 75 is so packed and dense that we’ll need two lessons to do it justice. The methodology that I’ll use is simpe: read the text and offer commentary as we go. Some things can be received upon an initial reading. Others, however, not so much. Sometimes there is a need for further commentary. And I’ll do my best to provide that for you. Also, my goal is to outline Aquinas’s thought in a way that easily digestible, giving summaries of the various arguments with premises and conclusions. I know it helps me to keep track of exactly what Aquinas is saying because it makes explicit what Aquinas often is saying implicitly. Now, before we begin diving into Question 73 in this lesson, it’s important that we look at Aquinas’s outline of the material that he will be going through on the Eucharist. Aquinas says there are seven major aspects of the Eucharist to consider:

• The sacrament itself (Question 73)
• Its matter (Questions 74-77)
• Its form (Question 78)
• Its effects (Question 79)
• The use or receiving of the sacrament (Questions 80-81)
• The minister (Question 82)
• The rite of the sacrament (Question 83)

In this lesson, we’ll start with Question 73, which deals with the sacrament itself. It’s divided up into 6 articles, or as Aquinas puts it, “six points of inquiry.”

1. ARTICLE 1: Is the Eucharist a sacrament?

  Commentary:   What is a sacrament?   A sense perceptible sign that effects what it signifies.   So the question here is: Does the bread effect what it signifies, namely, the body and blood of Jesus?  

1. Aquinas’s Answer: Yes

  [An appeal to authority] “On the contrary, It is said in the Collect [*Postcommunion "pro vivis et defunctis"]: "May this Thy Sacrament not make us deserving of punishment."   [Aquinas’s own reasoning] “I answer that, The Church's sacraments are ordained for helping man in the spiritual life. But the spiritual life is analogous to the corporeal, since corporeal things bear a resemblance to spiritual. Now it is clear that just as generation is required for corporeal life, since thereby man receives life; and growth, whereby man is brought to maturity: so...