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A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist

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This book is relatively short, but contains some of the most thought-provoking insights on the mystery of the Eucharist to be written in the 20th century. Abbot Vonier was a visionary ahead of his time, some say, yet, he actually presents the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist from its very inception, drawing largely from the Thomistic tradition. Contemporary "Catholics" may find it a difficult read at first, but be assured, if you persevere, the payoff is worth the work. This book should be mandatory for all seminarians and students of theology. This book is available directly from the publisher or from the Franciscan University of Steubenville bookstore for only $12.95 plus tax! Buy and read this book and be transformed in Christ.

Vonier's book on the Eucharist is challenging. He writes with a precision that is alien to the written works most Americans have been exposed to. He clarifies with sophistication the Catholic belief in the Real Presence by focusing on sacramentality, avoiding the oversimplistic fashion in which the Real Presence is often talked about. In my opinion, the most compelling chapters are 20 ("Man's Share in the Eucharistic Sacrifice"), 21 ("The Eucharistic Liturgy"), 22 ("The Eucharistic Banquet"), which could stand alone as independent essays. At one point, Abbot Vonier makes a compelling call to become a people of the Eucharist: "If this mystery becomes the constant preoccupation of human society, its daily deed, its chief concern, its highest aspiration, then society is saved" (p. 169). We would become eucharistic people constantly in a state of gratitude to our Creator.

The Key to the understanding of "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist" is the first sentence of Chapter Ten. It should stand at the head of the book. "In theological matters the spark that illumines always comes from under the hoof of hard thinking." The hard thinking is accompanied by a certain "hard reading" because of the subject matter and at times because of the vocabulary. I am inclined to think that the average reader will find this work a challenge.

Given the atmosphere of "fuzzy" thinking run-a-muck in this modern era, one must prepare oneself well to deal with the concepts and the distinctions of Thomistic thought found in "A Key". Neither Abbot Vonier, St. Thomas nor the Catholic Faith, however allow for "fuzzy" thinking. Why should I be surprised! After further thought, the aforementioned sentence belongs where it was placed. Its effectiveness requires the experience of the struggle. Pay the price and the Catholic-of- faith will emerge significantly enriched.

"A Key" requires a clear faith in the supernatural which is not always a given in these times. This awakening occurred to me as I read deep into this little book, page 145 precisely: "Once we admit the fundamental principle that God has power to transpose reality and being from one order into the other, from the natural order into the sacramental order, we have committed ourselves to every possible instance of such transposition." But before that we must be clearly committed to the existence of the source of that fundamental principal. Especially in the matter of faith in a personal God, one with a central place in the life of each of us, we are required to reject "fuzzy thinking". Hazy notions incline toward a less than enthusiastic fidelity.

Perhaps because of "fuzzy thinking" far too many Catholics (not excluding some priests and deacons) treat the sacraments as mere "rites of passage" for which in turn they receive a "diploma." It's the "religion thing" to be done. "A Key", well digested, is a curative for that kind of mentality.

The guiding principle (A Key) that directs and informs the whole of this book is a well understood notion of sacramentality. Thankfully, the Abbott helps us in this regard. Nowhere is this truer than when speaking of the Eucharist. Religion is an integral part of the real world of everyday life. When we were born we were not endowed with a compartmentalized existence. It was a unified reality that was bestowed upon us. Through the reality of faith we enter into a mystical world, nonetheless real for being so, that is the seven sacraments. Through each sacrament the past, the present, and the future are bound together in an efficacious event which of itself is causative of sanctification. In a unique and most beautiful way the Eucharist is the "crown jewel" in this mystical treasure trove at the Catholic's disposal.

If we take to heart the thrust of this book, our spiritual lives will be enhanced and, in the words of the Abbott himself, it will make of us true mystics. Instead of instilling in me a feeling of uncomfortableness, I find that the thought makes me desirous of an ever-deepening emersion into the God-life, which the sacraments promise, especially the Eucharist.

While "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist" is a studious read, it is one well worth the effort. It is a book whose time has surely come. It deserves re-reading to sufficiently plumb its depths. In fact, the Sacrament of the Eucharist demands it.

I really love this book -- I first got my copy over a year ago, and have since read through it twice. This is a book filled with penetrating insights.

Like many people who consider themselves Christian, I never thought much of the Eucharist, even though I grew up in a Catholic home. My reading of A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist has changed that.

Some of the other reviewers here have mentioned the challenge this book poses in terms of reading, but that was not my experience. Sure, it's not "See Spot run," but the subject matter doesn't allow for that. The fact is that this is an extremely well-written book, and a pleasure to read. That said, Vonier touches on profound ideas -- the author goes very deep. But where he goes deepest, he exercises the most care -- going over certain layers of his thought more than once to allow the reader to better see the color and context of what he's talking about, a little like unfurling a great flag. When unfurled and it's up and waving in the wind before your eyes, it's awe-inspiring.

In this day and age, when the trivial is elevated, and the most important matters are completely neglected, this book is, in my opinion, a MUST READ for everyone who has any interest in his or her own soul. I mean this, if only because Christ called Himself "true food," by which, when it comes to us as Christians today, I believe He was referring to the Eucharist (c.f. John 6). I am no longer a Catholic, although I do admire the faith of some individual Catholics I know. And I sometimes can't help but wonder -- What is happening to the Catholic Church? It seems to be falling into a sinkhole of dissipation and corruption. Nonetheless, when it comes to the question of the Eucharist, Protestants are wrong. After reading "Key," I understand why the Eucharist is the heart of the Mass. When Jesus Christ stood before His disciples during the Last Supper, took bread and said, "Take, eat; this is My body," Matthew 14:22, He wasn't lying. I wish every Catholic would run out and buy, read and be inspired by A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist. It would make them better Catholics, which would be a blessing for us all.

Abbot Vonier's little book on the Mass is a treasure to be read and re-read; indeed, I have read it twice and am itching to read it again. Its greatness lies in the fact that it manages to synthesise the work of our great philosopher saint, St Thomas Aquinas.

Vonier first sets the scene by explaining the nature of the sacraments and making it clear that the Eucharist, whilst being the highest tree in the sacramental wood, it is nonetheless first and foremost a sacrament. He takes issue with some catholic theology since the reformation, which in an eagerness to point out the errors of protestant theology, has ended up treating the Eucharist as being supra sacramental.

Thus, Vonier on a number of occasions points out: why are we surprised at the mystery of the Eucharist, which contains the whole Christ, and yet not surprised by Baptism, which is itself a going down into the tomb with Christ, with the result that the soul claims for itself the merits of the Lord's death and resurrection. Why we are also not surprised that in the sacrament of confession, the words of the Priest, as alter Christus, do indeed take away our sins through the merits of the Lord's passion. The Eucharist belongs to the same order of mystery. But, there is a difference, the other sacraments are perfected through the sacramental effect on the person; the Eucharist, by contrast, is perfected with the words of consecration.

I have set out below some extensive quotations to encourage Catholics seeking to understand their sacramental faith to take the plunge and buy this book. It can be bought on Abebooks, if not obtainable here



"Sacraments are signs, commemorations, monuments of the past. If we neglected this aspect, whilst trying to saving the notion of sacrament, we would be destroying its very nature and making it a thing entirely of the spirit. This would be to go out into the night of Protestantism through another door".

"If the priest at the altar brought down Christ from heaven in his natural state as a full grown man, this would not be a sacrament at all, for the event would lack the very essence of the sacrament, representative signification"."

"Sacraments are a unique creation with entirely new laws"

"Any effort we make in order to cultivate sacramental thought will be rewarded with precious fruits in our spiritual life; it will make us into true mystics"

"Our personal acts link us up with Christ; in this Catholics and protestants are agreed. But, the use of external things, of the sacramental signs, also link us up with Christ".

"the Eucharist belongs to the Divine cult because in that sacrament Divine worship is found in a supreme manner, as it is the sacrifice of the Church."

"The sacramental graces are specially characterised by the intimate connection with Christ's passion and death. They are not just any race, but grace flowing from the pierced side of Christ".

"Eucharistic sacrifice is an essentially sacramental thing; the Eucharist is a sacrament at its best because it is a ritual offering to God in the new Covenant"

Abbot Vonier makes three key points about sacraments:

(i) their representative significance;

(ii) the sacrament is not only man's healing but to God's glorification;

(iii) sacrament actually contains what it signifies.

The Eucharist has a threefold signification:

(i) its a commemoration of the Lord's passion;

(ii) ecclesiastical unity

(iii) a figure of the divine fruition which will take place in heaven - i.e. the viaticum.

"For the Eucharist it means not only the whole external rite of Mass signifies sacrifice, but he consecrated elements, or rather, the finitely holy Thing under the elements, also signifies sacrifice, as being the immediate representation of Christ immolated on the Cross".

"The use of the sacrament, Holy Communion, is held by St Thomas to be something that follows upon a sacramental act which is already complete in the consecration".

"Shall we say that the faithful come in at the end of the sacred drama?"

"It has the nature of sacrifice inasmuch as it is offered up, and it has the nature of sacrament inasmuch as it is partaken.

"It is commonly called a mystical sacrifice, or the unbloody sacrifice; it is a sacrament which is sacrifice or, better still, that the sacrifice is sacrament..we need not think of the anguish of pain, of any laceration of body, we need not think of any hypothetical death; in fact al the things that constitute the natural sacrifice ought to to be far removed from our thoughts"...none of those natural details of Christ's sacrificial act on the Cross are to be read into the sacrament-sacrifice which takes place on the altar".

"On Calvary Christ was offered up in propria specie, and that on the altar He is offered up in specie sacramenti. True oneness is in fact saved only through the diversity of the two states"

"If they (Body and blood) do signify a sacrifice, then there is a sacrifice, according to the universal axiom, that the Christian sacraments do what they signify".

"the Eucharistic sacrifice is not directly a mystery of Christ's Person, it is primarily a mystery of Christ's Body and Blood".

"When we offer up the great sacrifice, we say that we are re-enacting Christ's death sacramentally. Now Chirst's death is the separation of his Body and Blood, we do neither more nor less when we sacrifice at the altar...We enter into the mystery of his Body and Blood".

"The soul of Christ is in the sacrament through real concomittance, because it is not without the Body; but it in not in the sacrament through the power of consecration and therefore if this sacrament had been consecrated or celebrated at the time when the soul was really separated from the Body, the soul of Christ would not have been under the sacrament".

"If the consecrated elements had been preserved during the whole drama of Christ's agony on the Cross; there would have been real suffering and real death in the blessed sacrament then, though there would not have been in the sacrament the external violence done to Christ's Body by the executioners"

"the Eucharistic Body and Blood are representations of Christ in the sate when He was not whole and entire; when he was broken on the Cross at his death"

"It is the very nature of the Eucharist sacrifice to be a representation of the past, not a mactation in the present. Christ's body and blood represent aptly and completely that phase of His earthly career when He was dead on the Cross; they do not represent in any way that other phases of Christ's existence, His glorious life in heaven". "They signify in absolute literalness Christ as He hung on the Cross"

"As the Body and Blood on the altar are such a perfect representation of the Broken Son of God on Calvary, they are also the immediate and complete contact of the soul with all the saving power of Golgotha. So it can be said that in the Eucharistic sacrifice Christ is truly immolated, because the immolation of Christ on Calvary is brought home to use in such a realistic manner"...We do not say that Christ is immolated anew".

"We immolate Christ, but-------and here is an immense difference - not the Christ who is in heaven, because, as such He is not represented on the altar at all, but the Christ of Calvary, as the Christ of Calvary is the only one who is represented on the altar"

"In view of the sacrament, the Eucharist contains, not the mortal Christ, nor even the dying Christ, nor does it contain the glorious Christ, but it contains the Christ directly after his death"

"But in virtue of concomitance we have also the whole third phase in the Chris-personality, his glorious life. But when treating of the sacrifice we need not think of any other presentation except that of the second phase of the Christ personality"

"It is the genius and very nature of the Christian sacrament to be an act which may be repeated indefinitely"

"A sacrament is not an act in the drama, however great that drama may be: a sacrament is essentially the representation of the whole drama" Sacrament are the monuments of the finished thing"

"It is through this sacrament that we are made partakers of the fruits of the Lord's passion"

"In the sacrament of the Eucharist, then, representation and application of the sacrifice of the Cross are the only kind of immolation to be admitted to the sacrifice of the Christian altar"

"As the celebration of this sacrament is the representative image of the passion of Christ, so is the altar representative of the Cross itself on which Christ was immolated in His own nature".

"We do not bring Christ down from heaven, we do not raise Him up from the depths, through the sacramental signification; He is in our hands and in our mouths before we know where we are"

"But we understand that his Body is there according to the manner proper to the sacrament" "It is simply that thing which is in heaven, the Body and Blood of Christ but which has not left heaven for one instant"

"the sacrament produces the thing which it signifies; here it signifies the Body and Blood of Christ and it produces it"

"The sacrament is completed in the consecration of the matter, whilst the other sacraments are perfected in the use of the matter"

"Why do we believe more readily in the conversion of a sinner than i the Eucharistic change, which is constantly called by St Thomas a conversio"

"In the Eucharist we have the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ, but with a mode of being entirely different from that mode of being in which Christ was at the Last Supper, in which He is now in heaven"

"It is clear than that Christ as He is in Himself and as He is heaven in his natural mode of being, is really distinct from Himself in as
far as He claims for Himself and owns that substantial mode of being which He has in the sacrament." This duality in the mode of being, the natural mode and the sacramental mode belongs to the heart of the mystery"

"To sin against Christ's divinity is the greatest sin; next comes the sin against Christ's humanity in his natural state; then the sin committed against the sacrament of Christ's humanity; and finally sin against the ordinary creature"

"Christ's Divinity is present after the consecration on account of its admirable hypostatic union with his body and his soul"

"The Eucharist is essentially a gift to the Church, not only of Christ but of the sacrifice of Christ, so that the Church herself has her own sacrifice" "We offer to God a sacrifice of sweet odour"

"The Eucharistic sacrifice is not, as was the sacrifice of the Cross, an offering for the whole world; but being a sacramental thing is for the Church, for every member of the Church, because it is offered up as a sacrifice of the Church, by the children of the Church"

"It redeems the souls of the faithful with an abundance of redemption"

"It is a direct propitiation and glorification of God"

"The sacramental sacrifice which we have from Christ St Thomas calls an image of the sacrifice of the Cross. The priest of the Church in his sacerdotal capacity is the image of Christ, as priest"

"Her Priesthood is no more an intrusion into Christ's priesthood than her sacrifice is a supplanting of Christ's sacrifice. In her sacramental genius she knows that her Mass is the living image, the living memory of the holiest thing that ever happened here on earth, the sacrifice of perfect sweetness on Calvary".

"There is in the Catholic sacramental system a certain transitorin4ess which it is very important to remember". "Sacraments belong to the work which Christ does on earth; they are not permanent glories of the everlasting triumph"
"The Eucharist, divine as it is, will passaway as faith and hope will pass away but the graces of the sacrament will remain for all eternity, in the perfection of Christ's mystical body"

"Divine as the Eucharist is, life with Christ in heaven will be something more divine"

"The eucharistic Christ is immolated, the natural Christ in heaven is consummated"

About ten years ago, I came across a footnote in Aidan Nichols' The Holy Eucharist: From the New Testament to Pope John Paul II (alas, now out of print) which described A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist as "a classic example of the best twentieth-century eucharistic theology."

Seeing that endorsement - from a man not given to hyperbole - I had to find the book. But it was not easy. It had been out of print for over 50 years. When I finally did locate a copy, it was worth the effort. Key is a remarkable book, and it is good to see it back in print.

For Vonier, Catholic doctrine is not only true, but utterly compelling. His special talent as a writer was his gift for making readers share that enthusiasm.

What appears as cool, dry doctrine in the hands of many another writer becomes in Vonier's hands luminous -- a thing of beauty, even wonderment. And this not through florid language or devotional fluff - far from it - but rather his ability to explain Christian mysteries that are inherently sublime, but which are too often reduced to mere verbal formulas.

If you are seeking a deeper understanding of the Eucharist, this is a truly wonderful, eye-opening book.

This book was recommended to me several decades ago, and on more than a few other occasions, by a good and highly-respected friend. He had also given me my own copy to read. It basically sat in its place in my library for all that time. Shortly after his death, I came face to face with the book on Amazon.com. Now back in print as a paperback, it was being offered to me as a "recommended" item. Impressive! The preface was written by Peter Kreeft and the Introduction by Aidan Nichols, O.P. There was also a review by Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. that indicated "This book should never be out of print." I began to seriously wonder, "What have I missed?" I bought the paperback edition with the intention of finally following through on my friend's advice.

This did not begin as the easy read I thought it should be. It is a book that has to be worked through. It is based on the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and though I have had a solid foundation in his work over the years, Vonier did not seem to allow for any shortcuts. You had to do the work!

Vonier also drew much from the resultant teaching of the Council of Trent, steeped as well in Thomas' thought. While I also believed I had had a satisfactory understanding of Sacramental Theology, I suppose I was a bit unprepared for Vonier's insights. I am glad, however, that I was receptive to them.

If there was "only one thing" I could be grateful to the Abbot for, and I know it sounds trivial because we think we understand, it would be a new appreciation and perception of what "Sacraments" are! Vonier claimed it was necessary for him to dispel the notion that the Eucharistic sacrifice could be explained in terms other than from sacramental theology. A case he described considered the first Mass, in the Upper Room, as a sort of first-phase of the actual Sacrifice of Christ that would occur the next day, instead of its true nature: the sacramental presentation of that Sacrifice, as if the latter, in some way, could be dependent on the former. Subtle as it may seem, he strove to show how this drifted far from that taught by Saint Thomas Aquinas, that the Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is the sacrament of the Sacrifice of Christ. It is not different from the Sacrifice of Calvary because it is a sacrament. It is "the Sacrifice;" but it is the sacramental presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary. It is identical to the Last Supper too because in the Mass, Christ is the Victim, and because of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, Christ is also and always the Priest.

Abbot Vonier shows how each of the sacraments is a presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary. Of the other sacraments, he shows this most clearly with Baptism.

Hard as it is to work through many of the details presented, books like this deserve our attention if for nothing else but to get our theology straight! Otherwise, how easy it is, even unknowingly, to pass on false notions.

I also came to understand Abbot Vonier's intention, as stated in Amazon's Product Description, that this book was "written to give lay Catholics a better understanding of the Eucharist." Once you get into it you realize that lay Catholics, at that time he wrote this, were better educated in philosophy and theology and better equipped to handle such a book.

Read it! Even if you have to wrestle with it!

This book has revolutionized my understanding and thinking about not only Eucharist but also the very concept of sacrament. The clarity of thought I found within as expressed by Abbot Anscar Vonier was so refreshing unlike some books I have read on the Catholic faith. I would highly recommend it to anyone who really wants a good picture of the core of Catholic teaching on sacraments and the Eucharist especially.

Vonier's book is both very readable and deeply insightful. It clarifies and develops profoundly the theology of the Eucharist.