As I said last time, I was very grateful for all the responses to my piece on the Eucharist. And rather than post one of my previously written pieces, I thought I would respond here to some of these comments, within the main section of this weblog.

This could take two or three entries – but I thought would begin today with Bruce questioning Valentin Tomberg´s 1930´s statement that "There is nothing in the physical world more holy - more healing in the deepest sense of that word - than the bread of the Communion Service."

Scepticism here is understandable. All over the world, people receive this bread and there seems to be very little in the way of accounts, which would justify Tomberg´s remarkable assertion.

But then, who is to say what the world situation would be, were the Holy Communion to cease all together? For all we know, were humanity to be deprived of this colossal, collective act of Transubstantiation, catastrophic effects would be very much in evidence.

In other words, there are 400,000 Catholic priests in the world, whose principal duty is the Transubstantiation, and in most cases, this is undertaken on a daily basis.

There are also countless acts of such consecration happening in other areas of the Sacramental Church, though, as for example with the Orthodox, the work may not be undertaken daily, but rather weekly.

As you read these lines, dear friend, you might wish to pause and consider how many times, at this very instant, His Body and Blood becomes present in our world … And perhaps what the global results of that continuous coming-into-being, have been over these past centuries?

In any event, I ask myself, who can really say what humanity would be like, were it not to be receiving this continuous RADIATING sustenance - whether directly or indirectly? Personally, I believe the world situation would be far, far worse …

Nonetheless, though I myself am not skeptical of Valentin Tomberg´s dramatic statement, I also cannot help but profoundly resonate with Bruce´s feeling, when he tells us:

“The stature of the priest is so important in the delivery of the Communion. At the Catholic Mass I attended last week … the sermon was mumbled and disjointed. There was hardly any ritual or observable intention in the blessing of the wafer and cup. About six lay people handed out the wafers (which may have been sprinkled beforehand with the contents of the cup). In short it was a shemozzle.”

Yes I am in deep resonance here with Bruce about the present state of the liturgy.

The further I travel with the Church, the greater my sense of the immense tragedy of the post-Vatican II destruction of the liturgy – a liturgy that was still very much intact, of course, in 1930´s Catholicism.

Yet however much I agree with Bruce on this point, I feel the most crucial question has yet to be raised.

That question, it would seem to me, is not so much concerned with the stature of the priest, the sermon, distribution and so forth – as important as all of these undoubtedly are.

But rather, the crucial question is whether a consecration, a Transubstantiation has taken place. Or not.

That is to say, whether the bread and wine has been transformed into that which belongs to the One Whom is most ´holy … healing in the deepest sense of that word.´ ... ?

Now there may well be Catholic Masses, where a consecration has not taken place. Though personally I recall suspecting that only once in my entire experience. That came in a Mass by a priest, whom I, at least, perceived, as being of an ultra-liberal persuasion. And where so many elements of the Mass had been deleted, that I really had to ask myself, if I had been to Mass at all …

I admit I have not been to many Masses in America. Perhaps what I call this ultra-liberal Mass is more the norm there than I fear … Still I tend to doubt it, though am open to correction.

But in the question of whether the Transubstantiation has survived the 1960´s destruction of the liturgy, I want to return to Valentin Tomberg, by way of an unusual departure …

For in later life, Valentin Tomberg took most seriously the apparitions in Holland of ´the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary´.

From his German biography, I offer the following rough translation (for which, please see my note in the comments section):

“Valentin Tomberg took this appearance of the Holy Virgin very seriously, as he communicated to Ernst von Hippel [in a 1956 letter, after visiting the site of the Marian apparitions in Holland].

´In short: we made sure at this place, that it is a matter of a genuine and real revelation of the Holy Virgin and that the message and reports conveyed there are genuine and true. …

I understand - after everything – this, in such a way that, as at that time in Lourdes the ´Immaculate Conception´ brought a healing source for the individual illnesses of humans to effectiveness, now it is a matter for the development of a healing source for the diseases of the peoples by the “Mother of all peoples” [ie, the Lady of All Nations].

There is much concern around peace in the world, but where is the POWER, the SUBSTANCE of Peace? It concerns not thus political or other measures, but a – how shall I say it? - MAGICAL action of peace, as a direct contrast to Moscow´s measures to bring about peace and everyone, who participates in this action with thought and prayer, helps the flowing spreading-out of its effect.”

Concerning the magical action, which Tomberg speaks of spreading-out, it is perhaps necessary to say that this must certainly involve the central Prayer given by the Lady of all Nations:

'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father,
Send *now* your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of *all* nations,
That they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary,
Be our Advocate. Amen.'

(The asterisked words are those which the visionary reported that the Lady asked to be especially emphasised when praying this prayer.)

In this regard, we have also already commented on how the the Catholic author of Meditations on the Tarot regarded these apparitions of Mary. For those who have not seen it, I suggest that further clarification might be found by reading my weblog entry for 1 December 2005:'Woe to me if I tell and woe to me if I do not tell!'

Now in 1981, there was another apparition in Holland of the Lady of All Nations to the same Dutch visionary encountered by the anonymous Catholic author.

The Lady of All Nations is recorded as saying:

“The Moral decline in the Church and in the World are coming about, and the Wars are still going on. My Lord sent Me to warn them of all of this, but they did not listen.”

But according to the report, the Lady went on to offer hope.

The visionary reports that “the Lady turned towards the Tabernacle and pointed to it with Her right hand saying … “The Eucharist still exists.”

Now this is taken from the book Eucharistic Experiences – where the entire book offers this visionaries´ongoing revelation of the disastrous contemporary state of the Catholic Church ...

One can justifiably interpret these words of the Virgin then, as pointing to a definite ray of hope and consolation in a dire context: The Eucharist still exists!

But to return to Bruce´s comments, one certainly does not need the experiences of a Dutch visionary, however deeply trusted by Valentin Tomberg, to confirm for us, the tragic state of much of the Church.

For we can certainly feel it for ourselves.

The Catholic Church is in trouble.

And as far as I am concerned, much of the trouble of the Church is the trouble with the Novus Ordo – the new Mass initiated in the 1960´s after the Second Vatican Council. (A Council which also certainly succeeded in many ways, perhaps as much as it failed in this one.)

Now Bruce suggests “Perhaps if one was looking for tradition, the Orthodox churches are the way to go. As Rudolf Steiner observed, when folk were running off to India for enlightenment, it would have been better if they had headed off to Mt. Athos.”

Such a direction is certainly appropriate for some.

For myself, I prefer to contemplate Valentin Tomberg´s counsel, when he said in his Covenant of the Heart:

"The darkening which today is described as ´the present crisis of the Catholic Church´ can lead to the necessity for the solitary sons of the Church to hurry to the aid of the Holy Father, the most solitary of solitaries, in order to save the Church from the abyss toward which she is moving."

Yes I spend my life contemplating what he meant by these words, ´darkening´, ábyss´ and the NECESSITY to hurry ... As I also do his many, many other indications of profound support for the Catholic Mystery.

And I also prefer to take heart from the message that the Lady of All Nations sought to give us – that in the Catholic Church, “The Eucharist still exists.”

Yes this is my conviction – based on this and countless personal experiences - that there still exists at the heart of the Church, the life-transforming encounter with Jesus Christ.

Thus while I would certainly agree that the Novus Ordo liturgy has tragically served to OBSCURE this ENCOUNTER in innumerable cases, it has not succeeded in destroying it ...

But the obscuration can indeed be so great, that it is necessary to develop a special form of attention in order to perceive what underlies it, and to HELP DISPERSE it, if one is to go beyond the clouds of fog generated by what Bruce so aptly calls a `shemozzle´.

And I will be shortly turning to what I mean by this special form of attention ... and I hope to other comments made here on the Eucharist.