 Hello and welcome to Tan Courses. I am Dr. Jared Stout, Director of Content for Exodus 90 and Instructor for the Ley Division of St. John Viennese Seminary. I'm very blessed to be with you for our course, The Eucharist, The Heart of the Christian Life. And just a little bit about myself to really set up this topic. When I was 13 years old, I was actually expelled from the public schools and the only school that would take me in was the Catholic school. And I was invited by the priest who took me in to come to Mass during the week at 6.15 in the morning. And I really felt a profound call from our Lord to find my home in the church. Jesus told me that I would really find what I was looking for right there at the Mass. And so this has really set up this topic for me that the Eucharist is not just an idea that we believe, but it is a way of life. And that's what we're going to be unpacking in this course. Not only the doctrine of the Most Holy Eucharist, but also how it is the very center of our lives. It's a topic that I also explore in my book, How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization, which is also from Tan Books. So let's begin with a prayer before we enter into our first lesson in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Jesus, we adore you present in the Most Holy Eucharist. We ask that you would draw us into a deeper communion with you, that you would transform us ever more into your image and likeness, and that you would bring us to be with you forever in heaven. We ask that you bless this time that we have together in this course. Please lead and guide us. And may this course be for your glory and our good. And we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our first lesson is the Eucharist are great thanksgiving. And this topic essentially could be described as what really is the Eucharist. And you may have been Catholic for many years. You may be a new Catholic or maybe you're not even Catholic at all. But no matter where you are at, it is important not to take anything for granted. We have found that unfortunately there are so many Catholics who do not fully understand or believe in the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist. And so we're going to begin by unpacking what the church really believes, what Jesus himself has taught us about his presence in the Holy Eucharist. And what we see, and we can see this even in this image by Juan de Juanes of the Holy Chalice, because this was made for Valencia where the Holy Chalice is located, that the Eucharist really is a gift that the Lord has given us. And so you can see in this image Jesus is offering us the host and the chalice as the gift of his own body and blood. That is the heart of what the Eucharist means. But we can of course look at the word the Eucharist itself. Eucharistia is a Greek word which means Thanksgiving. And at the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the Eucharist as the sacrament of his body and blood, he was giving thanks to the Father. He blessed the bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples as he was in this great act of Thanksgiving. In a way, we could say that the entire life of Jesus was for the Father. And he recognized that everything in his own life and in creation itself was a gift that he was offering back to the Father in Thanksgiving. And by giving the Eucharist to us, he wants this to become our great act of Thanksgiving as well. So it's not only the Thanksgiving of Jesus, but it becomes our Thanksgiving to the Father as well. The Eucharist was given to us in the context of the Passover. The Passover was a meal that goes back to the time of the Exodus when Moses led Israel out of their slavery in Egypt. And by instituting the Eucharist in the context of the Passover, Jesus was giving us our own Passover from the slavery of sin. It was through the gift of his own life, of his body and of his blood that we would be freed from our slavery to sin. And that was not a once and done gift. And we know this because Jesus himself said, do this in memory of me. And by saying that, Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the context of the Mass as a perpetual memorial of the gift that he made of himself, the sacrifice that he made of himself to the Father. And once again, becoming our own means of offering thanks, praise, worship, and glory to God. Now in terms of understanding the nature of the Eucharist, the most important thing to understand is that the Eucharist truly is the body and blood of Christ. It comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine because Jesus wants to nourish us with himself, with his flesh, with his blood. But he does not want us to sink our teeth into human flesh in a kind of material way or to drink human blood in this material or gory way. The early Christians were actually accused of that by the Romans that they are cannibals. But because Jesus does want to nourish us with his life, he gives us his flesh and blood. But under the appearance of bread and wine, the accidents of the bread and wine remaining so that his own life can come to us as food rather than the outward eating of human flesh and blood. We believe because of Jesus' own teaching that the bread and wine during the Mass, and the priests praise the words of institution over them, the words of Jesus himself, this is my body, this is my blood, that these gifts cease to be bread and wine, and that they truly become the body and blood of Christ. We take Jesus at his word when he says, this is my body. And he says, this is my blood. He is the Son of God. He has the power to make this change. And the change of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ we call transubstantiation.