Transcript of CS#13: Vinny Flynn 7 Secrets Of The Eucharist

Transcript of Interview with Vinny Flynn about 7 Secrets Of The Eucharist. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

7 Secrets Of The Eucharist is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1001090/7-Secrets-Eucharist/

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Chris Cash: How are you doing this morning Vinny?

Vinny Flynn: I am doing just fine good thank you.

Chris Cash: Well, good I would like to talk with you today about the seven secrets of the Eucharist. Now this isn’t a really new book but it is certainly a very powerful book on one of the most important topics in the church which is the Eucharist itself and I think it is one of the most exciting subjects that we have to talk about in the church.

Vinny Flynn: Well, I certainly agree.

Chris Cash: So, what led you to write this book in the first place?

Vinny Flynn: Well. I have been traveling in the last few years and doing a lot of talks, retreats and conferences and what I kept finding is that many people don’t know what the church teaches about the Eucharist and the Eucharist is always something very important to me and I started realizing it when I was getting talks from the Eucharist that even daily communicants and people who are devoted to Eucharistic adoration and wouldn’t dream of missing mass weren’t aware of some of the basic truths about the Eucharist and I have been a priest and they would come up and tell me that they never got this in the seminary. As I begin thinking about writing a book I had read a lot of books on the Eucharist and I was realizing that there seemed to be two basic types of books on the Eucharist there are the super academic books written by theologians for theologians and the rest of us will have trouble reading them.

Chris Cash: I cannot certainly get through something like that…

Vinny Flynn: and then there is the type of books that is – very well attention, very pious, inspirational and with a lot of good effects-drawing people closer to the Eucharist but mostly seemed to have left out some of the deeper theological truths because they are kind of hard to explain so I found that while many of these books were very edifying and inspirational they were kind of watered down in a sense so it seemed like what was needed was a book that would have all the deep theology but have it explained simply so that is what I kind of resolved to try to do. Whether I succeeded or not that is up to the…

Chris Cash: That is up to the reader to judge I guess.

Vinny Flynn: so far we have been getting a very good response. The book came out in January and it’s-the response has been pretty overwhelming so I am very pleased.

Chris Cash: Now, this is your first book that you have written right?

Vinny Flynn: Well, it is the first book that I have written the whole book under my own name basically. I did a lot of editing and writing out of ghost writing where part of my work at the national shrine of divine mercy. I was involved in overseeing the editorial newsletter and booklets and books and all the stuff that went out and I was also responsible for being able to take theological truths, theological talks that were given, theological writings and make them accessible to the average reader. So, I had had a fair amount of experience in that way and I had written books in collaboration with other people and had written a lot of things without any byline because all the stuff that went out there, out of Mary help center. It didn’t necessarily have an author by line on all of this. And this is my first, you know full book written under my own name and published.

Chris Cash: Right and I am sure all those other books the full credit will be given in heaven right?

Vinny Flynn: I don’t worry about any credits-yes, yes. It just seemed to be-my whole life is in this book. The first talk I gave on the Eucharist was in the 1970 and this stuff has been working in me ever since and then again I was working in the international shrine of divine mercy. Part of my job which was wonderful which was just to read a lot especially a lot from Pope John Paul II and the teachings of the church and so it just got kind of – you know, continue to foster my own interest in the Eucharist and I just realized that Pope John Paul II that he’s been called the merry pope, he’s been called the mercy pope. He was also clearly-was the Eucharist pope and Pope Benedict is continuing where he left off. So I am convinced that Pope John Paul II was ushering us into a time of Eucharistic revival and we were in the midst of that right now. There is a whole Eucharistic revival beginning to happen in the church and it has to happen.

Chris Cash: Now, how did your learning’s about the divine mercy teachings effect you personally and spurs you on to expound on them for the benefit of the faithful.

Vinny Flynn: Again at the national shrine I was one of first things I was involved in early on was with the official English edition of the diary when that was published and so I had to learn a lot about Saint Therese and as I did I became more and more aware of how much every thing in her writings matched with what Pope John Paul was saying matched with the catholic church. It matched scripture-all the traditional teachings of the church but it gave a new focus to the Eucharist. She called the Eucharist the secret of her sanctity and her religious name what she took was Maria Pasiphina of the most blessed sacrament and almost every page of her 600 page diary had some reference to the Eucharist. Where she stressed more than anything is the need for a personal relationship with Christ in the Eucharist that was something she was drawn more and more into and even the great promises for the feast of mercy that Christ gave to her the Eucharist is central in that-on the Sunday after Easter People are encouraged to have gone into confession and be a state of grace that we receive communion on that day and then it will be the equal and of a second baptism for them.

So it is just a lot in the diary and a lot in the message of the divine mercy is Eucharistic the chapel of the divine mercy is a Eucharistic prayer. A lot of people who pray in the chapel even daily don’t realize that. It is a prayer that is almost like a mini mass that even from the very beginning ” I pray to you eternal father I offer you the body, the blood, the soul and divinity of your dearly beloved son” oh-that is the council definition of the Eucharist body+soul+divinity. Also echoes when the angel came to the children prior to our lady’s appearance in 1917. And taught them this prayer this Eucharistic prayer in the same eclectic, I offer you the body, blood, soul and divinity. So this sends a complete emphasis on-in the diary and in all her many apparitions of the Eucharist so that kind of just continue to feed me and you know convince me that some of this had to be made accessible in a new way for people.

Chris Cash: so, can you talk about a couple of the aspects or the truth of the eucharist-most of us knows very little about.

Vinny Flynn: Well, the first one that comes to mind is just the way Christ is present. Most people, most Catholics, who are practicing Catholics you know-understand that the Eucharist is about Christ being present. This whole concept of the real presence of the teaching of the church. But many people who even believe in the real presence is this really Christ that what looks like bread still-that looks like wine still is not- there has been this complete transformation of the substance of the bread into the body, the blood and soul divinity of the Christ. But for the average catholic to believe that, we get sort of like we play church. I don’t mean that in a really negative way that people are constantly doing it but we get into a routine. We Catholics are routine people-we get into a routine and go Sunday mass I am going to receive-I really want to get closer. I go to daily mass but go up I receive and I believe that this is Christ and I am going to think about Christ and I am going to fold my hands and all this stuff you know.

But who is this Christ that I am receiving? How is he present? What does that mean? It was funny that I would ask these questions in different places when we would be doing parish mission and we would be talking. People would not really know the answer to that you know. Christ is present, the church teaches as he is in heaven without leaving heaven so the first thing that you need to imagine is that the Eucharist is alive. Because we got to understand that this is a living person whom we are receiving. This is not a piece of bread. This is not a holy waiver this is the living God and he is present not hanging on the cross-again this is a common misunderstanding. The priest says the body of Christ, the body of Christ. I tend to think often-the body of Christ-I am thinking the body hanging on the cross. And we know that the mass-the teaching of the church on the mass is the Calvary rendered presence-so the mass is very much the sacrifice the Christ on the cross. But the church teaches that that sacrifice on the cross his passion, his death his resurrection-that these are not events that happened and then stopped. What is called the paschal mystery-the passion of death and the resurrection of Christ goes on.

The caricature of Jesus that it transcend all time and is present in every time so that the masses isn’t repeating again-he is not dying, he is not hanging on the cross again but his eternal action of offering himself to his father is made present in our now, in our moment of time. All the benefits of his passion, death and resurrection become available to us now so what he did 2000 years ago affects us immediately now. Pope John Paul says very clearly in one of his last writings of his in cyclical and aphasiac letter on the Eucharist that we receive now those fruits of Christ’s passion and resurrection with every Eucharist that is what the Eucharist gives to us it implies all those fruits all those graces that living presence and that eternal sacrifice that Christ-to us right now so what does that mean? It means that Christ is not present dead on the cross, he is not present dying on the cross. He is present as he is in heaven right now because he is eternally offering that we do to the father. That is the liturgy going on in heaven all the time that we plug into in the mass. That is why one of the secrets is that there is only one mass it is going on all the time. We can tap into it when we have a particular celebration from the holy mass. But Christ is living and glorious in heaven and when we receive him that who we receive the living and glorious Jesus Christ. God and man come to dwell in me. That is the most intimate relationship I will ever have with God this side of heaven.
And so that is why Pope John Paul says “We need to be amazed about this”, you know this amazement should always fill the church. And that is what he is trying to do is even when he wrote it he said “I am writing this to rekindle the mystic Eucharistic amazement” that was his whole goal in writing this on the Eucharist to rekindle Eucharistic amazement. We need to be amazed again like the first apostles were, the first disciples were. About what god is doing? God himself comes to us and dwells in us in the Eucharist.

Chris Cash: You know, my first real experience with understanding what you are saying about the true presence of the Jesus and the Eucharist was when I was in college and I became a Eucharistic minister just realizing the extent that we would go to to protect the Eucharist and to make sure that we did not put it through the sewer pipe. But just the procedure and protocol that goes into ensuring that we protect the Eucharist at all.

Vinny Flynn: Absolutely, it is not just a sacred object it is not just like you have to be a you know you have an old metal that has been blessed or a rosary beads or something or sacred water or holy water. It has been blessed so we need some rememence. We are not talking about something sacred in that sense we are talking about the very being of Jesus Christ who is not half man an half god. He is fully human and fully divine. And that is another thing I will go into some detail in the book is that you know, Christ when he comes to us is not alone that there is no separation in the trinity so that when the second person of the trinity came and took a body from the blessed virgin Mary-took a human nature from her body he became one of us fully, he became fully human and if we would be able to check his DNA-it would be Mary’s. He took flesh from flesh and to make that intimate marriage concept clear to us that, that our god took our humanity completely.

Well, that humanity was just totally fused to his divinity. He didn’t you know become half man half god. He remained one person-he had always been the second person of the trinity. Always united with the father and the Holy Spirit. Now, he takes a name and a human nature. He is now Jesus the Christ and he has a full human nature. The human nature is totally in accord with the divine nature. So, he has a human mind, human will, human emotion, human art but all that is completely linked forever with his divine being.

So, when people say “oh Christ did not know who he was it took him a long time to figure out who he was”. That is non sense. His human mind was aware of what he knew in his divinity. Which is why even as a child in the temple he is telling his mother” these are my father’s students” he knew. He knew completely. And so what that means is he also from the cross-here is this human being nailed to the cross well, this human being is also a divine being. He is a divine person who also has a human nature. So, in his humanity he knows what he knows in his divinity, so he looks across 2000 years of time and space and saw you and saw me. And loved us. He teaches us very clearly that you Jesus chapter 478 says” Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and his passion and gave himself up for each one of us”. When it says he died for humanity he took all our sins-oh that is very nice I said that generally. It is not general. He looked at me from the cross, remembered when I was formed in my mother’s womb. He knew me, he loved me-he saw all my sins and loved me anyway. He took all that sin and all my sins all my personal acts, thoughts and pulled all that sins into his pure body. And when he died-my sin died with him. That is why St. Paul in Hebrews wrote that Jesus died once for all. But it was a very personal thing. He would have died if you were the only human person needing redemption-he would die for you.

Chris Cash: Well, that is so true and unfortunately sometimes it’s something that the Protestants understand much better than we do I think.

Vinny Flynn: That is correct.

Chris Cash: Because I think-my wife used to be very active in many protestant churches and that is what they preach over and over.

Vinny Flynn: What they do not know is that it is the same Jesus who is present in the Eucharist.

Chris Cash: Absolutely.

Vinny Flynn: From the Eucharist he is loving me still, from the Eucharist he is trying to flood me with all the grace that he wants from me 2000 years from the cross. He is trying to apply that in my life right now, today. To live in me and because there is no separation in the trinity the father is with him and the holy spirit is with him and all of heaven is with him.

Heaven comes to dwell in my heart so that when we read that the kingdom of heaven is within well yes! In a very real way when we receive the Eucharist and in the book I give a little example from the St Theresa who knew this at her first holy communion. Her-she was so overjoyed. She had been preparing so completely to receive her first holy communion that when she actually went to receive she was in tears and she overheard some of the sisters saying ” Oh poor Therese” and she realized that they thought her mother-you know she was sad that her mother cannot be here-so sad. She wasn’t sad at all she was over joyed that she was in tears. And she writes in her autobiography that you know, they just did not realize that she was so over whelmed with joy that she could not bear without tears and she said that as if the absence of my mother could upset me when I receive Holy Communion. Since all of heaven came to me when I received my mother came to me too.

Chris Cash: That is very profound. We are going to take a short break and when we come back we will be talking with Vinny Flynn some more about the seven secrets of the Eucharist. This is the catholic spotlight.

And we are back talking to Vinny Flynn some more about the seven secrets of the Eucharist. So Vinny what can you tell us, as modern day Catholics about the awareness of the sense of sin and the application and lack there for the holy Eucharist.

Vinny Flynn: Well, as I look around I see things that are in a pagan society. I remember when my spiritual director Father George Gozekie talks about the grace is in other words turning against God which is in ignoring God and we are in a society that is ignoring god. And so there is really so sense of sin in society at large the catch phrase is “feel free to choose you own path” if it feels good do it-you know. That is not so bad and to me it’s like the MTV society that we are living in. It echoes for me-Paul’s letter roman the first chapter of roman’s and again in Philopian where he talks about people who glory in their shame. That because we ignore god we get-our perceptions get totally mixed up and the things that we used to be ashamed of that we ought to be ashamed of we now glory in.

For instance there were things flashed constantly on televisions that show people exulting in what traditionally has been thought of as sin. Improper sexuality, bad language just all kinds of immoral and perverted actions that are now being flaunted. Now the world has always been sinful from Adam on but when people would sin at least there would be this awareness of sin and it would be something “oh I would want to try to overcome that” or even if a person is not caring about you know if he is sins-or not. He is kind of ashamed of it. Feels a little guilty and would not want any one else to know. That was action

Chris Cash: Now there is pride

Vinny Flynn: absolutely, we are going to glory in shame we are going to flaunt it. So that is what our kids are exposed to constantly through television, through movies through music-the lyrics of music will do the same. So what we used to consider sin is now being put forth as something great-this is wonderful and gradually society has accepted these things and so church has been kind of reduced to an obligatory routine.
Like a cultural habit where many people go to church because their parents did, because they were brought up that way, because they want to kind of feel good about going to church, you know, there were all kinds of rebels to this but you know, I mean we can get into the habit of viewing church as something we do-of course I would not miss mass-I am a good catholic I go to mass every Sunday. I receive communion I try to live a piece of the good life but I am not seeing church as a live changing event. I am not seeing for instance receiving communion as something that is going to totally change my like.

Pope John Paul made it very clear that the Eucharist was about changing our lives and now Pope Benedict in his new Sacramento Caritarus his new episodic exhortation on the Eucharist he has made it very clear that the Eucharist makes possible what he calls a progressive transfiguration, progressive meaning it is a step by step not a one time fix. And it is not just a holy thing” ah I am receiving holy communion I am a good catholic” pat, pat pat myself on the back. It is supposed to transfigure me. Well he uses the same word transfiguration. Well, we know the transfiguration when Jesus went up on the mountain took three of the disciples with him and in front of them he was completely transfigured so that they saw his glory.

The glory of the living god and they were overwhelmed by it. We need to be transfigured like that and that is what the Eucharist if for. That it helps us to reflect the image of the son of god. And that he crosses a radical newness that this is eternal life. Your life is not for later. He says eternal life begins now thanks to the transformation that the Eucharist effects in us. That it starts a new life in us. And that is what we mean by Eucharistic revival, because we Catholics have not yet realized fully that the Eucharist is what is going to transform us into the divinity that Christ has in store for us. We are destined to become sharers in the divine light. It is not the Eucharistic fluid that is changed into us but t rather we who are mysteriously transformed by it. We are not just supposed to be receiving communion. We are supposed to be allowing Jesus to transform our lives to make us just him to share in his divine way of life.

Chris Cash: And what do you think that priests can get out of your book to help them to build up the community of the faithful.

Vinny Flynn: Well you know from what I learnt- I wanted priest to get out of it I was very conscious of priests and deacons and hoping that you know that I was not just repeating stuff that they knew and what I have found from the reactions from the priests themselves is that it is like a refresher course for many them in the theology of the Eucharist and that even priests have found it helpful and the explanations of the theology are concrete and simple. See for me, I love theology and I love getting into it and you know let it rattle around my brain a little bit but what I love most is what I call the “so what” and I find that that is what is missing with time. We will learn to sprout back theological truce or to accept certain beliefs but we don’t get the big picture so what of it.

So that has become my favorite question. Okay, so Jesus is present as he is in heaven-so what? What does that mean? When I started examining that then I get some more gems from it-it reminds me of Scot Harmony when he talks of reading scriptures. He says you get something that really staggers you-what? Huh! And most of us just tend to go on, we just keep reading. He says-that is the holy hah. You have to say hah then explore that there is where the treasure lies so that for instance when I am reading things and thinking about things and I am reading different people say we need to enter into communion and I say ” What does that mean”? Then I look at this word-receive. Well, receive is a passive word. It is like I am not doing anything I am just taking it in. Someone else is giving I am just receiving it. I am on the receiving end. I am on the passive, I am not doing anything. That is not true I need to be doing something. So then I read St Thomas acquaintance and I try to decipher some of that theology and what he says is that every reception of communion is too consulate, we read sacramental which means we understand the teaching that is. The body and soul and divinity of Christ and we accept that. We receiving it as a sacrament this sacrament is chosen by Christ and the graces that go with that. But in order to get the graces the fruit of the sacrament we have to be eating spiritually as well which means we have to be entering into what is happening.

Inside me my mind, my emotions, my heart, my spirit I need to understand that Jesus-the person Jesus Christ wants a deeper relationship with me-one on one and I need to be desiring and longing for that union with Christ. Allowing him to transform me to make me holy like him. If I am not longing for that St. Thomas says I am a false person and I get no grace. I get none of the fruit of the sacrament so that means that the more fully I can enter into this relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist the more he does transform me the more I can begin to live in a new way as Pope Benedict is calling us to do.
So that is the kind of thing that to give a long answer to a short question what I found is a lot of priests have appreciated that because it ties together the things they know and maybe even the things that they used to preach about but have backed off a little because it is a difficult truth to preach about.

Like I have had several priests who have come up to me and say you know ” I am using your book for harmonies I am thinking each thing…” because it has reminded them of these truths and also given them sample of how these things can be expressed simply and yet carry the depths of the teaching. So, they are very very pleased with-I mean I have had priests who have had you know bought copies of the book for the whole staff and especially for youth ministers and RCIA teachers, CCD teachers so they do seem to be finding it as something of value.

Chris Cash: Well Vinny it has been great talking with you and I am sure that all of our listeners will get al lot more if they pick up your book Seven secrets to the Eucharist available at catholiccompany.com and I hope to talk to you again when your next book comes out.
Vinny Flynn: Well, thank you.

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Transcript of Interview with Vinny Flynn about 7 Secrets Of The Eucharist. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

7 Secrets Of The Eucharist is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1001090/7-Secrets-Eucharist/