Opinion
By Valentine Obienyem
IN 1983, at St. Dominic Savio Seminary, Akpu, Msgr. Jeremiah Ikegbusi served as our foundational Rector, with Fr. Pantaleon Umechukwu (now a Professor) as his Vice. We fondly called him “Fr. Pante.” Those of us who possessed a knack for mnemonics quickly seized upon his name to permanently commit to memory the French word for trousers (pantalon).
Fr. Pante lived in a brilliant world of his own. Always immaculately neat, he walked with a brisk, disciplined stride – a slightly milder version of Mr. Dominic Igwemma, our legendary Latin teacher.
The seminarians loved him because once in a while – and I am not even sure if they still do this – we would skip night prep, and Fr. Pante would show us interesting and educational films for our edification. I still remember one of the films he showed us: “The King and I”. All I can recall is the lead character, who was bald, repeatedly saying with booming monarchical authority, “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
Digital natives of today, who can watch films at the press of a button on their phones, would hardly understand what it felt like in those halcyon days of innocence to have an opportunity to watch a movie. It was a rare window of cultural illumination in an otherwise highly structured ascetic life.
Today’s solemn feast brought our old formator vividly to mind. Fr. Pante was the kind of priest who, during a Latin Liturgy, would speak Latin down to the minutest details. Even after receiving Holy Communion, as part of the communion rite, he would whisper in Latin: “Corpus et sanguis Christi custodiant nos in vitam aeternam” – “May the body and blood of Christ preserve us unto everlasting life.” That is precisely what we celebrate today: the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
To underscore the supreme weight of this festival in the universal Church, it is elevated as a Solemnity, heralded by the the sequence.
The visiting priest, Fr. Dominic Anyalagbuna, who celebrated the Liturgy with us today, was similarly “Latin-intoxicated.” He read Ecclesiastical Latin with the fluid cadence of a native Italian. Drawing from the deep wells of academic research typical of a formator from the Blessed Pope John Paul II Major Seminary, he did magnificent justice to the Eucharistic mystery, handling all aspects of it with masterfully erudition.
His sermon opened on a dramatic, arresting note. Raising the Holy Communion housed within the luna, he exclaimed: “This is what we are celebrating today!”
The homilist contrasted our Catholic belief with the theology of Martin Luther. For Luther, Christ is genuinely present with the elements in a mysterious sacramental union (consubstantiation), but the bread and wine do not change their underlying substance. The Catholic Church, however, drawing directly from the explicit words of Christ in the Gospels, proclaims the total turning of the bread and wine into the real body and blood of Christ – transubstantiation. The priest vigorously affirmed this truth: after the words of consecration, Christ is truly, genuinely, and substantially present – even in the minutest fraction of the sacred Host.
He noted our human frailty, our modern, itching desire for signs and wonders. If it were announced that Christ would appear in person at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, there would be a stampede, a massive influx of the curious and the desperate. Yet, Christ is always with us, hidden under the humble accidents of bread and wine.
Fr. Anyalagbuna challenged us to build a robust faith that believes without the crutch of sensible experiences, a theme echoed by the Second Reading (1 Corinthians 11:23-26), which reminds us that every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. It is an act of pure, unadulterated faith that transcends sight.
To unpack the deep metaphysical reality of the consecration, the preacher retreated to Aristotelian metaphysics, where every physical reality is understood to be a composite of “matter” and “form”. This brought back another seminary memory from 1988/1989. Our Auxiliary, Mr. Collins Okeke (now a priest), once mesmerized us by lecturing on how Aristotle gave the lasting blow to the theory of hylomorphism that says that man is made up of a body and soul to as composite substance. In hylomorphism, the soul is the substantial form that animates, shapes, and gives life to the raw matter of the body.
Fr. Anyalagbuna masterfully demonstrated how the Aristotelian framework was baptized by St. Thomas Aquinas to form the intellectual scaffolding of sacramental theology. The logical parallel he drew was precise: matter refers to what is offered—the simple, tangible physical elements of bread and wine as the raw material; form is what is spoken—the institutional words of Christ pronounced by the priest acting in persona Christi; sacrament is the indivisible union of both matter and form under Christ’s divine institution, by which the physical sign becomes a true and effective sacred reality; and the effect is the radical and total change of substance known as transubstantiation – the body and blood of Christ.
In the earthy, timeless prose of our Igbo Catechism, we confess this sublime calculus with absolute clarity: “Achicha agaghịzi abụ achicha, ọ bụrụzi Ahụ na Ọbara Jesu; Mmanya agaghịzi abụ mmanya, ọ bụrụzi Ọbara Ya.”
Fr. Dominic emphasized the absolute reverence due to the Sacrament and the indispensable necessity of a validly ordained priest to consecrate it. Though he did not use the explicit term, he was defending the core Catholic doctrine of Apostolic Succession – the unbroken line of spiritual authority breathed by Christ upon the Apostles and transmitted unimpaired through the centuries to Catholic bishops and priests. Without this valid line of succession, the form lacks its supernatural efficacy, and the matter remains merely bread and wine.
Illustrating the transformative power of this Sacrament, the preacher invoked the testimony of the saints. St. Teresa of Avila remarked that she advanced further in holiness through a single worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist than through an entire lifetime of severe penances. Pope John Paul II famously declared that the Eucharist alone is enough for the soul. St. Thomas Aquinas confessed that the finest insights of his monumental theological career were gained not from his massive library, but while kneeling before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The homilist invited us to imitate these spiritual giants.
As a “School of Purity,” devout Holy Communion purifies our thoughts and strengthens the intellect to resist disordered passions and the impulses of the flesh that wound the soul and distort moral vision. It calls the believer into interior discipline, healing the memory and reordering desire toward what is truly good, true, and beautiful in God. In this light, sins against chastity—such as pornography, adultery, fornication, and masturbation—are not merely external violations of rule, but deeper ruptures in the integrity of the person, which the grace of the Eucharist seeks to heal and reorient. We are therefore invited to live with acute awareness of the divine Guest we receive, recognizing that our bodies become temples of Christ’s real presence, and that such a dignity demands reverence, purity of heart, and continual conversion of life.
Addressing a practical pastoral point, he explained why the Church often administers Holy Communion under one species alone for the sake of pastoral convenience. Because Christ is completely, indivisibly present in His entirety – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity -under either the form of bread or the form of wine, the communicant lacks nothing and receives the whole Christ regardless.
Finally, Fr. Anyalagbuna urged us to fiercely love Jesus present in the Tabernacle, describing His abiding presence as the permanent Bridegroom of our souls. He pleaded with us to remain perpetually in love with Christ, reminding us that the ultimate tragedy that can befall any human soul is to slip into eternity, die in sin, and miss the vision of God.
It was a masterful homily. Fr. Anyalagbuna delivered a homily that began with the rigorous intellectual, philosophical scaffolding of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and concluded beautifully with the restless, longing heart of St. Augustine – resting at last in the eternal glory of the “Beatific Vision”.
A.I
June 7, 2026
Tags: Msgr. Jeremiah Ikegbusi