Gabe der Gegenwart: Theologie und Dichtung der Eucharistie bei Tomas von Aquin. 3rd edition. Freiberg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder, 2014.

This book is a very interesting read. The author acknowledges the challenge of focusing on the theology of Thomas Aquinas amid the spectrum of foundational perspectives within contemporary theology today. He adroitly concentrates on constructive dialogue and consciously avoids apologetics. The first part considers the Eucharistic theology of Aquinas as found in part 3 of the Summa Theologiae and offers supportive cross-references from the Commentary on the Sentences, the Summa contra gentiles, and Thomas’ scriptural commentaries. Aquinas’ eucharistic theology is historically contextualized in relation to the perspectives of previous centuries and to the positions of his more immediate predecessors and successors. For Aquinas, the doctrine of transubstantiation was “a middle way between crude sensualism and mere spiritualism” (264). But how Christ is made present is inseparable from what is made sacramentally present: “The somatic real presence of Christ … cannot be separated from the memory of Jesus Christ's suffering and death, the commemorative actual presence” (94). Christ's surrendering or self-giving of his own life is made present in a representative way.

The second part offers a comparative analysis of Aquinas’ Eucharistic Hymns from the Divine Office for Corpus Christi and the hymn Adoro te devote. As the author notes, the Summa contra gentiles involves the intellectual effort of faith seeking understanding. The hymns can be read as a poetic distillation of Aquinas’ eucharistic theology. They articulate “theology's consciously scaled-back posture of one praying before God” (10). Thomas was not only a philosophical and theological thinker and professor, but also a person of profound prayer who brought his theological considerations into his meditative contemplation. His poetic prayers unveil the spirituality hidden in his speculative theology, revealing its relationship to life and holiness. A poetic theology of Christ's self-gift unfolds in the hymns and an appreciation of the giver's presence in the gift.

Part 3 recognizes that there have been epochal forms of eucharistic theology: “Faith in the resurrected crucified one giving his presence ever anew in the gifts of bread and wine has given rise to different readings in each epoch of theology” (254). The earliest roots are found in the meals and the Last Supper of Jesus, which is presented in two threads of tradition, reflecting the blessing and thanking motifs of Jewish Kiddush prayer. Tück underscores that the conceptual tools by which the faith is translated into new horizons of thinking and speaking can involve both beneficial clarification and inadequacies and deficiencies. After a brief perusal of such efforts over the centuries, he takes up and more fully develops the theme Gift of Presence. Essential components include the pro-existent stance of the earthly Jesus and the personal, sacramental presence of the risen Christ. “Within the sacramental presence there remain inscribed moments of absence: Christ is there and yet hidden” (297). Eucharistic presence involves the free self-gift of the crucified and risen one. That self-gift is an offer of friendship. It comes from a Jesus who “took his place with those beaten and battered” (324).

The author refers to the somatic or corporeal nature of the personal presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and also to Christ's glorified corporeality, but does not clarify his understanding of that corporeality or acknowledge how that issue has received significant attention in recent Catholic theology. Does he wish to simply maintain the perspectives of Aquinas? Tück likewise emphasizes, in the first and third sections of the book, that the priest saying “This is my body” acts in persona Christi. He does not acknowledge that the eucharistic priesthood is not found in the New Testament, as the Pontifical Biblical Commission did in its 1967 report on women and the eucharistic priesthood. In footnote 136 on page 90, the author cites the Romano-Germanic Pontifical's definition of the priestly office as “potestas offere sacrificium Deo missamque celebrare.” He adds: “This definition greatly influenced medieval theology. The question to what extent this and similar definitions led to a cultic and sacerdotal constriction of understanding the priestly ministry, which was only revised at the Second Vatican Council, must remain open here.” These are issues to which Tück could have given more attention.