Dec 5

Dec 5 A Catholic Quest for the Holy Grail

A Catholic Quest for the Holy Grail
Charles A. Coulombe
TAN Books, 2017
241 pp., $27.95
ISBN: 978-1-5051-0968-9

Reviewed by Marie Dudzik

It would be difficult, even in this illiterate day, to find someone who knows absolutely nothing about King Arthur. The stories of Camelot and the characters of the Round Table continue to appear, even if obliquely, in movies and television. Dante recounts how Francesca Rimini began the affair with Paulo through reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. At the death of Falstaff, Mistress Quickly says that he is now in Arthur’s bosom, presumably where all good English literary characters go when they die. C. S. Lewis brings in Merlin and Arthur as a means of renewing the spirit of Britain in That Hideous Strength. The stories can be read in sanitized versions by children, while the original versions contain content for “more mature audiences”. The legends and characters have amazing staying power. Why? What is it about Arthur that is so compelling? For both children and adults, the answer would have to be the Quest; the ideals of knighthood and chivalry that give children heroes to emulate and adults a wistful taste of what might have been, if they had not been born so late in time.

But what if the Quest isn’t just a story, or isn’t a tale about something that happened long ago? What if the Quest is something that continues throughout time, and is a journey we all might take, if we only have courage and faith enough to embark on it? Charles Coulombe takes this view in his book on the Holy Grail, a work that is part history, part literary criticism, and part call to arms.

The author gives a synopsis of the Arthurian Quest for the Grail, performed by Sir Percival, but the bulk of the book is not about the knights of the Round Table, but about the goal for which the knights were really questing: personal holiness and the graces given by God through the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. This is something for which we all should be striving, and like the knights of the Round Table, God is constantly reminding us of our duty.

Coulombe sees the Eucharistic miracles throughout the ages as constant renewals of the Quest for the Holy Grail. He cites a book on chivalry that states: “‘The quest [the Grail legends] describe is not just for the Grail, as an object, but for what it symbolizes: Eucharistic grace and communion with God.’”[1] It is not the Grail that is of such importance, but what it contained: the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ in the Eucharist. So the tales of Arthur and his court become not entertaining stories of the days of chivalry, but a reminder of the dangers of sin and that life without the help of the Sacraments is doomed to be a failed quest. These are truths that are as important for us today as they were for the initial hearers and readers of the tales in the Middle Ages.

The importance of the Eucharist and belief in the Real Presence is stressed in the chapters in which the author recounts several Eucharistic miracles throughout the centuries. The miracles were given to us to rekindle flagging belief in the Real Presence. Coulombe also includes results of scientific investigations of the miracles, and the results are always the same: the same blood type is found, the same type of cardiac tissue is present, and the evidence of extreme stress on the tissues is evident. There is also a catalogue of the collection and preservation of the relics of the Passion, from the True Cross to the spear of Longinus, to Veronica’s veil. The Grail remains central though, because it pertains to the heart of the Church: the Mass and the Eucharist.

This centrality of the Eucharist leads Coulombe into a discussion of what he sees as extensions of the idea of Percival’s quest: devotions to the Sacred Heart and Precious Blood. The Sacred Heart becomes the badge for the soldiers of the Vendée, who fought to defend the Church and the monarchy in Revolutionary France. An auxiliary of the Precious Blood, the devotion to the Five Wounds, was displayed on the banners led into battle during the Pilgrimage of Grace, in which the northern barons of England sought to end Henry VIII’s war on the Church. The Precious Blood also inspired the creation of the Passionists, the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, who preached against Masons and other secret societies in Italy that sought to harm the Church. One of their priests, Fr. Barbieri, helped to bring John Henry Newman, Edward Caswall, and Frederick Faber into the Church. They in turn started the Birmingham and Brompton Oratory in England, and their members too have a special devotion to the Precious Blood. In their own way, these two congregations carry on the work of the knights of old. We too can carry on the Quest, by taking advantage of these devotions. The Sacred Heart is central to the First Friday devotions, and the month of July is devoted to the Precious Blood. The perseverance in prayer that these two devotions inspire is no less important than the physical toils of Percival and Lancelot.

But the Quest is brought even closer to home for us in this book. Coulombe likens the knight’s encounter in the Chapel Perilous with Confession. Just as the knights had to face their own sins and failings in the Chapel, so we face ourselves in the confessional. And what about the Grail, the central symbol of the story? Of course it is the contents of the Grail, the Blood of Christ that we encounter every day in the Mass. But the author includes one more tantalizing story that brings it even closer. In the Roman Canon, at the consecration of the wine, the priest says, “taking into His holy and venerable hands this goodly chalice”, implying a direct contact with the true Grail. This comes from a tradition that St. John took possession of the Grail and used it for Mass, then gave it to St. Peter who used it, and passed it down to succeeding popes. When Pope Sixtus II was arrested during the persecution, he instructed his deacon, St. Lawrence, to distribute the riches of the Church. Lawrence sent the Grail to his hometown in Spain. From there it found a home in Valencia, where it resides today, and is a likely candidate for the true Grail. The Canon was written while those popes were using the real Grail. This chalice means this actual chalice. Every priest who says those words, and every person who assists at Mass believing those words, participates in the Quest.

In the end, the Grail is really a challenge—do we really believe in the tenets of our faith? Do we really believe everything we say in the Creed? Does our belief lead us to behave like those knights and soldiers of old, willing to stand and defend those beliefs against an unbelieving world? In that sense, we have everything in common with the knights of the Round Table, and every day is an opportunity to renew our own Quest.