A Catholic Quest for the Holy Grail

  From Faith and Culture:

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. (Read more.)

See Charles Coulombe's book, HERE.

 

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