The Eucharist, the Miraculous Sacrament that we are so lucky to witness at every Mass, is so central and important to our Catholic Faith. As Catholics, we are called to believe in the True Presence, which means that through a process called transubstantiation, the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ. Not a symbol, but a reality.
I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.
JRR Tolkien
What do modern Catholics actually believe about the Eucharist?
In a PEW research study conducted last year in the United States, it was revealed that 69% of Catholics believe that the Eucharist is only a symbol of the body and blood of Christ. This is further broken down into 43% who believe the Church teaches that they are symbols, 22% know that the Church teaches the Eucharist is the actual body and blood but still rejects this teaching, and 4% who are unsure what the Church teaches.
These numbers seem to show that there is a distinct lack of teaching amongst American Catholics. The Church does teach that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ, not a symbol. The Church teaches that Christ is really right there in front of you. This has been Church teaching since the beginning!
So my goal in this article today is to show how this happens, where this comes from in the Bible, and why Jesus would do this.
What is Transubstantiation?
Transubstantiation is the total change of substance of bread into the body of Christ and of the substance of wine into the blood of Christ.
This can be hard to grasp, because the bread and wine may change into the body and blood of Christ, but it still looks like bread and wine. It doesn’t appear to our eyes like anything has happened. In reality, God changes the substance, or the being, of the bread and wine into Christ, while keeping the appearance and physical makeup of bread and wine.
Substance and Accidents
To fully understand how Transubstantiation is possible, we need to go over some philosophical terms, substance and accidents.
Substance in the modern sense usually means material or physical matter. With this in mind, it’s understandable why people would be confused when they hear about “transubstantiation.” Because the modern definition of substance, the physical material, doesn’t actually change. The confusion comes from the fact that the Church uses the classical definition of substance, which is something that exists in and of itself. Substance is essential for something to exist and to be what it is. Substance determines what something actually is. Accidents in the classical sense are actually the characteristics of a substance, or what it looks like, what it is made of and other qualities.
So for example water can be liquid, solid, or gas, but it is still water in all those forms. The substance is water and the form is the accident. A tree can be cut down and milled down into lumber and built into a bench, but it is still wood in both forms. So wood is the substance, and the form it takes is the accident.
So if you’re still with me I’m going to give you another concept. In nature, whenever the substance of an object changes, the accidents also change. That’s how important the substance of an object is. So if you burn that wood, it’s substance changes to ash, and it’s accidents must change. It is no longer a bench but a pile of ash, grey and sooty.
This is what makes Transubstantiation so miraculous, because the only way it is possible to change a substance, the underlying being, without changing the accidents is through divine intervention. And this is exactly what happens, God changes what the bread and wine actually are, without changing what the accidents, or characteristics, are. So we end up with the actual body and blood of Christ, with the taste of bead and wine, appearance of bread and wine, and if you looked under a microscope you would see the cells of bread and wine.
Where did this teaching come from?
All of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church come from the Bible, and this is definitely true for the Eucharist.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
John 6:50-59
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
In this passage we see Christ teaching us the importance of the Eucharist. He also calls it His flesh and His blood. He calls it His flesh 5 times. The Jews that were with Him questioned how He could give His flesh to eat, but Jesus didn’t explain it as a metaphor or parable, as He usually did if people did not understand Him. He explained again and again that it was His flesh.
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
Luke 22:19-20
Here we see the institution of the Eucharist. When Jesus held up the bread, declared it was His body, and held up the wine, declaring it as His blood. Again, He did not declare this as a metaphor. He also made it clear that this bread was His actual body, the same flesh He said we must eat in John 6:50-59. This is where the Catholic Church gets this teaching from. This is why we believe the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ.
Why would Christ appear as the Eucharist?
As the passage from John 6 explains, Christ called His flesh the bread that came down from Heaven. Jesus is explaining to us that the Eucharist is like the manna from the book of Exodus. When the Jews had escaped from Egypt, they were stuck in the desert for 40 years. God sent them bread from Heaven, manna, to sustain them in the desert since there was no food. This is what Jesus is doing for us now.
Jesus died on the cross, freeing us from sin, just as God helped Moses free the Jews from the pharoah. The thing is, just like the Jews who were freed from pharoah, we are stuck in the desert. We are not at our final destination, for the Jews it was the promised land, for us it is Heaven. Being with God is our promised land. So Jesus gave us this incredible gift to sustain us and keep us alive until we make it home.
Why are we eating His flesh?
To understand this question, we need to make another parallel between the New Testament and Old Testament.
On the night before the Jews were freed and left Egypt, they slaughtered a lamb and spread it’s blood on their doorpost. This sounds gruesome, but it saved them from a terrible fate, as this was also the night that God had slain the firstborn of the Egyptians. This blood had allowed the spirit of God to pass over them. They had also eaten the lamb. This event would become a ritual celebrated every year, called Passover. A lamb would be sacrificed and eaten every Passover afterward, called the paschal lamb.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
1 Corinthians 5:7
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the Christian paschal sacrifice. Christ is our lamb. So every time we receive the Eucharist, we are not only receiving the mana in the desert, we are partaking in a perpetual passover. This is why you might hear the mass called a sacrifice. It’s important to note that Christ was only sacrificed once. Every sacrifice at the mass is a participation in that sacrifice, not a new sacrifice.
Closing remarks on the Eucharist
So we know what the Church teaches, that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ. We know what Transubstantiation is, which is when the substance of the bread and wine is changed into Christ. We know that although the substance is changed, the accidents, or form remains the same. Christ Himself told us that we had to eat His body and blood. And why would this be? To sustain us through the desert of this life, and to participate in the perpetual and new paschal sacrifice present in every Eucharist.
Does this all still sound unbelievable and impossible? Just remember that God is all powerful, and doing something like this is well within His power. Also remember that He has done something similar to this before. Jesus Christ, who is God, appeared as a human being. Though He was the Son, a person of the Holy Trinity, He had the appearance, qualities, characteristics, and DNA of a human being. Such a thing is profoundly incredible, and becoming bread and wine is certainly just as possible as this.
The all powerful God who created the universe, gave His only begotten Son as a sacrifice to save us, and by receiving the Eucharist, we are participating in this incredible act of love. Because the Eucharist is a part of Christ’s sacrifice. When you realize that Christ set it up that way on purpose, you realize how incredibly special this gift is. So make sure you are in a state of grace, and go to Communion with this thought ever present in your mind. That Eucharist is not just a piece of bread, that is literally Jesus. Not a symbol, but a reality. And when we consume the Eucharist, we are strengthened for this journey on Earth. We have life within us. We have Christ, physically and spiritually within us.