Sunday, June 2, 2024
Corpus Christi: What Is the Eucharist?
The Eucharist is at the heart of Catholic worship and spiritual life. During the Mass, the priest prays over the bread and the wine, calling down the Holy Spirit and repeating Christ’s words from the Last Supper: “This is my body,” “This is my blood.” As Catholics we believe that through the prayer of the priest and the power of the Holy Spirit the bread and wine are transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the risen Christ. When we consume the consecrated host and drink of the consecrated wine, we do not merely receive a symbol, we receive Christ himself. We enter into the most intimate union with Christ possible in this life.
How can we understand this transformation? On the one hand, the Eucharist is an inscrutable mystery that we will never fully understand in this life. On the other hand, philosophical reflection can help us gain some insights into the mystery. In the 13th century, the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas used the metaphysical system of Aristotle to help us understand the Eucharist more deeply. Aquinas worked out the theology of transubstantiation, which is based on the perspective that each object has what are known as essential qualities and accidental qualities.
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