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.
For example, take an object like a table. We have many different tables – different shapes and colors and made out of different materials. Those variations are the accidental qualities of a table. But we also have something that all tables have in common, what makes them a table as opposed to other objects – their “tableness,” as we might say. The quality that makes a table different from all other objects is its essential quality.
The concept of transubstantiation means that the essential quality of bread and of wine is changed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the risen Christ. Outwardly, in their accidental qualities, the consecrated host and wine will still seem like bread and wine. But in their essential qualities, they have been transformed into Christ. We should also add that both the consecrated bread and the wine are fully Christ. We do not receive less of Christ if we receive only the consecrated host or the consecrated wine, though it is a good spiritual and liturgical practice to receive both when we have the opportunity.
One question that may arise is, where did the Church get this belief? Are these ideas just something theologians thought of long after biblical times? The answer is no. The Catholic belief in the Eucharist is firmly rooted in the Scriptures. In the Last Supper narratives of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Christ clearly says of the bread and wine “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” and he instructs the disciples to “do this in memory of me,” meaning that the Church is to continue the ritual he had just done.
In the Bread of Life narrative in Chapter Six of the Gospel of John, Christ states: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53-58)
During this discourse in Chapter Six, his audience objects to his words and begins to leave. But far from trying to water down his message or to explain that he was only speaking metaphorically, Christ reaffirms his words more and more strongly. Indeed, his message is so hard for his audience to accept that by the end of the discourse, for the time being, only his inner circle stays with him. The dynamics of the exchange show that Christ meant what he said literally.
We also see that earliest Church writers after the conclusion of the apostolic era have the same belief in the Eucharist that the Catholic Church has today. They describe the Mass as having the same basic elements and underlying theology that the Church has maintained over the centuries. Thus, the belief in the Eucharist is not a later historical accretion, but a belief handed down to us from the earliest Christian times.
Our belief in the Eucharist is also supported by Eucharistic miracles that have taken place at different times in Church history. In these miracles, the consecrated bread and wine change in their accidental qualities as well, and thus we see the host turning to flesh and the wine turning to blood. Though our faith does not rest on Eucharistic miracles, they are a divine sign supporting our belief.
Our faith in the Eucharist has also been reinforced by millions of Catholics, priest and laity alike, who have experienced Christ in a special way through the reception of the Eucharist in Communion. Which leads me to my final point for this reflection, though of course books can and have been written on the Eucharist. While it is good to have some intellectual understanding of this theology, first and foremost we should not see the Eucharist as a theological subject, but as Christ’s gift of himself to us, inviting us into the most intimate possible union between our Creator and, us, his creation. The Eucharist is our heavenly food that helps us to face the vicissitudes of daily life and helps us enter into eternal life in the infinite love of God.
||
The readings for The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - Corpus Christi, Cycle B are:
Ex 24:3-8
Ps 116:12-13, 15-16, 17-18
Heb 9:11-15
Mk 14:12-16, 22-26
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Eucharistic Adoration in Lourdes by Zoltan Abraham (c) 2015.