On the Eucharist

I really like this picture. It's called "Mother of the Eucharist," which is why I chose it for today's post. As per a request made some time ago, I am doing a post on the Eucharist and what the Church teaches about it. I hope this is helpful and answers the questions posed in the original request.

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Overview of the Eucharist

The Holy Eucharist is by far the most sublime of the mysteries that the Church posesses. In short, it is both a sacrament and a sacrifice- in the Eucharist, the Real Presence of Christ becomes manifest to us here on Earth through the simple medium of bread and wine.

While the other sacraments of the Church confer God's Grace upon us, the Eucharist is much more than that- through it, we are able to receive not only God's Grace but, indeed, His very Being.

Christ is present completely, that is, "really, truly and substantially" in the Eucharist. It is not just a sign or a symbol of Christ, but instead it IS Christ in a very real way. During the consecration at Mass, the bread and wine on the altar become the body and blood of Christ during a process that we call transubstantiation. That is, the entire substance of the bread and wine are altered and become the Divinity of the Lord. This is a difficult concept to undestand and is rightly called a "mystery," as none of us could ever really hope to *truly* understand it.

At any rate, to understand what is happening during the consecration we need to understand something about nature. Everything has, essentially, two natures- one physical and one spiritual. So, a piece of bread has a metaphysical nature (a *kind* of soul, if you will, although that's not entirely appropriate terminology) and a physical nature. Think of this as a sort of parallel to humans- humans have souls and bodies; in a similar manner, so do other things, although non-human things do not have the same kinds of souls that we do.

During the consecration, the metaphysical nature of the bread is basically *removed* and *replaced* by another nature- God's. In this way, although the bread still looks like bread, it is no longer technically bread, but Christ's body, His Divine Nature. Is it not still bread, though? Well, technically no. It does, however, retain the accidents of bread, so it appears, for all intensive purposes, to still *be* bread, even though it is not.

If I may be permitted a crude example, the bread is kind of like a jelly donut. Before consecration, you have a donut with raspberry jam filling. During the consecration, the jam gets taken out and custard gets put in in its place (all instantaneously/simultaneously). So, while the post-consecration donut still looks like a jelly donut, it has, in fact, become a custard donut, a thing both vastly superior and totally different than the original.

The Historical Eucharist

Contrary to some charges, it is not correct to say that our modern understanding of the Eucharist and its nature (that is, the process of transubstantiation) is simply a medieval invention. Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr, who lived around the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., both attested to the understanding that the Eucharist was really and actually the Body and Blood of the Lord.

It is true that the terminology that we use now (especially and specifically "transubstantiation") came from the middle ages, but, as usual, to assert that such a terminological development indicates a doctrinal one is absurd. As I have stated before (on many issues) on this blog, the two are not related. The codification of beliefs in the Church generally only comes when a widespread belief comes under concerted attack from certain quarters. The term transubstantiation came into being under Pope Innocent III's reign for a variety of reasons, although the doctrine itself was not explicitly defined until the Council of Trent, when the belief in the Eucharist had come under heavy fire from Protestant heretics.

Indeed, with rare exception the belief in the Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist was common to all Christians (in East and West) for sixteen centuries, until Martin Luther's revolution overthrew it in many areas.

Origins of the Eucharist

The Eucharist itself comes to us straight from our Lord Himself. The Church celebrates the Last Supper (i.e. the institution of the Eucharist) every year on Holy Thursday.

The Last Supper is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, as well as in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Although John's Gospel omits this, he does have these words of Jesus, "Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you shall not have life within you," (6:53).

It is worth noting that the Church does not take every passage in the Bible literally, like many Protestant fundamentalists. This does not mean, however, that NO passage in the Bible is meant to be taken literally and the Church, in Her wisdom, has recognized that these passages about the Eucharist are not simply fancy symbolism. Indeed, as I said before, almost all Christians recognized from the first origins of the Church the literal nature of what Jesus said when he instituted the Eucharist. "Take this and eat... this is my body," is not meant to be taken to mean that Jesus was simply handing his apostles a symbol of Himself, but rather that He was handing them Himself.

We are not to understand, however, the Eucharist in cannibalistic terms. While this may sound crude, it is worth noting that some of the charges levelled against early Christians in the Roman Empire was that they were cannibals. This charge is (occassionally) used by extremist Protestants, although the reasoning behind it is extremely flimsy.

As I said before, the metaphysical nature of the bread is changed, but the accidents of the bread itself remain. That is to say, the bread changes literally into the nature of Christ, but not into His actual flesh. There are numerous problems with a cannibalistic understanding of the Eucharist, not the least of which is the fact that the disciples would have run out of His body pretty quickly...

The Consecration

As a result of the miraculous nature of the Eucharist, it is not something that can simply be conjured up out of thin air. A proper and valid consecration/transubstantiation must occur under strict circumstances. It must occur during a proper Mass, the words of consecration must be correct, the materials (bread and wine) must be of a proper nature and kind, etc.

Sometimes people jokingly ask, "Why can't we just consecrate donuts or something? Wouldn't that be better?" Alas, but no, you cannot have a giant pizza-Jesus. [It is possible, although unlikely, that Bojangles' biscuits would be of the proper form for consecration. I would contend, however, that as they are already practically Divine, such an action would be redundant.]

There are numerous reasons for the restrictions placed upon the actual consecration, but rather than going into them in detail I think it is worth simply thinking of a few of the practical ones. Firstly, Jesus consecrated bread and wine, not cheese and crackers- if the priest's actions are to be an imitation of Christ's, they have to be an imitation in form as well as fact. Secondly, relaxing limitations on Eucharistic consecrations would inevitably lead to a decrease of respect of the Sacrament itself. If the priest was handing out donuts, do you think anyone would really think it was Jesus? And thirdly, let us remember that the Church does not actually have the power to "relax" restrictions like this. Jesus does not come into Cheez-Its, He comes into bread and wine. A random bishop simply could not say, one day, "Alright, you can consecrate steaks now."

Non-Catholic Eucharists

There are some non-Catholic Christian denominations that share the same belief with regard to the Eucharist. The Eastern Orthodox churches, for example, hold the same beliefs as we do. Their sacraments are regarded as valid (that is to say, whenever they have their Liturgies, Jesus is truly present in their communion).

Most non-Catholics, aside from the Orthodox, however, do not believe in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They believe, instead, that the Eucharist is a symbol. It may be a very important and meaningful symbol, but the bread and wine do not literally become the body and blood of Christ. The sacraments of these Christians (most Protestants, for example) are not considered valid because of this huge and fundamental difference in belief.

The Vital Importance of the Eucharist

The Eucharist is of central importance to the Church- both as a whole and on an individual level. It sustains us, keeps us well and whole. Sometimes we are not aware of the Eucharist's presence in our lives. That is, sometimes it might seem to us like we are profligate sinners, that we are simply incapable of doing good, doing right, actually acting out God's Will in our lives. Indeed, it might seem to use, at times, that our reception of the Eucharist is not doing us any good.

This is, fortunately for us, patently false. Even if we are not capable of seeing God work in our lives, in and through the Eucharist, that doesn't mean it isn't happening. If we think we are terrible sinners, think how much worse we would be without the Eucharist. A saying I find useful in this regard is this, from the Imitation of Christ:

Oh Lord, make possible to me by your Grace what is impossible to me by my nature.

The truth contained in this statement is that we are incapable of acting as we are intended to using simply our own will power. We are extraordinarily dependent on God and His Grace to sustain us, to guide us, to lead us, in our lives. The Eucharist is, therefore, of utterly paramount importance for us in our own spiritual lives.

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I hope this has been at least a somewhat reasonable overview of the Eucharist. It is impossible, of course, to say much in such a short space of any real meaning or depth, but I do hope that it may answer the most basic of questions about it. If anyone has other, deeper/different questions about the Eucharist, I'd be happy to cover those as well.

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Saint Peter, pray for us!

Saint Paul, pray for us!

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!