Dear Parishioners, Last week we celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Many of us know the dogma: Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul and divinity under the appearance of bread and wine. This miraculous transformation occurs in the sacrifice of the Mass at the consecration in a process known as Transubstantiation. This word tries to capture the miraculous event. Transubstantiation means that the substance of the bread and wine has been converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. The bread and wine cease to be bread and wine.
There are many examples in scripture which support this dogma (cf. John 6, the Institution Narratives and 1 Corinthians). Further, this dogma has not changed from the very beginning of the Church, through the Fathers of the Church (e.g. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies), saints, theologians, and finally to our present day. St. Justin Martyr writes in the second century: “For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these things… so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by word of prayer, which is from him, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”
In order to wrap our minds around this miracle, several principles derived from St. Thomas Aquinas may help. (1) The accidents of the bread and wine are found before and after the consecration. Accidents are real; not an illusion. The accidents are the sensory appearances of an object. (2) We really receive Christ’s Body and Blood at the Mass. At the same time Christ remains in heaven (cf. Hebrews). (3) A single body cannot be extended with its quantity in two places at once with its own accidents (hence why the accidents of bread and wine remain). (4) An object or a person comes to be in a place either by a change of place (called locomotion) or by the conversion of one thing into another (called substantial change). (5) At the Last Supper Christ speaks literally and not figuratively. For change to occur there must be something at the beginning of the process and something at the end of the process (change does not come from nothing; i.e. there has to be something in order for there to be a change [creation means “comes from nothing”]). In this change called Transubstantiation, Christ’s body and blood do not change (if they did, then Christ would be constantly recreated at every Mass, which is impossible and it would be a different Christ). Instead the substance of bread and wine change. The bread and wine are not annihilated and then Christ is present, rather the bread and wine have to be there in order for a change to occur (otherwise we are back to creation rather than change). No substance of the bread and wine remain (an idea called impanation), since this would imply a weakness on the part of Christ. Finally the bread and wine must be changed (called a substantial change), otherwise the only other way Christ could be present would be by locomotion (change of place), which contradicts principle (2), (3) and (4) above. So in short, we literally receive Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity.